Weaving Together Beyond Disciplines: A Transdisciplinary Experience in Engineering Education and Community Collaboration

Traditional engineering curricula often present a fragmented view of the world, neglecting the socio-cultural, environmental, and ethical dimensions of the challenges students will eventually face. This limitation hinders students' ability to engage with complex, real-world issues. However, engineering education is undergoing a transformative shift. Universities are increasingly adopting active learning methodologies that integrate diverse competencies beyond technical expertise, promoting contextualized learning. This paper presents some conclusions about an educational initiative that began over a decade ago with the participation of students in an engineering competition and has grown into a collaborative strategy involving students, faculty, alumni, and administrative staff from the university, working together with fishermen from a vulnerable community in the Colombian Pacific Coast to address critical challenges related to artisanal fishing. This initiative offers a transdisciplinary model for addressing technical, environmental, and social issues through collaboration across academic fields, including sociology, anthropology, design, and engineering, combined with civil society knowledge. Undergraduate engineering students are working closely with this diverse community to co-design innovative, sustainable solutions. The experience of mutual knowledge exchange and co-learning highlights the importance of integrating local expertise, respecting cultural contexts, and considering longterm sustainability. The text explores this process, its challenges, key lessons learned, and the potential for engineering education to contribute to social justice.