Winter 2009 — Vol. 62, No. 1
Clemson is raising a new generation of global thinkers.
Imagine if you were a student whose “class work” helps bring clean drinking water to a village. Whose “field trips” take you to developing communities in foreign countries or ailing parts of your own country to apply what you’re learning. Whose after-college plans include humanitarian service as well as your own “economic development.”
Students in Clemson’s chapter of Engineers Without Borders don’t have to imagine. They don’t even have to be engineering majors. But they do need vision, energy and some well-seasoned guidance.
Engineers Without Borders (EWB) is a nonprofit organization that partners with developing communities to improve quality of life. EWB implements sustainable engineering projects (water, power, waste systems) while involving and training internationally responsible engineers and other professionals.
The concept is a perfect fit for Clemson’s belief in education that creates doers as well as thinkers.
At ground zero in New Orleans
Clemson’s EWB student chapter began in fall 2005 with the first projects centered on Katrina-wrecked New Orleans. Since then, students and faculty have completed four service trips there. The first three trips — May and November 2006, and August 2007 — were in collaboration with Catholic Charities Helping Hands, a program dedicated to helping elderly residents repair and return to their homes.
Web Extra: New Orleans Project Slideshow
In May 2008, volunteers from Clemson’s EWB partnered with Tigers Go! (a group leading alternative spring breaks) and a volunteer from the University of New Orleans EWB for their fourth trip. The EWB team helped install insulation and drywall in the home of piano teacher Barbara Murray, who is still living in a FEMA trailer.
“Students drawn to EWB projects are very giving of their time and skills to help others,” says Caye Drapcho, chapter co-adviser and biosystems engineering professor. “The ones who’ve traveled to New Orleans have been surprised at the poverty that existed there even before the hurricane hit and at the lack of progress made since then. When they see the great need that exists in our own country, it motivates them to want to return and make an even bigger impact.”
Biosystems engineering and EWB student Lauren Staples, who went to New Orleans in 2008, says, “There are still so many ghost buildings with the spray paint that the National Guard and Red Cross originally tagged on each house as they searched for victims. Hardly any road signs … people living in tents under bridges.
“In our situation, we worked with people from all different backgrounds. It makes you aware that disasters don’t distinguish between ages, classes or heritage. And that help shouldn’t either.”
The learning experience has been so successful that the New Orleans project is now part of an EWB Creative Inquiry class taught by Drapcho.
The next part of the project focuses on a sustainable solar energy design. Students have already submitted an EPA P3 proposal for solar water heater installation. Now, they’re modifying and designing solar water heaters to be installed onto secondary structures and donated to families in New Orleans.
The team plans to test the solar energy design on-site in New Orleans in the near future.
Web Extra: El Salvador Project
Along the coast of El Salvador
Another team of Clemson students is working to construct water supply and sanitation systems in Isla de Mendez, a small community on a peninsula on the coast of El Salvador, to bring clean drinking water to remote villages and to help the locals develop eco-tourism.
Why El Salvador? EWB partners with countries where it can help communities thrive in their own homes, on their own plot of earth, in their own culture. Parts of El Salvador are a good fit — gracious and grateful people, the Spanish language and established leadership through a nongovernmental organization.
Clemson’s involvement has come through a stroke of luck — the kind of luck you get when preparation meets opportunity. Environmental systems engineering alumnus Jim Chamberlain (M ’94) returned to Clemson last year to work on a Ph.D. in environmental engineering and science.
In the interim, he’d worked in Austin, Texas, and elsewhere as an engineer and a teacher. While in Austin, he established the EWB chapter for professional engineers and began a project in El Salvador. When he came back to Clemson, the University’s chapter and faculty supporters were eager to develop the El Salvador connection.
The first Clemson EWB team went to El Salvador last spring. Two professional engineers — David Boles, a chemical engineer with Owens Corning, and environmental systems engineer Ross Wagenseil ’85, PhD ’91, a professor at Tri-County Technical College — joined the group.
Chamberlain says, “Team members stayed in the homes of host families where they shared meals, slept on thinly clad beds (family members gave up their beds for their guests), took bucket showers and got a taste of day-to-day life far different from their own.”
And they accomplished an impressive amount of work during their eight-day visit.
They met with the community leaders, installed a wind anemometer, conducted percolation tests, evaluated electrical loads, analyzed water quality, surveyed and assessed sites for future designs — all with the ultimate goal of clean water, solar power and sanitation systems for the community.
The El Salvador project, like the New Orleans project, developed into a Creative Inquiry class this fall, with the goal of continuing and extending what was already begun both in the classroom and on-site.
“The purpose of this Creative Inquiry course is to get students engaged in active design of appropriate and sustainable technology that will benefit a developing community in El Salvador,” says Mark Schlautman, environmental engineering and earth sciences professor and EWB co-adviser.
“Each semester one or two project modules will be scoped, researched and designed. Some students will travel to El Salvador in the spring to collect data and assist in the implementation of their project design.”
Not just for engineers
A bonus of the EWB Creative Inquiry classes is that students don’t have to be engineering majors. Language, business, education, architectural design, biology — virtually all majors gain a wealth of information, experience and perspective while they make life better for people who need them.
And while many of the EWB teams’ successes can be measured in engineering terms, others can’t.
For example, EWB student Maria Koon, a mechanical engineering major, says of the El Salvador project, “The highlight of the trip was spending time with the families with whom we were staying in the evenings and at meal times.
“It was so great to be able to practice Spanish with them and tell them about the projects on which we were working. It was interesting to hear their opinions about the local needs and how grateful they are for the work done by previous delegations.”
And the impact is far beyond the classroom or even the project site.
Web Extra: El Salvador Project for Rotary International (pdf)
As civil engineering major David Christopher, who has taken part in both the New Orleans and El Salvador projects, points out, “As I was going through the career fair a few months ago, I found myself evaluating potential employers based not only on the pay I would receive but also on their stance toward sustainability and the environment.”
Helping students shift to more international thinking is a major part of Engineers Without Borders’ philosophy.
Chamberlain, who’s helping lead the El Salvador Creative Inquiry class and the on-site visits, says, “EWB’s humanitarian efforts are certainly an immediate goal in all its work. But creating a new generation of engineers and other professionals who are global-minded is just as important.”
To learn more about Engineers Without Borders USA, go to www.ewb-usa.org.
For more on Clemson’s chapter, go to www.clemson.edu/~ewb.
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