Young engineers aid world
SCI-TECH SCENE | International projects offer hands-on experience, a chance to do good
Kathryn Weissman, a senior at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, spent part of her summer with other IIT students helping install electricity and a solar-power system at a public high school in Haiti.
"I learned that when you're trying to help people from a completely different culture, you have to be very patient and understanding," said Weissman, 21, who will earn her bachelor's in civil engineering in May.
Weissman's first visit to Haiti to plan the project, in January 2008, was the first time she had traveled outside of the United States. She said the IIT students came to understand that electricity to power laptops for the Haiti schoolchildren was more meaningful to their education than overhead lighting. The schoolchildren's parents will pay $1 extra per year to maintain the solar-power system for the long term.
The IIT students are members of Haiti Outreach (HaitiOutreach.org) and the university's student chapter of Engineers Without Borders (ewb-usa.org). Weissman is president of the student group. The students raised $20,000 to buy materials for the Haiti project.
They worked with mentor Tom Debates, owner of Geneva-based photovoltaic installation company Habi-tek (Habi-tek.com), to gain greater expertise in designing the system and choosing solar panels and equipment. Debates, who volunteered as a member of the Chicago area professional chapter of Engineers Without Borders (ewb-chicago.org), traveled with the students to lead the installation work.
Weissman was fascinated by the Haitian city of Pignon, population about 10,000, and its rural lifestyle. Children at the teeming village market wandered among the crowd feeling completely safe, and people lived fulfilled lives with no cars, air conditioning or ability to go grocery shopping in the way we know it, she said.
"Everyone does 'market shopping' on the same day," she said. "It's hot, crowded, and women buy fruit, vegetables, beans and rice for the entire week in an outdoor area where hundreds of men and women have set out their goods."
She cannot wait to return to Haiti, where the next project will be to see if volunteers can pipe water from natural springs to La Victoire, a city of 3,000 next to Pignon.
Other Chicago area students have found their calling in similar technology-oriented volunteer trips.
Jennifer Welch, who will earn a bachelor's in civil engineering from the University of Illinois at Chicago in May 2010, served as project manager this summer for UIC's Engineers Without Borders student group, working to improve a water system serving 1,200 people in and around Cerro Alto, Guatemala.
"The trip was complex," she said, in part because the team included students in diverse studies: planning, public health, and civil and mechanical engineering.
Engineers for a Sustainable World (esustainableworld.org) provides another avenue for engineers to use their skills in developing countries.
Elizabeth Hohl, a Northwestern University graduate, was part of an Engineers for a Sustainable World-USA safe-water team working last summer in the Iganga district of southwestern Uganda.
Hohl graduated in June with a bachelor's in civil engineering.
Her team found potters to make clay vessels with lids and spigots. The lids and spigots were important because much of the water left in open pots became contaminated and led to children getting cholera, typhoid, worms, and diarrhea.
The team marketed the redesigned pots at reduced prices at local markets and a national trade show, and created a plan to subsidize distributing the pots to villagers.
The communities were quite excited by the new design, and many perceived the spigot as a status symbol, Hohl said. She also helped design and promote a chlorination dispenser to treat dirty water.
"Development work is hard," Hohl said. "It's not easy to go into a village of 300 people who have lived an entirely different life from you and try to understand them and their lives, as well as try to have them understand you and your life."
Priscilla Zuconi Viana, a native of Brasilia, Brazil, and a doctoral student in environmental engineering at the University of Illinois at Chicago, got a reality check when she saw children playing in wastewater in a Rio de Janeiro slum while she was in graduate school.
"It was really bad," said Viana, 30, who holds a master's in environmental engineering from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, and an undergraduate degree in civil engineering from the State University of Campinas in Sao Paulo, Brazil.
In August, she was one of two UIC international students awarded International Dissertation Fellowships for 2009-10 from the American Association of University Women.
Viana's faculty advisers built a wastewater treatment plant so students could test low-cost technologies to treat the sewage. She also researched water-quality degradation on the Guandu River in Brazil.
"To me, research is not an objective in itself," she said. "The beauty of research lies in its intrinsic democratic nature. Its benefits should be disseminated to provide resources for sustainable environmental stewardship and to promote solutions to environmental problems."
Viana intends to return to Brazil after she finishes her studies to serve as a role model for other women who want to become engineers.