Student engineers take stories of their work in poor regions to NYC

By David Brand

No longer the "me generation," American engineering students are actively taking on some of the world's toughest problems.

A Cornell-based national engineering service organization will take some of its many stories of students and professional engineers working to improve the lot of some of the world's poorest communities, many in the developing world, to New York City next week.

Eight Cornell students and alumni from the College of Engineering and the Johnson Graduate School of Management spent their spring break in Umuahia, Nigeria, setting up a project to turn biomass waste into energy. This summer, a multidisciplinary team of volunteers from several chapters of the Cornell-based Engineers for a Sustainable World (ESW) will further develop the project. Among those in Umuahia receiving instruction in adobe brick making were, from left, Regina Clewlow, M.E. '02, director of ESW, and Jo Pak, C.E. '05. Engineers for a Sustainable World

The group, Engineers for a Sustainable World (ESW), will host students and supporters from across the United States at the Mezzanine Conference Room, 30 Rockefeller Plaza, at 5:30 p.m. May 12. The event, which will be both fund-raiser and a call for volunteers, will feature students recently returned from Bosnia, South Africa and Nigeria describing their community-service engineering projects that have made a big difference in people's lives by enabling self-help, making the projects sustainable.

Founded at Cornell in 2002 as Engineers Without Frontiers, the organization now has a presence on more than 80 campuses in the United States and includes more than 1,000 students and professional engineers, many of whom volunteer to work on integrating community development and engineering in the developing world. Current projects being funded by ESW include a rural water-supply project in Honduras, a composting-education project in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and, starting in June, computer training in China.

This summer, a multidisciplinary team of ESW volunteers from various university chapters will travel to Umuahia, Nigeria, to develop a project to turn biomass waste into energy. The project was set up over the spring break by eight Cornell students and alumni from the College of Engineering and the Johnson Graduate School of Management.

ESW also has begun to encourage the integration of this community service into academic courses. Five new project-based courses have been created at Cornell, Pennsylvania State University, Stanford University and the University of Michigan, with student teams working with partners in El Salvador, India, Jamaica, Africa and U.S. communities. At Stanford this spring, students have been working on a class project to design a green building in Nicaragua. The 11-member team includes both undergraduates and graduates with backgrounds in civil engineering, earth systems, economics, physics and alternative energies.

Jennifer Burney, the project team coordinator, helped to create the new civil and environmental engineering course. She also is co-chair of the ESW national conference, "Solutions for a Shrinking Planet," to be hosted by Stanford Sept. 29 to Oct. 2, 2004.

"We are proud to have sparked this initiative within engineering education," said Regina Clewlow, ESW's executive director (a 2002 Cornell M.Eng. graduate), who founded the student group with Krishna Athreya, director of Minority and Women's Programs in Engineering at Cornell. "In the past two years, we have discovered that there are a lot of engineering students and faculty who are looking for ways to address issues of poverty and sustainability," said Clewlow.

The U.S. group recently changed its name to Engineers for a Sustainable World because of its focus "on the challenges of long-term, sustainable development -- by seeking lasting solutions for reducing poverty, and by working to improve sustainability in the United States and abroad," said Clewlow. "The new name more accurately reflects these goals and activities."

Those wanting to attend the New York City event should register via cjb58@cornell.edu (due to security, all attendees must be on the Rockefeller Center guest list).