EWB experience leaves a lasting impression

Emily Smith
ASME NEWS

An interest in environmental engineering and the chance to travel intersected on a flier posted late last year on the University of New Hampshire campus, directing Ben Nichols to a student meeting of ASME's newest partner — Engineers Without Borders-USA.

A few months after that meeting, in June 2004, the ASME student member traveled to Thailand with four other EWB team members. In six short days, Nichols said, he got an education that he would never have received in the university's classroom, yet will be with him forever — a real-life appreciation of how valuable mechanical engineering is to people with so little.

Ensuring that villagers in Thailand had regular access to clean water "was probably the most fun, rewarding thing I've ever done in my life," said Nichols, who graduates in May.

Student member Ben Nichols at work in Thailand on an EWB-USA project.

EWB-USA maintains a list of projects around the globe that student teams can sign up to tackle. In 2003, the UNH team chose the Thailand project, which had two facets: channeling water from a naturally occurring spring in a way that would make it clean enough for the residents of 34 villages to drink; and getting water from a nearby river to crop fields.

Like many EWB projects that are implemented and completed with student help, the Thailand project would be done in phases. The first phase had been finished the summer before Nichols arrived, when another UNH student team traveled to the Thailand villages to set up a piping system with filters, a leech field and a water collection site.

Nichols' team followed up by building a sturdy spring box directly over a 5,000-gallon collection site to protect the contents from being dirtied by silt, leaves and other runoff. The team also changed the land gradient around the spring box to ensure that runoff water was carried away from the spring box to diversion ditches.

Participation in the EWB project required Nichols to take a series of crash courses, in subjects seldom offered in the curriculums required by most engineering departments. The first course was in fund raising, to cover the cost of his travel and accommodation; the second was in materials improvisation, because so many of the usual engineering materials were unavailable in the forests of Thailand; followed by an on-the-spot lesson in the development of sign language to communicate with people who not only didn't understand engineering, but didn't speak English.

"Much of the system had to be improvised as we did not know what materials and tools would be available until we arrived," Nichols explained. "We had a plan and supply list, but most of the materials were not available so being able to improvise quickly was a necessity. Most of the designing had to be done on the spot while we assessed the site."

Nichols plans to return in January to implement the project's third and final phase, which involves teaching the villagers different farming techniques, redesigning a ravine-system that is used to channel river water to crop fields, and restructuring a dam prone to massive leaks.

Although already interested in environmental engineering, Nichols said his EWB experience "might change what my job is going to be. I liked the feeling I got from helping people. I want a job where I can feel good about what I'm doing."

Let ASME NEWS know if you have worked on an EWB project. E-mail details to smithem@asme.org.

EWB receives appoximately four applications for new projects each year. For details about the EWB-USA project list, visit www.ewb-usa.org.

 

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