Matthew Garneau '19 and a local
technician work on a water pump installation.
Stephen (Tyler) Arnold '19, Matthew
Garneau '19, David Piekut '19, and Daniel Wietsman '19, with a water tank
installed by UHart students nearly 10 years ago, and bearing the University's
name in Hindi.
For elementary school children
living in villages outside of New Delhi, India, learning in dim light and
sweltering classrooms has become a way of life. With limited access to water
and electricity, teachers often choose between holding classes in the hot,
humid outdoors or using kerosene lamps indoors with their inherent fire and air
quality risks. A group of students in the College
of Engineering, Technology, and Architecture,
led by civil engineering major Matthew Garneau ’19, set out to improve this
difficult learning environment by increasing the water and power supply in two
local schools.
This was Matthew’s second trip to
India during winter break, and his first leading the team as vice president of
the University’s Engineers Without Borders (EWB) chapter. “I wanted to return to India in a leadership role
because our efforts made such a dramatic difference to the quality of the
children’s school days,” says Matthew of South Windsor, Conn., who, during his
first trip in 2015, installed faster well pumps and Uninterruptable Power
Systems (UPS) in primary schools.
“Power is turned on for a maximum of
only two hours a day, so classrooms are almost dark, and the heat makes it
difficult for students to concentrate,” Matthew says. “Limited access to power
also means less water will be available, since well pumps needs electricity to
run,” he explains.
Over the course of nearly two weeks,
Matthew directed the team as it installed higher-powered water pumps and UPS'
in two government primary schools in the villages of Rithoj and Raisena,
located about an hour outside of New Delhi. Matthew, who has been running his
own landscaping company for four years, oversaw local technicians and worked
with translators to negotiate prices at local parts suppliers.
“We did most of the engineering and
measurement work for the installations at CETA, so we made only minor
calculation adjustments to better fit both systems,“ Matthew points out. The
students also had opportunities to interact with villagers and learn firsthand
about Indian culture.
Professor of Civil and Environmental
Engineering David Pines, who oversees EWB at UHart, notes the students not only
successfully implemented these sustainable engineering missions, they also
checked in on longer term work he and other UHart students have completed over
the 10 years the chapter has been traveling to the country, and surveyed sites
where future well pumps and UPS systems can be installed.
EWB projects at the University have
been steadily growing. Pines and another team of students visited Kenya’s Lake
Region over spring break, continuing efforts to dramatically improve the
harvesting process for farmers using a threshing machine designed by a UHart
student (read more here).
The chapter, which has expanded to include the Hartford EWB Professional
Chapter and the Hartford Art School, is working on three new challenging projects. Matthew is on board with all of
them, as he plans to run for chapter president next year.
“All EWB members serve as important
links to projects that give us the chance to apply practical knowledge,
sometimes even before we learn the theory behind it,” he says. “Providing
solutions to world problems helps us go from being students to being engineers.”
Unotes: 3/27/17
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