University of Illinois Alumni Association

By Dave Evensen
Maren Somers Photos

For members of the University of Illinois student chapter of Engineers Without Borders, college stress involves more than nail biting over a mind-bending exam.

It also comes from slogging through monsoons, fighting off disease and enduring oppressive heat. But for these students, the rewards of bringing life-saving services, such as clean water and electricity, to impoverished villages halfway across the globe is ever more satisfying than an A+ grade.

To be clear, providing essentials to underdeveloped, foreign communities is just one – albeit major – goal of many pursued by the University’s EWB chapter. Much work is done right on campus, where students representing a variety of engineering disciplines design things such as solar-powered refrigerators, toxic gas sensors, biofuel converters and other innovations.

The theme of their work, however, is basically the same. EWB is where optimistic minds take on some of the world’s most fundamental problems in the style of engineers – which means efficiently, systematically and head-on. An Indian village needs cheaper electricity? Convert the generator. This Nigerian town lacks accessible water? Build a well. The water’s too dirty in a community in Guatemala? Construct a filter.

Considering that members of the UI chapter are all volunteers who manage full class loads, the irony of calling the club an extracurricular activity might at first escape you. To the students who plunge themselves into the midst of tribal politics, malarial mosquitoes and hard, foreign landscapes to sway the fate of some distant village, however, the experience can be life-altering.

Former student Patrick Walsh ’07 ENG was so moved by his experiences during an EWB aid project in India that he later developed a battery-powered, solar-charged LED lamp that could provide inexpensive and safe light to more than a billion people. His idea won the $30,000 prestigious Lemelson-Illinois Student Prize, and the recent graduate subsequently started his own company – GreenLight Planet Inc. – to produce and distribute the invention.

The India project that inspired him, conducted in the summers of 2004 and 2005, was the UI chapter’s first international endeavor, taking place in a village called Badakamandara, a small, rural community surrounded by oil seed trees in the state of Orissa. The town had no lights, and the chapter configured a generator to run on oil acquired from the seeds of the surrounding trees.

Walsh and fellow student member Maren Somers returned to Badakamandara to check on whether their generator was being used. Their first proof of any results came when they arrived in town and saw power lines stretching over the rooftops. Turns out the town had taken full advantage of the generator, and half of the roughly 100 houses in town had light bulbs; a few even had radios and televisions. The town also had devised a system to manage the new commodity (each household paid five rupees and 1.5 liters of vegetable oil per month, per bulb).

Such things have an impact, to say the least.

“A lot of our careers have been shaped by our experience in this organization,” Somers said. As for herself, she’s considering staying at the U of I as a graduate student to work on an EWB project in Nigeria.

Founded five years ago, the UI chapter formed as an arm of Engineers Without Borders-USA, a nonprofit humanitarian organization that began when a group of engineering students and a professor from the University of Colorado successfully developed a water delivery system for a small village in Central America. EWB-USA now includes almost 300 established and developing student and professional chapters, which take on projects already approved by EWB-USA headquarters in Colorado or pursue ideas that come from outside EWB channels (with headquarters’ blessing). For example, at Illinois, the chapter was recently approached by Peter Rohloff, MD ’07 (UIC), to help prevent the spread of disease through water supplies in Socorro, Guatemala. EWB-USA said OK, and the chapter plans to travel to the small village during the upcoming winter semester break to build a filtration system.

Tough weather conditions often confront members of Engineers Without Borders. Patrick Walsh takes cover from a monsoon in Orissa, India, in 2005.

While sticking to guidelines, the chapter on the Urbana campus has set out in its own direction. Member Stephanie Bogle, a doctoral student who managed the India project and the ongoing Guatemala project, served on the first EWB board after it came together in fall 2003. She said the group made early decisions that shaped it into a different kind of EWB chapter.

“When the first board here formed, part of the mission was to educate students here on this campus about international development and sustainability,” Bogle said.

Thus, in addition to international projects, the group will do local ones, from low-scale efforts (such as hosting lecturers) to big ones (such as the campus’s Biodiesel Initiative, in which the chapter plans to take waste vegetable oil from campus cafeterias and convert it into 400 gallons of biodiesel per week for University-owned vehicles). The effort, which could start producing biodiesel as soon as this fall, would reduce emissions, cut costs and provide a fuel that achieves the same mileage as regular diesel.

Other campus projects include building a windmill in which every part is replaceable. Having built the device, group members await University approval before it can be erected somewhere on campus (members accept the fact that a large, rotating contraption designed and built by students must undergo some safety review before it’s perched in a high place).

“Most chapters in the United States only have international projects,” Bogle said. “We’re fairly unique in that way.”

Thus far, however, the group’s international work has garnered the most outside attention. The chapter’s packed office, located on the first floor of Engineering Hall, has award plaques and blown-up ceremonial checks tucked into gaps next to the wall. Most recently, the group landed a $75,000 grant from the Environmental Protection Agency for drilling water wells in Nigeria.

The club has also received two grants from the prestigious, international Mondialogo Engineering Award Competition. Totaling roughly $25,000, one was for the India project, the other for Nigeria.

While fundraising is an ongoing necessity (the Nigeria project has a budget of approximately $170,000, for example, with the vast majority of it paid by grants), plenty of organizations – including some from the University – have been willing to chip in money and resources. The Engineering Design Council, for example, has pledged more than $40,000 for the Nigeria project, and the University’s International Programs in Engineering has paid for most of the chapter’s travel. The Center for Advanced Materials for the Purification of Water with Systems, or WaterCampws, helped obtain the EPA grant. J. Bruce Litchfield ’78 ENG, assistant dean of the College of Engineering, serves as the group’s general adviser.

Being so closely linked to the campus has raised questions about the degree of separation between the chapter and the University. Already, group members must obtain permission from the U of I to travel overseas. And they have tested making EWB part of a class curriculum.

Chapter president Tessa Colbrese, a senior this fall, acknowledges the advantages of making the link between the EWB chapter and the University more formal. But she’s also hesitant to carry that relationship much further.

“We take a lot of pride in being a student-run, -designed and -built organization,” she said.

Indeed, students have learned much from tackling unforeseen snags and contingencies on their own. And the problems they deal with are not minor ones – they often threaten the very success of the project. With limited time and resources, the students must deal with them quickly and smartly, right in the field.

If there was ever any doubt of this fact, it came to an end during their first, aforementioned project in India. Prior to building the biofuel generator, EWB visited the village in May 2004 for a site assessment and told the residents that the group would return later to build. When EWB came back a year later, it expected to find a generator site already prepared. Instead, it found a flood-prone field. The villagers had seen their share of broken promises and didn’t think the UI students would follow up on theirs – though they were happy when the students did.

As political disputes forced the students to build the generator shed in the flood zone, they had to build it to withstand water. It was put to the test, too – the group was hit with a monsoon while it was there (not to mention illness).

Other barriers were cultural. For example, local women were typically not invited to business meetings to discuss the generator. Still, EWB was responsible for teaching the community how to use the machine after its departure, despite not having directly reached half of the village’s population.

There were technical snags. In modifying a diesel generator to run on straight vegetable oil from trees, the student workers were unsure of key vegetable oil properties, such as viscosity, and flash point. In a paper presented at the International Conference on Engineering Education, the EWB authors said the project, with a $20,000 budget, forced them to work outside their various disciplines, thereby developing their confidence and intuition.

Some work complications can be dangerous. In 2005, the chapter was delegated the drilling project in the town of Adu Achi, Nigeria, to relieve the residents of walking 4 miles roundtrip to a dirty river for water. Religious violence had broken out in the country, however, and EWB put the plans on hold rather than take the risk. In the interim, the students helped build latrines and provide sanitation education in Kenya.

When EWB finally traveled to Nigeria for the assessment in 2006, they found that the people, with average monthly incomes of roughly $20 to $40, often needed the water to wash cassava. The starchy root, similar to a potato, is popular in that part of the world but must be cleaned properly so as not to release cyanide.

Because of the spiritual significance of the river, the town objected to pumping the water out of its banks into the village – it would have been a difficult task anyway – so residents and EWB decided to drill down in the ground some 500 feet for water. EWB returned in January of this year to build a reservoir where groundwater will be stored for distribution. The students went back this past summer, and Somers anticipates the project lasting at least two more years. While the drilling will be done by a contractor, students are also involved in education, design, monitoring and management development.

That raises a key point facing any student organization: turnover. Members graduate or get busy with other activities and find the dedication needed to bring life-sustaining services to the Third World too much. Though EWB at Illinois is  attractive, and membership rolls stand at about 1,000, only 100 or so are active. The number willing or able to sacrifice holidays for overseas projects dwindles to a handful.

The club offers just a learning experience and a chance to make a difference, Colbrese said “There are no other incentives, really,” she said. “The people who come and stay are really dedicated and wonderful people.”

EWB’s work receives good reviews. Canadian Samaritans for Africa, which submitted the Nigeria project to EWB-USA for consideration, is pleased that the organization accepted it, and that it was assigned to the UI chapter.

Patrick Walsh starts up the generator for the first time. As soon as the villagers heard it running, they ran to bring spices for grinding.

Loretto Lane, executive director of Canadian Samaritans for Africa, is optimistic that the town of Adu Achi will have its clean water soon. The organization takes some hope in the Urbana chapter’s work ethic.

“They gave up some of their Christmas vacation and traveled over to Nigeria,” Lane said. “They had to be very creative and resilient in order to cope with the many unforeseen glitches which occurred while trying to purchase materials. They are great people, and it was a privilege getting to know them.”

Such sentiments buoy the chapter, though the real meaning comes from the product of their efforts. Bogle looks back at the success in India, for example, and feels good about their work, even though it’s just a blip in the ocean of need.

“It is nice to come away from a project and something like that is accomplished,” she said. “Three hundred people in Orissa now have electricity, and 300 people in Guatemala will have clean water. It’s quite a bit different than what most engineers in the United States do.”

“In the end,” Somers said, “a lot of people say it’s just a drop in the bucket. The community in Nigeria is 10,000, and there’s 2 billion people who need access to drinking water… But 10,000 people is still something. I can tell you those 10,000 people are extremely happy about it.”

The proof? Whenever there’s a lull in the project, Somers says, the people of Adu Achi fast in prayer in order to move the project along. Talk about water pressure.

Evensen is a freelance writer living in Champaign.