Global Engineering

Home-grown community engagement sprouts in Fort Morgan, Colorado

Anonymous — Mon, 25 Apr 2022 17:42:13 +0000

Home-grown community engagement sprouts in Fort Morgan, Colorado Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 04/25/2022 - 11:42

Cody Johnston

Scooping dirt from the garden bed, Britta Bergstrom takes a handful of carrot seeds, gently places them in the dip and firms the warm earth back over top as a group of students look on with a gleam of wonder in their eyes.

Bergstrom, a graduate student in the Mortenson Center in Global Engineering Certificate Program at the University of Colorado Boulder, radiates joy as her work at the intersection of engineering and grass-roots community engagement comes to fruition.

This spring marks the founding of Pioneer Elementary School’s Garden Club where students, teachers, and community members in Fort Morgan, Colorado come together to plant vegetables and herbs in the Morgan County School District’s second community garden.

“There's definitely a need for healthier foods and also culturally relevant herbs, fruits and vegetables if we can grow them in Colorado, and so this solution hit both of those,” says Bergstrom.

With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and the uncertainty of international travel, Bergstrom pivoted her field-based practicum, an integral piece of earning a Certificate in Global Engineering, from Tanzania to an internship with the International Association for Refugees (IAFR) and a community engaged project closer to home.

“It ended up being really a blessing in disguise because I did get to get plugged in locally and do my practicum in my home state,” says Bergstrom.

The Mortenson Center’s Global Engineering program and her internship with IAFR allowed Bergstrom to research and identify a desire by Fort Morgan’s diverse migrant communities to grow their own organic produce, as well as a desire for inter-cultural community building.

“Global engineering allows for us as human beings to leverage those inter-continental networks and knowledge networks to find solutions for humanity in general,” says Bergstrom.

Deep-Seated Cooperation

A key partner for the community garden taking root just 95 miles east from Boulder was the University’s Office for Outreach and Engagement (OOE).

Bergstrom received one of 16 Community Impact Grants that OOE awarded in 2021-22, which helped foster the link between her research within the Mortenson Center and making an impact at the community-level.

“This is core to our mission, and it has shaped the evolution of our institution throughout its entire history,” says David Meens, director of the Office for Outreach and Engagement.

Though built into the university’s founding charter in 1876, the formation of OOE at the turn of the century and creation of the CU Boulder Outreach Awards catalyzed the commitment to building mutually beneficial relationships between scholars and community.

“We encourage folks to think about what is the authentic version of this public scholarship that is advancing the academic mission of the university through engagement with communities in ways that lead to mutual benefit and serve their needs,” says Meens.

Over the last 22 years, the CU Boulder Outreach Awards have provided over $6.7 million to 863 projects that have directly benefited more than 5.5 million people in Colorado.

Instilling Longevity

The Community Impact Grant not only greenlit the garden but also laid the groundwork for Renae Aguirre, a third grade teacher at Pioneer Elementary, to start a garden club.

A Fort Morgan native and teacher of seven years at Pioneer, Aguirre lights up when asked about cultivating student participation in the garden.

“I had one little boy tell me that the reason he joined the garden club was because his parents don’t know how to do it. So he wants to learn, so he can do it at home, and he’s only in first grade,” she says.

Root vegetables and leafy greens will ground the garden, and Aguirre will plant tomatoes and cucumbers after the last frost later in May. With 90 students of Pioneer’s 330 already signed up for the club, the garden will be well-tended.

And for Bergstrom, it’s just the beginning of a career at the intersection of engineering and community outreach.

“When I think about making an impact as an engineer, there’s a lot of power and real changes in these types of grassroots, community efforts,” she says.

With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and the uncertainty of international travel, Mortenson Center graduate student Britta Bergstrom pivoted her field-based practicum in Tanzania to a community-engaged garden in her home state.

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International student Chieri Kamada reflects on COVID experience

Anonymous — Wed, 28 Jul 2021 15:05:24 +0000

International student Chieri Kamada reflects on COVID experience Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 07/28/2021 - 09:05

Ashley Schoenbauer

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit the U.S. in March 2020, college students around the nation were forced to quickly change gears, debate whether to travel home and adjust to remote learning.

This unexpected and turbulent time was difficult for many students, but international students were often met with even more challenges and considerable roadblocks. Chieri Kamada was among them.

As the campus prepares for a more typical fall semester, Kamada is finding new strength from her experiences – and a desire to help fellow international students.

Kamada is a sophomore at CU Boulder studying aerospace engineering with minors in computer science and space. Originally from Saitama, Japan, Kamada moved to the U.S. three years ago when her father’s job relocated. When her parents later returned to Japan, Kamada stayed in Colorado.

Kamada began her college experience at CU in fall 2019. At the time, she was living with a host family in South Boulder and really enjoyed her first semester. Kamada made friends and built connections with other students through her involvement in the CU marching band.

By spring 2020, Kamada had been hearing inklings about the coronavirus from her parents and how it was impacting Asia, but she did not expect it to impact the U.S. to the extent it did.

Discrimination fuels fears

As cases spiked and the situation became more pressing, Kamada became worried about the lack of a mask-wearing culture in the U.S. and about the possibility of discrimination. Through friends and social media, Kamada had heard stories of Asians and Asian Americans being the targets of racism and xenophobia, and she did not want to increase the risk of experiencing that herself.

“I just heard too many of those stories. I know Colorado is a really safe place in general, but I was just scared. I’m still scared now,” Kamada said. “I couldn’t expect how people would react when they saw me.”

Due to these worries, Kamada did not leave her Boulder home for any reason other than to get groceries every once in a while.

International policies cause concern

In May 2020, Kamada flew home to Japan. She planned to return to the U.S. in the summer or fall, but as the COVID-19 situation escalated in the States, she had to reconsider.

As an international student, Kamada faced additional concerns about what catching COVID-19 would mean for her. She worried about having proper access to medical help, dealing with costs of care and insurance, and being so far away from her parents.

“It just felt like there was just not enough support to make me feel comfortable enough to live through this pandemic in the U.S.,” she said.

Kamada faced additional stress as the U.S. government sent mixed messages regarding student visa regulations, which historically required international students to enroll in in-person classes to maintain their visa status. Although this policy was eventually relaxed to allow international students to attend classes virtually, the uncertainty caused significant stress for Kamada and international students across the nation. This stress was further exacerbated by border closures and international flight cancelations.

Remote classes bring isolation

With so many factors in play, Kamada officially decided to take all her fall classes from Japan -- on a 16-hour time difference.

Although Kamada reached out to her professors and was offered the ability to watch lectures asynchronously on her own schedule, she knew it would be difficult to keep up without a fixed schedule. So Kamada woke up at 4 a.m. for classes for 16 weeks straight.

Throughout the semester, Kamada struggled at times with her exhausting schedule. She also struggled to keep in touch with her friends.

“I was virtually cut off from all my friends,” Kamada said. “That made me feel isolated and like no one could help me, but it was all happening because of my decision.”

Using her experiences for good

Looking back, Kamada credits this situation for leading her to join the college’s International Student Advisory Board. By doing so, Kamada has been able to connect with students who fully understand the extent of what she went through and who can relate to the difficulties that come with being an international student.

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There’s an internal voice, saying ‘You’ve got no excuse, you’ve gotta work hard, you’re representing your family,’” Kamada said. “There’s that mentality that we all have, and COVID really amplified that.”

The difficulties Kamada endured during the fall 2020 semester provided her with hindsight on various topics and ideas of how the university can better support international students going forward. She said she wished she had reached out to Counseling and Psychiatric Services at CU for support but felt that others needed the help more.

Kamada finished the semester without any significant grade drops. She said that her time feeling isolated in Japan made her realize that she wants to be more active in reaching out to make connections with other people. She also gained new communication and time-management skills.

Overall, Kamada said she feels that her current self is better than it would have been had she stayed in Boulder, and she plans to use her experience as a strength going forward.

“Everything that was happening was total hell, but I feel really proud of myself,” she said. “Talking about it now, I’m thinking, ‘Wow, that is such an accomplishment.’

“Being an international student is hard, but that means you’ve got a story to tell and an experience like no one else. You can use that to connect with people, and that’s the thing that’s really awesome.”

This unexpected and turbulent time was difficult for many students, but international students were often met with even more challenges and considerable roadblocks. As the campus prepares for a more typical fall semester, Kamada is finding new strength from her experiences – and a desire to help fellow international students.

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International design challenge builds global engineering skills for CU students

Anonymous — Mon, 03 May 2021 22:20:57 +0000

International design challenge builds global engineering skills for CU students Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 05/03/2021 - 16:20

Ashley Schoenbauer

When the pandemic hindered the original plans of the Engineers Without Borders team, Christian Lamb's team transitioned to pursue an international design challenge assisting two towns in rural Peru.

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Think globally, act locally: Engineers adjust plans to support Colorado town

Anonymous — Tue, 20 Apr 2021 18:34:07 +0000

Think globally, act locally: Engineers adjust plans to support Colorado town Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 04/20/2021 - 12:34

Ashley Schoenbauer

When the pandemic hit, the Engineers Without Borders team made the difficult decision to suspend its Puerto Rico project and began searching for creative opportunities to bring engineering solutions to under-resourced communities.

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ME students invent device for delivering COVID-19 vaccines to rural areas

Anonymous — Wed, 31 Mar 2021 16:14:47 +0000

ME students invent device for delivering COVID-19 vaccines to rural areas Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 03/31/2021 - 10:14

Sarah Kuta

CU Engineering students have invented a novel solution to this global problem, which has the potential to affect millions of people living in rural areas around the world. Meet PortaVax, a portable vaccine carrier that can keep up to 250 vaccine doses cold for several days using insulation and dry ice.

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Seeds of change: ATLAS students present paper on poverty cycles in rural India

Anonymous — Fri, 08 Jan 2021 17:51:40 +0000

Seeds of change: ATLAS students present paper on poverty cycles in rural India Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 01/08/2021 - 10:51

When three first-year ATLAS master's students in the Social Impact track of the Creative Technology and Design master’s program learned of the staggering suicide rate of male farmers in rural India and the suffering that ensues for their surviving family members, they wanted to explore effective interventions.

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Air Quality Inquiry project extends from rural Colorado into Mongolia

Anonymous — Mon, 21 Sep 2020 19:21:19 +0000

Air Quality Inquiry project extends from rural Colorado into Mongolia Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 09/21/2020 - 13:21

For three years, Air Quality Inquiry has been reaching K-12 students across rural Colorado. This year, Daniel Knight and his team extended the program across the globe to reach Public Lab Mongolia, a nonprofit whose mission is to make data available to the Mongolian public.

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Engineering team building Rwandan-style hut to test clean-air solutions

Anonymous — Fri, 17 Apr 2020 01:29:14 +0000

Engineering team building Rwandan-style hut to test clean-air solutions Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 04/16/2020 - 19:29

Kenna Bruner

The students will model their building after Rwandan housing.

Some 3 billion people in the developing world use stoves fueled by kerosene, wood, animal dung or coal for cooking, heating and lighting. Pollution from burning fuels indoors increases the risk of respiratory illnesses including childhood pneumonia, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, cardiovascular diseases and lung cancers.

Each year, more than 4 million people die prematurely from illnesses attributable to household air pollution, 99 percent of which occur in developing countries.

A team of four engineering undergraduates has undertaken a project to help improve the health of people in Rwanda who use these polluting stoves.

The students’ project, named Solar Housing for Engineering (SHE), focused on designing a Rwandan-style hut where air quality research can be conducted. The structure will be built on CU Boulder’s East Campus to serve as an on-site laboratory for cookstove-related air quality research.

“Smoke from cookstoves is one of the number one killers globally,” said Kate Johnson, one of the team members on the project. “There are millions and millions of families worldwide who rely on indoor cook fires for their food.”

In addition to Johnson, the team members are Katie Lindberg, Antoinette Ridgel and Meghan Vonk. All are seniors in environmental engineering.

The SHE project is for their senior design class in environmental engineering.

Indoor air pollution has many potential solutions including providing cleaner fuels or better ventilation. This home will enable researchers to test multiple solutions. The project allows students who might not be able to travel to other countries to work on engineering projects for the developing world.

“We are making it as close as possible to Rwandan conditions while understanding that we’re building this in Colorado,” Johnson said. “It has to withstand snow loads, different temperatures and wind loads. Those are things we have to consider. We’re looking at making it an adobe construction with a tin roof. Another thing about the home, it needs to be completely self-powered.”

The idea to replicate a Rwanda hut came from CU’s Mortenson Center in Global Engineering, a program that focuses on undergraduate and graduate levels. The Mortenson Center trains engineers to work with institutions and communities worldwide to develop tools and ways to tackle global challenges. One of the center’s research initiatives is indoor air quality in the developing world, focusing specifically on Rwanda for this project.

Since travel to the developing world to conduct research can be financially inaccessible for some students, they had to find a way to perform accurate experiments that would still involve students in the work.

“This team was professional, hard-working and dedicated,” said Michael Walker, an instructor in the Department of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering at CU. “This is one of the strongest teams I have had the opportunity to work with the past few years.”

The team designed the structure and all of its components, including the materials and layout, the ventilation system (to remove pollutants between experiments), and a photovoltaic array so it’s completely self-powered.

They also designed mathematical plume models to predict the paths and concentrations of airborne contaminants inside the structure. Construction is scheduled for spring 2021.

The structure will be student-built. A separate team of researchers with the Mortensen Center and CU will use the hut to perform the indoor air pollution research.

“This senior project definitely benefits our education and future careers in several ways,” Johnson said. “Our senior design class is taken at the end of four years of environmental engineering courses and is a chance for us to take principles learned in those courses and apply them to a real-world project. It also gives us valuable experience working to meet a client’s needs, which is extremely important in environmental consulting.”

A team of engineering undergraduates has undertaken a project to help improve the health of people in Rwanda who use cookstoves.

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Jeppesen program offers study abroad + paid internship for grad students

Anonymous — Mon, 02 Dec 2019 23:15:35 +0000

Jeppesen program offers study abroad + paid internship for grad students Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 12/02/2019 - 16:15

Kellen Short

Seth Hill, a BS/MS student in aerospace engineering, traveled to Germany in August for the Jeppesen program.

TU-Darmstadt student Max Funck earned his American pilot's license while studying at CU Boulder.

For nearly a decade, a unique exchange program has offered CU Boulder graduate engineering students a glimpse at university life in Germany and a lucrative paid internship with Jeppesen – and allowed a German student the chance to study and work in Colorado.

Applications are now being accepted for the next cycle of the Elrey B. Jeppesen Scholarship, and one student from CU will be selected for the yearlong exchange, which includes room and board and a full semester of tuition at Technical University of Darmstadt, one of Germany's premier engineering universities. After a semester of graduate studies at TU-Darmstadt, students transition into a semester-long internship in Frankfurt with the Boeing subsidiary company’s German operations.

For some participants, the program has even led to full-time positions with Jeppesen, which specializes in software development, data analytics and research for the aviation sector.

“I don’t think that there’s many internships that are both combined: you get to go overseas and go to a different university, and then you also get a paid internship along with it,” said Sam Schwartz, associate technical fellow for Boeing Global Services. “It really enhances your chances of being hired at the end because we’ve worked with you for the whole summer.”

Seth Hill, an aerospace engineering BS/MS student from Greeley, traveled to Frankfurt in August to begin the program. He studied the foreign language throughout high school and even traveled to Germany for 10 days his senior year. Hill also studied abroad in Berlin during the summer of his sophomore year at CU, so he was anxious to return and said the scholarship felt tailor-made for him.

“It’s such an amazing opportunity to spend a whole year in another country and get so many experiences for work and for school and for life, and you’re pretty much doing it for free,” Hill said. “I just feel so, so lucky.”

He completed a monthlong language immersion course through TU Darmstadt before starting classes. After the semester ends in February, he’ll begin his work with Jeppesen at its modern Frankfurt headquarters.

Meanwhile, TU Darmstadt master’s student Max Funck spent all of last year studying at CU Boulder and interning in Jeppesen’s Denver office before returning home in August 2019.

He said he enjoyed the wide variety of class choices available to him, using makerspaces like the ITLL, and experiencing a different style of education.

“The main difference is that professors here are so accessible,” Funck said, adding he was surprised that students were encouraged to email or meet with faculty for help outside of class. “That’s a wonderful attitude and so motivating.”

But the experience wasn’t all study and work. While at CU, Funck played on the CU roller hockey club team, visited 13 National Parks and earned a U.S. pilot’s license.

“As Seth and Max experienced, the Jeppesen scholarship is an unparalleled opportunity to gain global experience that translates into future career paths as part of an incredibly well-rounded graduate education experience,” said Andrew Wingfield, director of international programs in the College of Engineering and Applied Science.

Program Requirements

Applicants must:

Be U.S. citizens or permanent residents
Be full-time, master’s students in the College of Engineering & Applied Science with a stated interest in aircraft systems design
Have completed four semesters (or equivalent) of German language courses. (Courses and internship will be conducted in English, but German skills are required for cultural integration)
Commit to serving as an ambassador of CU Boulder and the United States
Commit to preparing a professional presentation of the experience for Jeppesen stakeholders

To Apply: Contact andrew.wingfield@colorado.edu by Feb. 28, 2020

Applications are now being accepted for the next cycle of the scholarship, which includes room and board and a full semester of tuition at Technical University of Darmstadt, plus a semester-long paid internship.

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Study abroad trailblazer Ku Thomas wins advocacy award

Anonymous — Fri, 15 Nov 2019 22:51:32 +0000

Study abroad trailblazer Ku Thomas wins advocacy award Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 11/15/2019 - 15:51

Leading up to the award, he was the first student in his major to study abroad in back-to-back semesters in two different countries: New Zealand and Singapore.

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