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On a dusty morning in Pocora, a village of 5,000 in the eastern-central Costa Rican province of Límon, UGA engineering undergraduates tried to elaborate on questions asked of a man standing before a small house. The man, who lived with his wife and children in the two-room structure, expressed curiosity about the presence of the foreigners. Lacking a common language, they struggled to understand each other, but in the interstices of silence, the wheels of communication began to turn. A connection was made, not through words, but eyes – faces – and the interactions based on questions from a survey suddenly took on new meaning.
The students had spent the first half of the semester in small groups as a part of their ENGR 4920 senior design project, specifically formulating the questions to be included in the survey. Equipped with a fluent Spanish speaker and an array of budding engineering fundamentals, the four students who drew this project had spent a great deal of time developing the survey, and they welcomed the opportunity to finally spend time with villagers.
The UGA engineering senior design program, lead by a trio of faculty including David Gattie, who accompanied this group on spring break in Costa Rica, is a study in continuity which is itself designed for long-term impact. Projects range from designing adaptive wheelchairs for the disabled to devices for obtaining potable water under emergency conditions to the project in Pocora Sur. “We try to give the students a complex problem that necessitates working together and using what they’ve learned over the course of the undergraduate experience,” Gattie says.
The Costa Rica project hinges on synthesizing disparate information plus engaging a further trait that Gattie sees as crucial to the future of engineering education: the ability to step back and evaluate the questions. During the course of their visit the students would visit clinics, talking to patients about prescription medicines and waste water alike, even trek into the jungle in search of a mysterious water source.
The project exemplifies a new direction for service learning within engineering education, a program at UGA designed to inculcate engineering students with some of the multi-level expertise, communications skills and flexibility they will need to be successful engineers. While this may seem like a Herculean task with abstract payoffs in the near term, entering a small village as strangers the students quickly gain a deeper appreciation for the context of problem solving. Their preparations and the trip resulted in a true student learning project, whereby they begin to define what they can do and what a population actually needs. By this process, according to Gattie, service learning begins to take on a new meaning as well.
“Those students are now thinking differently, they’re more driven to asking questions first than just immediately seeking answers,” he says, relating the pivot to the profession in general. “Learning how to ask the right questions is what engineers need to do.”
Competing
in a Global Economy
The University of Georgia is at the forefront of the globalization
movement in higher education with a wealth of opportunities for
international experiences. Our students are flocking to study-abroad
programs, thriving on the challenges inherent in confronting a
new cultural environment. More and more, students on campus are
also making choices that reflect an understanding of the importance
of global awareness—from living in a residence hall-based
language community to starting a radio program in another language
to minoring in a foreign language. These experiences, whether at
home or abroad, influence how our students perceive the world and
their place in it. We’re producing graduates prepared to
be world citizens—well informed, culturally sensitive and
technologically sophisticated. They’re ready to take on the
challenges of our global society, and they’ll be equally
at home whether in the Peach State or the Republic of Georgia. |
The project exemplifies a new direction for service learning within engineering education, a program at UGA designed to inculcate engineering students with some of the skills and flexibility they will need to be successful engineers.
