This award will support U.S. undergraduate students to work in rural communities in northern Ghana to research engineering solutions related to the availability and quality of water, energy and shelter. The students will collaborate with a team of Ghanian faculty and students led by Dr. Francis Momade from College of Engineering of Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Kumasi. This project's unique combination of hands-on, project-based learning, research on appropriate engineering technologies, cultural and language immersion, and pre- and post-travel academic activities will give students insight into how engineering research can address problems associated with the supply of natural resources and the impact of their usage on the environment. Working with their Ghanaian colleagues, the students will deconstruct each problem into its core components, synthesize and design an appropriate, often minimalist, approach that incorporates input from the stakeholders, includes indigenous resources and techniques, and has the potential to be sustainable.
In addition to receiving research training and hands-on experience with the rigorous demands of engineering in a developing nation, this project will help students understand what it means to live in another culture as an outsider, how people from different cultures frame questions differently, and how framing questions differently can have important consequences for how engineering is done and what results are achieved in a project. The students will be exposed to a different engineering culture, where engineering education, practices, and methods are often constrained by a dramatic lack of resources. They will work with those who use the research results and they will try to derive solutions with potential to improve the lives of people in rural communities across the developing world. The project aims to give students an appreciation of sustainable design within the broad context of human society and limited natural resources. As practicing engineers, this knowledge will be of benefit to the U. S. and the world at large.
