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EWB RHIT is proud to announce that Mr. David Lincoln has been named our club's freshman of the year.  David is a Mechanical Engineering major at Rose who also plans on pursuing his Master's in Engineering Management during his time here.  David is currently Co-Engineering Team Lead and has been a major reason that we have been able to find recent success with the design work on our water distribution project in Chaguarloma, Ecuador.  Congratulations David!

Throughout the past couple of years, EWB-RHIT has been working on a project to bring clean drinking water to Chaguarloma, Ecuador. Chaguarloma is home to around 35-40 families, located in the northwest region on Quito. Before the project began, members of the community had to walk 3.5 kilometers on a daily basis just to get clean water. During the first trip, which took place August 2018, EWB-RHIT conducted a social survey to understand the communities needs. Additionally, we conducted water testing and preliminary survey data. The social survey revealed that on average, each family spend 5 hours a day water! The team traveled to many surrounding springs to test the bacteria levels and flow rates to determine the best spring to source the water for the pipeline. Then, the team…

Rising Senior, Luke Greenwood has earned the American Concrete Institute Foundation's Future Concrete Industry Leader Fellowship, one of the most coveted honors that an undergraduate civil engineering student can earn.  This honor recognizes Mr. Greenwood's leadership abilities, past experiences in structural engineering and design, and desire to become an effective concrete industry leader in the future. Luke has been involved in Engineer's Without Borders since his freshman year having recently completed a term as Engineering Team Lead.  EWB-RHIT was lucky enough to have Luke share his leadership skills and civil engineering expertise as he helped lead us through much of our preliminary design on our water distribution project in Chaguarloma, Ecuador during his time as team lead.  In addition to his role as team lead, Luke was a member of…

Congratulations to the Rose-Hulman Class of 2021!  This group of students have made monumental impacts on the club.  They joined us for the tail end of our latrine project in Ghana and have been with us for the entire water distribution project in Ecuador.  They helped carry us through various challenges from trying to find a water source in Ecuador to guiding us through COVID-19.   Katlynn Bussett - Biomedical Engineering - Fundraising and Marketing Team Lead (2019) - Local Outreach Chair (2018)   Peter Householter - Civil Engineering - Local Outreach Chair (2020) - Engineering Team Lead (2020)   Cyrus Luczkow - Biomedical Engineering - President (2020) - Treasurer (2019) - Fundraising and Marketing Team Lead (2018)   Amy Metz - Civil Engineering - Engineering Team Lead (2019) -…

This past Saturday we hosted our first every walkathon as a socially distanced fundraiser to help us raise funds for our water distribution project in Ecuador.  This was a great opportunities to not only help fund our project but also teach campus about the extents that those in Chaguarloma, Ecuador must go to in order to get water. In Chaguarloma there are no clean water sources in the community.  Any time someone wants to go and get water it is a 3.5 km (2.2 mile) round trip to do so.  The idea behind this event was to have participants walk a 3.5 km path around campus and along the national trail behind campus so that they would be able to better understand the hardships those in Chaguarloma must go through…

EWB-RHIT teamed up with Engineers in Action, an NGO based in Ecuador, with who we are working on our water distribution project with, last fall to help with the response efforts to COVID-19 in Chaguarloma.  We were able to provide funding for family cleaning kits that helped prevent the spread of COVID-19. Engineers in Action traveled to the community from October 2nd through 4th to conduct 4 training training sessions about how to properly wash hands, socially distance, proposed etc.  In addition they distributed hygiene kits that included items such as soap, masks, disinfectant, etc.   The efforts were particularly important as the Ecuadorian government is stretched very thin and unable to provide an adequate response to COVID-19, and proper hygiene as a whole is not very well practiced in…

[caption id="attachment_3926" align="aligncenter" width="1267"] Team members discussing home locations with community members[/caption] At the end of August, a travel team consisting of eight individuals traveled to the community of Charguarloma to complete an assessment trip. Of the eight travel team members, five were students--Joe Hubach, Emily Hausmann, Peter Householter, Josh Krsek, and Amy Metz. The other three travel team members were Jed Holt, the technical mentor;  Liam Sawyer, the traveling mentor; and Dr. John Gardner, the faculty mentor. Upon arriving in Ecuador, the team met with their NGO, Engineers in Action to discuss logistics and plans of action, before heading to the community the next day. After meeting the community members and attending the fiesta the community threw on the first day which featured traditional dancers and food, the travel…

EWB-RHIT participated in their first Servants at Work (SAWs) build on September 15th of the 2018-19 school year. Five students met with the SAWs coordinators at their garage to help load the prefabricated sections for the wheelchair ramp. Students and SAWs members worked for 8 hours to construct the ramp after running into some complications with an existing structure and adjusting the ramp design on the fly. Originally two metal ramps with no railings that were ineffective in the winter were the only way to get up to the house. The new ramp proved to be much sturdier and safer than the original. The owner, after a couple test runs on his wheelchair, was very pleased with the work. EWB-RHIT would like to thank SAWs for allowing us to participate…

Congratulations to  Emily Haussmann and Peter Householter on being named our 2017-2018 members of the year.  Peter is a freshman Civil Engineering student and Emily Haussmann is a junior Mechanical Engineering student.  Both of them have made significant contributions to the club on the water distribution project.  Emily has been around long enough to have been heavily involved with our Ghana latrine project as well, traveling to Ghana twice.  We are excited to see what they will bring to the table in the coming years and look forward to them being part of our first travel team to Ecuador this August. Congratulations Emily and Peter!

Our technical mentor, Jed Holt, has traveled with us to Gomoa Gyaman on three implementation trips. Not only was he there for us when we needed last-minute design changes and kept us on task during the daily meetings, but he also created lasting relationships with the community and travel team members. To thank him for the time he has put into our chapter, members of past travel teams met Jed and his wife in Indianapolis for dinner. We all enjoyed good food and reminisced about our trips to Ghana with him. The EWB contract with the community of Gomoa Gyaman, which was signed at the beginning of our partnership in 2011, stated that we would continue our partnership for five years. The chapter also decided that the needs of the community of…