Engineers with a Mission

Chartered in 2004, Baylor student organization, Engineers
with a Mission (EM), offers engineering students opportunities
to serve those who struggle in various ways both in Waco and
around the world. Over these past 13 years, faculty sponsor
and senior lecturer at the School of Engineering and Computer
Science, Brian Thomas, says he has learned a great deal about
using limited resources efficiently, how to draw student
participation and, most significantly, how to help communities
in need without inflicting harm.

“Our mission statement has evolved over time as we’ve
learned more about not coming in as these ‘technology saviors’
and just delivering some improvement that is unwanted or
misunderstood,” said Thomas, who is also lead faculty member
of the new humanitarian engineering concentration at Baylor.
“We’re much more collaborative with those on the ground. These
have to be the solutions that [communities] want—not what we
think they need.”

Since its founding, EM has established relationships with
Waco’s Rapoport Academy, tutoring Waco-area elementary
and middle schoolers in science and math, and Mission Waco’s
Engineering for Kids after-school program, which is aimed at
cultivating early interest in STEM fields.

As busy as they are, EM tutors know that the mere 60 or 90
minutes they commit to helping young students each week can
yield a mutually transformative experience.

“There's a lot to learn from others who come from different
ethnic, cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds,” said Megan
Cheng, senior electrical and computer engineering major and EM
project manager. “It’s fun to be a part of something larger than
myself. The local community will be here long after I graduate,
and volunteering locally is a great way to leave my mark.”

Well Project in Laredo
Over Spring Break, EM traveled to Laredo, Texas, for the
second time to an area of the city deemed a “food desert”—
meaning there are no grocery stores, farmers’ markets or even gas
stations for many miles.

“Las Lomas is a part of town unreached by city water lines,”
explained Jill Klentzman, lecturer of mechanical engineering and
faculty volunteer with EM. “Residents have to drive and wait in
line for hours to fill large 300- or 400-gallon tanks with clean
water and take them back to their home.”

Having learned of Las Lomas through a relationship between
Baylor Missions and the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, EM
made its first trip to the border town in July 2016, bringing
with them an energy-efficient drill specially designed for use
in developing regions. The equipment, purchased with private
donations as well as a $7,500 grant from Baylor Missions, was able
to penetrate a stubborn, rocky layer of earth and finally hit water.
Baylor students then devised a way to filter clean water from the
soil, rocks and clay.

Over Spring Break, EM partnered with a group from the Diana
R. Garland School of Social Work, taking 33 people, including
faculty sponsors, back to Laredo with a two-fold mission:

to install a well and working water pump at Vaquero Church, a
church that stands about a half-mile from the first well project;
and also to gauge interest and garner community buy-in for this
second project.

“The social work team helped us by holding town-hall-type
meetings and identifying the priorities of the community,"
Thomas said. "The EM team developed the hole we drilled last
year and a solar-powered pump was installed in it. The pump
delivers water from 43 feet below ground to a storage tank 300
feet away. It's non-potable, but the hope is that the water can be
used for toilets, laundry and other types of washing.”

In addition to improved water access, the community expressed
a desire for a soccer field where children could play together. So
EM designed and built soccer goals to convert the land behind the
church into a playing field.

“The people at the church [Vaquero Church] really took us in
and welcomed us,” Klentzman said. “They made us lunch every
day we were working, they brought their kids and we got to know
them; when we were drilling, people would just come out and
watch like a spectator thing and some of the neighborhood boys
wanted to try drilling themselves.”

Solar Power in Cap-Haitien, Haiti
This May, just after finals, Thomas and a small team of EM
students will board a plane to northern Haiti, the poorest country
in the western hemisphere, where approximately 80 percent of the
population lives in poverty. At the IDADEE orphanage (a French
acronym meaning ‘The Initiative to Assist and Mentor Children’)
in the city of Cap-Haitien, EM will help install an array of solar
panels to supplement the compound’s existing generator.

“They have a large gasoline-powered generator that powers the
whole compound, but it’s huge and it’s expensive to run,” Thomas
explained. “They have to fire up this enormous thing even when
they only need a couple of lights on. The solar panels will tie into
the same lines that the generator feeds. And when they don’t need
full power, they’ll turn the generator off and turn the solar on.”

May’s mission trip will be EM’s fourth to Haiti. Previous
projects have included the installation of solar arrays at various
buildings and schools and installing smaller solar panels on top of
private residences, helping Haitians start micro-businesses out of
their homes.

“Customers can stop in and charge their cell phone batteries,”
Thomas explained. “And the quality of work [Baylor students] did
on these projects was excellent.”

In planning service projects of this length and scale, Thomas
has learned that timing is everything.

“We’re boarding the plane to Haiti on Sunday, May 14—the
morning after graduation for seniors,” he said. “And we return
the day before summer classes start. Also, a lot of engineering
students are concerned about securing professional internships
over the summer, so we can’t schedule these trips in the middle
of June or July.”

One challenge in completing the solar installation in only
two weeks is the limited amount of time the EM team has to get
to know the administrators and children working and living at
the orphanage.

“Spending time with them, talking to them as peers and not
projects and coming in with the attitude of a learner—these things
take time,” he said. “That’s what’s extra-hard about a short-term
trip. There simply isn’t enough time. But when we follow the lead
of some full-time, on-the-ground missionary or organization, and
filter all we do through them, we can better ensure appropriate
solutions to specific challenges within a community.”

For more information about Engineers with a Mission,
visit baylor.edu/ecs.