Tau Beta Pi: The Engineering Honors Society
My fellow inductees and I with The Bent in front of Kaufman Hall after the spring 2019 initiation ceremony
Tau Beta Pi is an engineering honors society which serves to recognize academic achievement and exemplary character of eligible engineering students. The aim is to provide students an enhanced engineering educational experience through scholarship and career opportunities, cultivation of the appreciation of the engineering field, and encouragement of comradeship among members.
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I got inducted into this organization in May 2019 and served as the recording secretary for the following academic year, where my role was to take notes on chapter activities and assist in planning out events. I then became the president of the chapter the next academic year to serve as the general ambassador of the society and to organize the chapter agenda.
More than just the leadership and management skills I obtained, being a member of the society and serving these positions has incited me to reflect on and think beyond the concept of academic success. It has been my job to tackle the question of what makes a great engineer/student of engineering. Working with members who are already academically successful in their respective classes, I recognize that the goal is to encourage an environment which seeks to go beyond curricular success and to rather discover relevant and important ideas and concepts not taught inside the classroom. Altogether, we are given the task to tackle the bigger questions of engineering which, in addition to finding newer and more effective designs and methods to improve technology, include questioning the types of technology we want to develop as society, the meaning of good design, and the role that engineering plays in shaping the future in the macroscale. We do these through reading extracurricular books, sharing the latest updates in engineering knowledge, and listening to diverse stories of fellow members with experience and advice.
Engineers Without Borders: La Reforma Project
This gallery shows photos taken during our week-long assessment trip to La Reforma in March 2019. We performed water quality testing, surveyed the topography of the area, and conducted house-to-house polls to better understand the location and to build a strong relationship with the community.
This project is part of my membership in the Engineers Without Borders - ODU Chapter. Its proposal was approved in September 2018 and we conducted our first trip in March 2019. Our aim for this project is to design and implement a sustainable water distribution and sanitation system to a community of over 800 people in La Reforma, San Cristóbal Verapaz, Guatemala. Access to clean water in this community is very difficult that the women and children spend the majority of their days traveling long distances to obtain water. As a result, they often do not have time for school, leisure, or other fulfilling activities.
Our project team consists of different roles, from constructing the pipeline drawings to fundraising. I serve as one of the Project Leads, where I manage the important documents and communicate with the country director, project engineer, and other experts. I also served as the Health and Safety Officer during our trip, where I was required to have first aid and CPR skills and to prepare the list of nearby clinics and hospitals in case of an emergency.
Currently, our design of the system involves a pipeline utilizing a submersible electric pump to deliver water from a catchment tank, which sources water from a spring via gravity, to a distribution tank that connects to the individual households. We were originally expecting to go back to La Reforma in March 2020 to finally implement our design, but this plan was halted due to the travel restrictions brought by the COVID-19 pandemic. Additionally, a later hydrological test around November 2020 had revealed that the water source does not have sufficient volume to sustain the community in the drier seasons, and constructing a costly well might be necessary. Our team also has to negotiate for an agreement with an independent landowner who owns half of this water source.
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Our team thus continues to work hard to overcome these challenges and ultimately bring clean water to all the people of this wonderful community. While I would have already graduated before our team can likely finalize everything and carry out the design, this project will always be carried with me because of the amazing people I have been given the privilege to meet. In addition to the profound motivation for learning concepts of engineering from the realization of the great impact it can make, this experience has most of all instilled in me the most valuable lessons of gratitude, teamwork, and intercultural understanding. I will always stay in touch with my project team and the people of La Reforma, and hopefully I can keep visiting the community in the future and continue to help in any way that I can.
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