College students spending a summer abroad is nothing new, but the University of Alabama chapter of Engineers Without Borders is taking a different approach.
Eleven students and two UA professors are departing Sunday for Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, formerly Saigon, and rural Cambodia, where they will work on engineering projects relating to water supplies in the villages.
'Most of the disease elimination in North America happened due to engineering, not due to medicine,' said Phillip Johnson, an engineering professor and the director of Engineers Without Borders at UA.
'If your profession knows how to deal with these issues, as mine does, you have a moral obligation to do this.'
Johnson is joining the students on the three-week trip.
'This is something that we dealt with a long time ago and much of the world, particularly the Third World, has not dealt with these issues,' he said.
The group will work with Joe Brown of UA's New College, who researches small, household-based water filtration systems. Brown has worked in Southeast Asia for several years on sand and clay pot filters. A nongovernmental organization installed 150 of the sand filters three years ago, but no research has been done on the results.
'Our group is going to go visit the installations,' Johnson said. 'We'll interview all the people that are using these filters, then we plan to write a paper on the outcome when we get back and publish it.'
Johnson also plans to research rainwater collection as a source of clean drinking water in Vietnam.
'Vietnam has copious rainfall, and it might be the best source of water they can come up with,' he said. 'Ground water is easily contaminated with human waste and animal waste.'
This trip will be focused on information gathering, and they will plan projects to work on if the group decides to return to Southeast Asia, he said.
The trip is not just about helping others, Johnson said. Engineering has become an international industry where people work with others around the world. To be able to compete in the industry, students should have international experience.
Engineers Without Borders at UA has taken three previous trips to Peru, but UA junior Ynhi Thai, who was born in Vietnam and moved to America in 1991, planned the trip to Southeast Asia.
'The professor told the students, if they had a project idea they could pick it up and start it and I thought, ‘Why not Vietnam?' ' Thai said. 'I thought it would be easy for me to start up a project in Vietnam because I know the language and the culture. It feels really rewarding, and I'm very happy to be able to go back and help my country of birth.'
Thai went with the program to Peru in summer 2006, when they did survey projects similar to what they are planning in Vietnam and Cambodia. Later, groups installed a water treatment center and solar panels for a school building. She has been interested in using her knowledge to help others ever since.
'It's more than just going home to revisit my heritage. It's going to help where there's a disparity,' she said. 'I like being able to use what I learn in the classroom as an engineer in a real life situation, and at the same time be able to help people.'
Thai said planning the trip wasn't easy, but she speaks fluent Vietnamese, her parents have always spoken their native language with her, and she has relatives still living in the country.
After several failed attempts to plan projects, including an $80,000 bridge in rural Vietnam, Thai got in touch with Brown, who wanted help with his water filtration work. The group also barely beat the cut-off for American entry into Cambodia because of the swine flu scare. Their transportation into Cambodia has yet to be confirmed, Thai said.
The American manager of the nonprofit group they plan to work with also quit recently, making everything very unorganized, she said.
Despite the last-minute obstacles, the students are excited about the trip, Thai said.
'They're very open-minded, which is good because no one is freaking out yet,' she said. 'They've told me they want to go over there and build something and make a difference and come back and be proud.'
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