As a civil engineering major who is minoring in Spanish, freshman Carli Ballantine couldn’t have scripted a better experiential learning trip than traveling to the coast of Panama during winter break to visit a water intake system.
Ballantine and six other civil engineering students spent five days in the Central American country, accompanied by distinguished lecturer Jenny Retherford. They learned about the relationship between engineering design and implementation of the design, gained community input, and soaked in the culture.
The UT group worked with Solea Water, a nonprofit that helps vulnerable communities implement, operate, and maintain public utility services. Alan Foster, a Panama County director and board member of Solea Water, guided the UT group during its stay.
“Being able to gain a perspective from the older students I was with, but also with Solea Water, was so interesting,” Ballantine said. “It was really awesome to learn about water systems and to learn about the culture in a Spanish-speaking country and about different people’s life perspectives from their own words.”
The trip was made possible through a generous donation from Barbie Bigelow (MS/CS, ’85), former chair of the TCE Board of Advisors, and her husband, Andy (BS/ME, ’83), to TCE Global Sustainability Fund.
The Global Sustainability Fund was created to help equip UT engineering students with the skill set required to meet today’s workforce needs, which include cross-cultural communication and collaboration; sustainable design principles; real-world problem-solving under resource constraints; integration of social and technical considerations; and international project management experience.
Hand-On Water Distribution
The area the group visited is a remote location with rural conditions. The students were able to observe how the island obtains water from the mainland. The process involves a mountain stream on the mainland with a concrete dam, an intake, and a pipe. An intake is the structure or system used to collect and draw water from a source like a stream, river, or lake and direct it towards a distribution system.
The pipe goes from the stream to the shore and follows along the bottom of the ocean to the island. The Kuna, an indigenous tribe that resides on the island, all use the same line for the water, often leading to pressure issues.
A senior design team from the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering is currently working to design a system to change how the distribution works on the island to improve the flow. The group that traveled to Panama will provide the senior design team members with feedback, measurements, and photos from its visit.
“I think we can take for granted a lot of engineering practices that we have in the US, as far as running water all the time through the city and our water cleaning systems,” said UT senior Robert Emerson, who made the trip to Panama but is not part of the senior design team. “It’s amazing seeing how other people use basic, fundamental engineering to accomplish their needs like getting water from a stream in the jungle.”
Once the students saw the intake system, they broke into two groups and sketched how they would design a system if given the chance with the pipe, pumps, and valves that Foster made available to them.
“I think we were really lucky that we had a variety of students who are at different places in their learning,” Retherford said. “It fostered a lot of great questions and conversations, not just about the physics of the project, but also how it would work socially in the community and the management of the system. The students provided a lot of great ideas.”
The hands-on experience gave Ballantine a better sense of perspective about how the engineering process worked.
“Getting to talk through the different parts of the water system, seeing those valves we would use, and getting to touch them was just such a unique experience,” she said. “It’s something I wouldn’t have gotten to do if I had to stay at home for winter break, and I’m really grateful that I got to see something I could possibly do in the future.”
Connecting with the Culture
When the UT group first arrived, Foster and Retherford met with the island chiefs and Retherford provided them with UT gear. The students ate food cooked by the Kuna tribe, slept in hammocks, and hiked through the rain forest. They visited the Panama Canal, historic downtown Panama City, and did some snorkeling off one of the islands.
“It was an experience not many of us would get in our lifetimes if not for attending UT and being in the Tickle College of Engineering,” Emerson said. “I was able to touch a sea turtle and see a shipwreck between two islands that has been there for decades. I could go on for days about the experience. The trip definitely took us out of our comfort zones and showed us a new way of living.”
Ballantine is thankful she was able to take a trip outside of the US in her first year at UT. Not only did she learn more about civil engineering, but she met new people, made new friends, and saw how the Volunteer spirit can bring people together abroad.
“I’m excited to have that connection with Tennessee and be able to get to know the civil engineering department more,” she said. “It would be great to start a new civil engineering study abroad in the future so more students can get this type of experience.”
For anyone wishing to support similar trips, gifts can be made to the TCE Global Sustainability Fund.
Contact
Rhiannon Potkey (865-974-0683, rpotkey@utk.edu)