US-Ghana Student Research: Lessons from Africa - Undergraduate Engineering Research in Rural Ghana

该奖项将支持美国本科生在加纳北部农村社区工作，研究与水、能源和住房的可用性和质量有关的工程解决方案。这些学生将与来自库马西夸梅·恩克鲁玛科技大学工程学院的Francis Momade博士带领的加纳教师和学生团队合作。该项目独特的结合了实践，基于项目的学习，适当的工程技术研究，文化和语言沉浸，以及旅行前后的学术活动，将使学生深入了解工程研究如何解决与自然资源供应相关的问题及其使用对环境的影响。学生们将与他们的加纳同事合作，将每个问题分解为其核心组成部分，综合和设计一个适当的、通常是极简主义的方法，该方法结合了利益相关者的投入，包括本土资源和技术，并具有可持续发展的潜力。除了接受研究培训和在发展中国家的严格工程要求的实践经验外，该项目还将帮助学生了解作为一个局外人生活在另一种文化中意味着什么，来自不同文化的人如何以不同的方式提出问题，以及以不同的方式提出问题如何对工程的完成方式和项目的结果产生重要影响。学生将接触到一个不同的工程文化，在那里，工程教育、实践和方法往往受到资源严重缺乏的限制。他们将与那些使用研究成果的人合作，他们将努力得出有可能改善发展中国家农村社区人民生活的解决方案。该项目旨在让学生在人类社会和有限的自然资源的大背景下欣赏可持续设计。作为实践工程师，这些知识将有益于美国和整个世界。

This award will support U.S. undergraduate students to work in rural communities in northern Ghana to research engineering solutions related to the availability and quality of water, energy and shelter. The students will collaborate with a team of Ghanian faculty and students led by Dr. Francis Momade from College of Engineering of Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Kumasi. This project's unique combination of hands-on, project-based learning, research on appropriate engineering technologies, cultural and language immersion, and pre- and post-travel academic activities will give students insight into how engineering research can address problems associated with the supply of natural resources and the impact of their usage on the environment. Working with their Ghanaian colleagues, the students will deconstruct each problem into its core components, synthesize and design an appropriate, often minimalist, approach that incorporates input from the stakeholders, includes indigenous resources and techniques, and has the potential to be sustainable.In addition to receiving research training and hands-on experience with the rigorous demands of engineering in a developing nation, this project will help students understand what it means to live in another culture as an outsider, how people from different cultures frame questions differently, and how framing questions differently can have important consequences for how engineering is done and what results are achieved in a project. The students will be exposed to a different engineering culture, where engineering education, practices, and methods are often constrained by a dramatic lack of resources. They will work with those who use the research results and they will try to derive solutions with potential to improve the lives of people in rural communities across the developing world. The project aims to give students an appreciation of sustainable design within the broad context of human society and limited natural resources. As practicing engineers, this knowledge will be of benefit to the U. S. and the world at large.