Engineers without borders: Experiential education

Abstract

An Engineers Without Borders (EWB) Club has operated at our University for approximately 6 years, conducting projects in Asia, Africa, Central America, and North America. EWB projects are completed cooperatively between club members and students enrolled in an experiential learning course required by the engineering curriculum. EWB projects provide real world experiences where students are called upon to use all their book knowledge, common sense and resourcefulness to make a significant contribution to project goals. Students work in multidisciplinary teams. They are responsible for interacting with clients, conducting assessment trips, designing solutions, making recommendations, producing engineering reports and drawings, making presentations, raising funds, and supervising and participating in construction. The projects introduce student to the triple bottom line, i.e., projects must work at environmental, economic, and social levels. The purpose of this paper is to describe the benefits of incorporating EWB projects into the engineering curriculum. In order to do this, three projects are described in detail, in Senegal, El Salvador, and The Gambia. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2009.