Page 6 - ME Newsletter Fall

TEACHING
Design for Life: Water in Tanzania
ME 4583 is an engineering design course currenly led by Teaching Associate Professor Matt Anderson in which CSE students take on an experiential, hands-on, real-world engineering problem and travel to Tanzania to understand the parameters of the problem firsthand. The course has been designed to facilitate the use of fluid mechanics topics while evaluating a problem and designing a solution.
Over winter break, the class travels to Tanzania, landing in Dar es Salaam. They then travel inland to the high country to a much more rural region where they evaluate the needs and current resources of multiple villages. The class is divided into teams and each team travels to a village that currently does not have access to improved water sources. There, the students are tasked with collecting as much information as possible, including tracking down current water sources and elevations using GPS and testing existing water sources for contaminants. They use the collected data, develop a proposed plan for accessing and distributing clean water, and turn it into a complex fluid dynamics model, working with village officials
to ensure that the community’s needs will be met and the system can be maintained for as long as possible. They also learn about local culture and work with the community to ensure that any solution proposed meets the needs of those that would use the system.
Back on the UMN campus in the spring, students work on the course deliverables, leveraging all their in-country learnings and data collection. All teams present their solution proposals to a large and varied audience including university faculty, friends/family, and potential funding organizations. Next, they finalize the technical design work and create
a report that can be used to implement the proposed solution by local Tanzanian installers.
“This is by far the most unique engineering course that I have ever had
the privilege of being a part of,” said Anderson. “I love seeing our students work together in interdisciplinary teams to understand the challenges and possibilities that these real world problems present and gain a perspective of global engineering problems, which are really opportunities in disguise.”
6 ME News Fall 2024
Far left: The team encouters their first engineering problem and designs a solution on the bus from Dar es Salaam
Left: In-field water testing for biological contaminants with a water sample from a current water collection source