A university program puts students in a group to create real-world solutions for outside companies and nonprofits.
INDIANAPOLIS — A student project inspired in a classroom at the University of Indianapolis is now helping the world.
A group of engineering students developed a prototype device to allow a vehicle engine in Africa to be hooked up to a well and pump water out of the ground. It’s called a “power take-off system.”
“We are here almost every single day working on small portions of the project,” said Mitchell Blazek, a sophomore at UIndy. “It’s monumental. It’s the only reason I chose engineering so that I could actually do something and now it feels like I am actually doing something.”
Blazek and four other students are part of the university’s “DesignSpine” class.
Students are put in a group to create real-world solutions for outside companies and nonprofits. About a dozen projects are completed in a school year.
“I don’t know of another university that has this,” said Ken Reid, associate dean of engineering. “Every engineering university has a senior design project, but a lot of times, that is the first time the student gets to do design on their own that’s not part of a class. Here they are going to do that three times.”
For Blazek’s group, they were tasked with finding a solution to improve Africa’s water supply.
Indianapolis nonprofit Institute for Affordable Transportation was their client. They develop very simple vehicles for farm-to-market transport in developing countries.
“Thirty-five percent of the crops throughout Africa never make it to market. They rot in the fields or don’t get it to market. We are trying to fight that and enable the families at the small farming level,” said Will Austin, the executive director at the Institute for Affordable Transportation.
Austin said he plans to send the students’ prototype to test it in real life.
“I was thinking about all the places we can send it and most likely we will send this to Cameroon. We are getting ready to send a shipment in two weeks,” he said.
Students like Shealana Booker said it’s a rewarding feeling knowing the device may actually be used.
“That would just bring a new meaning to the project being able to see it work and being able to help people,” Booker said.
Being both sophomores, Booker and Blazek plan to be in the class again next year.
“It gives us a goal to work towards next year,” Blazek said.
“And make something even better,” Booker added.