Students Build Bridges, School in Bolivia
| A Bolivian child peers through a fence and watches his school expand. |
By Dean Woodbeck '78
These are not the college students featured in those newspaper articles about wild spring breaks in the tropics.
These are civil and environmental engineering students who parted with $2500 of their own money to spend two weeks in third world conditions among people who have very little in the way of material possessions.
And they loved every minute of it.
"Taking me out of my culture, and showing me the true meaning of giving is something that will stay with me forever," said Jenelle Hejny, a civil engineering student from Stillwater, Minnesota.
How's that for attitude?
During the past year-and-a-half, instructor Linda Phillips '79 has led three groups of students to Barrio Los Pinos, Santa Cruz, Bolivia. They do both the brain work and the brawn work on a school that has been expanding and changing every year.
In 1998, it consisted of one room and seven kindergartners. Now, a two-story building serves 182 students in grades K-7.
| Two Tech students and a Bolivian man raise one of the trusses on the school roof. |
It all started when Phillips, an instructor in civil and environmental engineering, cast about for a way to make a potentially boring course real to the students.
Who knew that a civil engineering course on professional practice--with such eye-popping topics as contracts and specifications--would result in life-changing experiences?
During a personal volunteer trip to Bolivia, she hit on an idea that has done just that--combining the needs of the planned school with those of her students.
"I would show them slides of simple procedures and have them write specifications from scratch," Phillips said. "The project was simple, so they could manage without a lot of background in the field."
When students saw that this would be a real school helping real people, they started to ask, "Why canŐt we go to Bolivia?"
After much logistical work, planning, and negotiating, Phillips pulled together the first trip in 2001.