Senior engineering students' project to be put to use in Kenya

On Saturday, May 5, senior engineering majors will showcase their projects at the 28th annual Senior Design Banquet and Projects Night.
Each project represents a year of brainstorming, research, planning, constructing, critiquing and reviewing by one of Calvin's 16 senior design teams--composed of civil and environmental, chemical, electrical and computer and mechanical engineering concentrators.
Some of the teams build prototypes. One team designed a touch-screen user interface that's embedded into a coffee table. Another team designed a robot to rescue victims of collapsed buildings. And yet another team designed a single-person vehicle, which they hope can achieve close to 1,000 miles per gallon in fuel efficiency.
And while these projects fulfill the final requirements for senior engineering students at Calvin, for some, their projects hold much more significance.
The Alternative Farming Solutions team, comprised of five Calvin engineering majors, built an all-terrain vehicle that will be used to help with farming Amarynth in Kenya. The students connected with someone from the Christian Reformed World Relief Committee (CRWRC), who indicated a need for a village in Kenya. The team then went to work, using pieces of a Chevy S10 and a Ford Ranger, a transmission from a lawnmower, among other things to build a vehicle that will allow the people of this village to plow, transport and plant their produce and then bring it into town, something that is currently done manually.
Check out their project: https://vimeo.com/41574438
"Two semesters of hard work and dedication have culminated into some amazing projects," said engineering professor Steve Vander Leest. "Beyond the really obvious prototypes, there is months of really significant design work."
On Saturday, the teams will kick off with the traditional engineering Open House, held from 4 p.m. to 5:45 p.m. in the two wings of the engineering building. Students, faculty, staff and family and friends of the engineers can view the senior design projects and ask questions of the senior designers. From 7:30 through 9 p.m., the students will give formal presentations of their projects in various lecture halls around campus.
For more information, visit http://www.calvin.edu/academic/engineering/senior-design/
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Matt Kucinski
Media Relations Manager
Calvin College
msk23@calvin.edu
616.526.8935 (office)
616.307.7429 (cell)
Received on Fri May 4 16:40:55 2012