Engineering 10: A Hands-On Intro to Sustainable Engineering
by Arthur Raymond, Foothill College Student, Silicon Valley CA USA
A laptop is plugged in. Several throats clear. The sweet scent of hot coffee in the early morning permeates the room as a PowerPoint presentation flickers onto a set of projected screen. Dozens of pairs of eyes flutter between a group of speakers and some slides.
December 5th and 6th marked the final presentations of Dr. Sarah Parikh’s “ENGR 10: Introduction to Engineering,” with groups of 3 to 5 students presenting their big idea to change Foothill campus. For many of these students, it’s the first engineering class that they’ve ever taken. Project management, design, ethics, costs — a first experience, but definitely not the last one for these engineers in training.
With the guidance of Dr Parikh, along with Foothill faculty’s Jim Kozelka and Bob Cormia, students were given the freedom to consider issues on Foothill campus. This freedom culminated into projects created and led by the students which explored the possible engineering solutions to these problems.
Dr. Sarah Parikh had glowing words about the event, her class, and her students before the presentations got underway.
“One of the real strengths [of this class] is that we have engineers from all the different majors learning and working together.”
Projects were presented in the form of a 5 minute presentation followed by a 5 minute Q&A session, led by an all-star commentary panel comprised of Foothill Chancellor Judy C. Miner, Foothill President Thuy Thi Nguyen, Waidy Lee (Foothill advisory board member and Independent Research professional, Pacific Rim Advisor at Coulomb Technology), Dr. Scott Lankford (Foothill English professor and Foothill’s Center for Sustainable Future chair), Robert Cormia (Foothill Engineering and Nanoscience Instructor), Lawrence Lew (Foothill Business Instructor) and Jim Kozelka (Foothill Facility’s Energy Systems manager).
Over the two days 12 projects were presented with a variety of sustainability issues that plague to campus being addressed. The borderline torturous parking problem was tackled through low-tech and high-tech means, from cameras tracking incoming and outgoing cars to a vehicle counting system using an induction loop vehicle monitoring system fully designed by the students of the class — at a fifth of the cost of the quoted price from an industry leader. The campus swimming pool’s ability to hemorrhage money — a $105,000 year heating and water cost — was another popular issue being tackled during the presentations, which included a new tarp design offering a potential $40,000 yearly saving and an alcohol-based liquid solar cover projected that would save an estimated $57,000 a year.
Some building-specific ideas were mentioned, with a heavy focus on buildings 4700 and 4800 with their plethora of scientific equipment that drain energy throughout their idle time. Using what is essentially a smart plug, the first group presenting on day one suggested an automated program that knows when to turn your lights, computers, and lab equipment on and off, with a system that could potentially know when a class is occupied and schedule itself accordingly.
Chancellor Miner regarded these projects highly and offered hope for the future: “[This project] makes me think: ‘can we do this?’ … because of the incredible cost-benefit of a single building, would you think there’s an economy of scale… if we look at the entire PSEC complex?”
While the projects received some criticisms, nearly all received praise as well. Chancellor Miner was enthusiastic about more than a few projects, and jokingly (or maybe not so much) referred to one of the presentations as a job interview while Jim Kozelka thought extremely highly of one of the energy projects, going as far as to say that it was “brilliant… The cost of emissions that you’re now saving… That’s something that we don’t value enough… I would like to implement this district-wide within 3 years.”
