South Dakota
Mines and the Universidad
Peruana de Ciencias Aplicadas in Lima, Peru, (UPC Peru) were
awarded a grant from the
100,000 Strong in the Americas Innovation Fund to build a
partnership that includes a student exchange that builds technical,
intercultural and soft-skills training that are needed to improve water quality
in Peru.
This program will increase student and faculty collaboration,
mobility and cross-cultural skills in the U.S. and Peru. It will also hone
student skills via a water sanitation project for families who lack water
services in the Lima district of Villa María del Triunfo, Peru.
Capstone design student teams and faculty from both
universities will work together virtually and in-person on implementation of a
fog catcher system that collects water from the air to be used for domestic
purposes, irrigation of orchards and the implementation of a waste-water
treatment system to be re-used for irrigation. At Mines, multidisciplinary
teams of students from chemical engineering, civil and environmental
engineering and other departments will be involved in the project. Learn more
about the overall effort in this video.
“By
participating in this collaborative design project, students from both South
Dakota Mines and UPC-Peru will learn about each other’s culture, country and
educational differences, as well as similarities, helping them to be more
globally aware and able to contribute positively to both societies in the
future,” says David Dixon, Ph.D., a South Dakota Mines professor in the Karen
M. Swindler Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering.
Students at South Dakota Mines and UPC will begin
work on the project in the summer of 2023 and continue throughout the coming
year.
The 100,000 Strong in the Americas Innovation Fund is the
public-private sector collaboration between the U.S. Department of State, U.S. Embassies, Partners of the Americas, corporations and foundations working
together to stimulate new higher education partnerships between the United
States and the rest of the Western Hemisphere.
“We appreciate the opportunities the grant enables
us to pursue. This multinational project embodies South Dakota Mines’ vision, ‘to
develop world-class leaders’ and mission ‘to educate scientists and engineers
to address global challenges and engage in partnerships to transform society’,”
says Suzi Aadland, director of the Ivanhoe International Center at Mines. “Engineering
and science are global enterprises and education in these fields must prepare
our graduates to work successfully on multi-national and multicultural teams.
Their work will have a global impact, and this is one project that will help
our students develop some skills necessary to be successful.”
South Dakota Mines is one of 23 colleges and universities
in the United States and 31 higher education institutions in Colombia, Peru,
Ecuador, and Bolivia that received funding from the 100,000 Strong in the
Americas Innovation Fund this year. The grants support innovative and inclusive
training and exchange programs for students and faculty in strategic areas,
including climate solutions, sustainable energy, digital transformation,
health, creative industries, and STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math),
among others.