Westmont Magazine Engineering Students Innovate, Fly to Ecuador

Young students in Ecuador learned about science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) while having fun thanks to two teams of students from Westmont’s Engineering Design course. After months of planning during the spring semester, seniors Jared Lush and Sebastian Vethan joined Daniel Jensen, director of engineering, on a trip to Quito, Ecuador, in May to see how Ecuadorian students received their innovative teaching projects.“

The children and their parents absolutely loved having international visitors and deeply appreciated the opportunity to learn STEM subjects,” Jensen says. “One child traveled 12 hours on a bus to attend. They also had tons of fun playing with the planes, motors and gears.”

Last spring, the team of Joshua Guinto, Carlos Potrero, Kadin Whang and Gia Versales created a project for students ages 7 to 13 that uses gears, magnets and a coiled magnetic copper wire to generate an alternating current, which illuminates a tiny light bulb.

The students participated in a partnership between Compassion International, Baylor University and Westmont through the Christian Collective for Social Innovation (CCSI).

Compassion International connected them with people in Ecuador, who provided critical insights for the Westmont engineers about designing for their culture. The students implemented Design Innovation (DI), a process found in many research and commercial fields but still somewhat novel in higher education.

The two groups unveiled their creations during a formal Critical Design Review presentation to members of the Westmont community April 25 and 27. They explained how they utilized the DI process, breaking down each of the four design phases: discover, define, develop and deliver.

“The experience for the Westmont students and faculty was tremendous,” Jensen says. “We learned so much from our interactions with the Ecuadorian people, including insights into their culture, details on how they live their daily lives and ways we can improve our designs for them.

“We can see now how we can specifically pray for them. One of the goals of the Westmont engineering program is to design products that help and even delight people — and do so in the name of Jesus. In that sense, this trip was a wonderful culmination for our engineering design work.”