Colombia STEM Education – Community Centered Design Studio

Overview

Community Advancement for Santa Rita Education (CARE)

The team was tasked with finding ways to support continued education in the Santa Rita community. After receiving extensive amounts of  community feedback on what mothers and community leaders wanted, the team made a STEM education plan. This plan focuses on the 9-12 age group and the hands on aspect of prototyping and problem solving. The program has the students look at how a water filter is used and implements  the design process in the students’ own creation of a rudimentary water filter. The program was tested at multiple middle and elementary schools to better understand the flaws and strengths, with the intent of testing on the ground at the school in Santa Rita. Iterations were made on the program after feedback from in person testing and teachers. Our program provides a unique solution to an educational problem through an economical implementation of the engineering design process.

Throughout the process of researching and engaging with stakeholders, we came up with three primary issues to address and select from. These included the issue of water contamination from waste generated through coffee bean production along with contamination from gold mine-related waste. The last of these issues was waste management in a community with limited resources available for scaled city-wide management.

After a long period of contemplation, we decided to avoid having a single prototype as the primary target, due to a lack of need. Instead, the idea most team members agreed upon was to develop a STEM-based educational activity that students can engage in, with various smaller prototypes which can support this program.

Ideas for modules which could be used in the school to engage students include: a lab kit integrating water contamination remediation and filtration, a robotics module which could implement and demonstrate water contamination remediation, and a waste-cleanup robot which the students could potentially build and engage with which would provide an educational experience centered around waste management.

We detailed an overall process for our team to use that helped us pursue the development of these educational activities and used a flowchart to fine-tune our wide reaching goal into a single manageable concept.

Our research was utilized to inform our decision about which concept to select. The primary overarching theme of our project is STEM education and opportunity. STEM projects and programs have been proven to impact student interest. STEM education has the ability to impact both individuals and groups by explaining the world around them and introducing solutions to some of the technical problems communities face. We took this wide-reaching goal and began to narrow it down through significant stakeholder outreach and feedback.

We spoke with Viviana Garzon and Nicolas Mantilla at Uniminuto to collect their opinions. They spoke about issues ranging from water contamination to mining runoff and potential problems with waste management in the area.

“Motivate people to determine their passions and what moves them. Show them that there is so much they can discover through education.”

– Alejo Delgado-Jiménez, Graduate Student Colorado School of Mines

We also interviewed graduate students who have visited Santa Rita. Jeison Delgado-Jimenez (Alejo) was passionate about student involvement. One thing he said that stuck with our team and guided us through our project was: “Motivate people to determine their passions and what moves them. Show them that there is so much they can discover through education.” From that point on, we used that statement as a compass to ensure we were headed in the right direction. Rosalie O’Brien also helped us take steps toward problem definition and concept selection by informing us of issues she had observed in the community such as water contamination as a result of the coffee harvest and job instability in the area.  After talking with Rosalie and Alejo, it seemed like trash was not as significant a problem in Santa Rita itself.

17 out of 21 surveys named water contamination as the biggest issue the community faces

Our most valuable insight came directly from the community. We received 21 responses to the survey we put together and was administered to family members in the St. Rita community by Diana Restrepo, a representative of the Instituto Colombia de Bienestar Familia (ICBF). An overwhelming majority, 17 out of 21 surveys, named water contamination as the biggest issue the community faces. This helped us narrow our concepts down to water contamination from mining runoff or water contamination from coffee fruit. When considering other design teams working in Santa Rita to address the mining industry, we felt our efforts would be best applied to water contamination from coffee fruit.

We also used a decision matrix to quantify the technical consideration for each of the concepts proposed. All seven criteria were evenly weighted when determining their impact on our decision because all seven highlight important parts of a successful project that sufficiently addresses the needs of the community.

Decision Matrix for Design Concept Selection

Our team’s strength lies in water treatment and contamination remediation since half of the members are environmental engineering majors. Choosing the solid waste concept would rely heavily on mechanical skills which would apply pressure to the only mechanical engineering student on our team – hence it’s score of 1. We believe we are more equipped to address water contamination issues effectively. Water contamination from coffee fruit is a simpler chemical process based on the production of acid. Due to its simple nature, it would be a more effective teaching tool for young children, earning a score of 5. Mining contamination requires more reliance on complex chemistry and more detailed remediation techniques. It is feasible but ultimately more challenging and received a score of 3.

In the end, we believed that water contamination from coffee fruit was the concept with the greatest possibility for success and execution by the CARE Team.