August 21, 2024 | Annette Saunders
Collaborative, functional and creative are three words that Emma Santos, a Senior studying environmental and ecological engineering, used to describe the grant project, Community Water Projects: Rain Garden and Bioswale Update for STEM Education, that she and her team completed. This project was conducted through the Purdue class Community Engaged Engineering and Design (EEE 472) under the guidance of Dr. Lindsey Payne.
Through this Project, Santos and her team partnered with Food Finders Food Bank (FFFB), a nonprofit organization in Lafayette Indiana dedicated to providing food-based resources to those in need and making connections to life-stabilizing resources, through updating their rain garden and bioswale. FFFB’s rain garden and bioswale diverts polluted rainwater from entering the Wabash. Santos shared that the rain garden was becoming overgrown, which made the garden an important semester project.
Santos led her team in applying for a Purdue Service-Learning Grant to fund the reformation of the rain garden and bioswale. Through this grant, they were awarded $1,500 for materials that included various types of plants and soil, as well as other items imperative for the completion of the project.
Santos shared that she felt that this was a smooth process, and was something she had been previously interested in exploring.
She enjoyed being able to work with students in her major as well as connecting with the community partner (FFFB), and volunteers, who helped install native plants to earn service-hour requirements. She mentioned that her team and FFFB needed to comprise what her and her team were able to do with what the community partner was hoping to obtain, developing valuable negotiation experience on her behalf.
Through the hands-on work of this service-learning project, the EEE 472 student team realized how excited they are to enter the workforce, and learned the kinds of things that they should expect when they enter it; for Santos, this includes skills like project management and working with contractors and clients.
“Service-Learning really puts into perspective why you’re getting your education and what you can do in the future.”
She believes that service-learning is both motivating for students' future careers and also prepares them to handle obstacles that can arise when working towards the completion of a large-scale project. Santos emphasizes that service-learning motivates you to work for something more than a grade.
This grantee knows that service is not something she wants to end once she is no longer doing school-based learning. She shared, “Overall, it has really solidified for me that I enjoy helping people; being able to be in a major and go into a career that helps people is really exciting.”
Santos hopes that her future career will impact communities in positive ways just like the positive impact she and her team inspired through this service-learning grant.