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ISU engineering student from Charles City traveling to Africa for winter break project

  • Jack Schwickerath of Charles City, a senior engineering student at Iowa State University, works on a project. Photo submitted

  • A group of students at the primary school in Ullo, Ghana, pose for a photo by a member from the Iowa State chapter of Engineers Without Borders on a trip there in 2017. Photo submitted

By Bob Steenson, bsteenson@charlescitypress.com 

An ISU engineering student will definitely not be experiencing snow for Christmas.

Jack Schwickerath, an Iowa State senior from Charles City, majoring in biological systems engineering, will be on a trip to Ghana, West Africa, for the next 3½ weeks.

He’ll be helping a group from the ISU chapter of Engineers Without Borders install a pumping supply system for a small community where a 1,500-student primary school struggles to find adequate water.

Engineers Without Borders is an organization that looks for engineering solutions to help solve community problems around the world. The ISU chapter has been working on the project in Ullo, Ghana, for several years, first identifying possible sources for water then designing a way to deliver it to the school and the village of Ullo.

“We are installing a solar-powered pump to place in a well that has been drilled in the community,” Schwickerath told the Press. “We will then run over a kilometer of piping to the local primary school and storage tanks.”

He said the group contracted with a company in the area to order parts and they’ll work with that company to install and test the system.

Seven students and one ISU engineering professor will be on the trip. They’ll drive to Chicago today (Friday), then on Saturday fly to Washington, D.C. From there they’ll take a 12-hour flight to Accra, the Ghana capital on the southern coast.

“Then from Accra we’ll take a small inland flight for an hour and a half, two hours, to the closest airport in the region, Tamale,” Schwickerath said. “And then we will drive six hours in a rented van to Ullo.”

Schwickerath said he has been part of the ISU chapter of Engineers Without Borders for about two years. In the semester just ending he was the vice president of membership.

“It was really an interaction between me looking for a way to get involved in an extracurricular on campus, and it spoke to my drive to use my skills to both broaden my horizon and give back to people who are experiencing something far different than I am,” he said.

This will be his first time traveling out of the country with the chapter, he said. One of the seven students has been to Ullo previously.

Right now that part of Ghana is in the dry season, and it’s about 90 degrees every day, he said.

While in Ullo, the group will stay at the local chieftain’s complex.

“It’s largely concrete and open to the elements,” Schwickerath said. “We call it the chief’s palace.”

The plan is to get the solar pump and pipeline up and running while they are there.

“We’ll get to monitor it for three to four days before we have to leave the community,” he said. “Of course, with construction, something probably will go wrong. We’re excited to hopefully have it all done.”

The ISU chapter has raised all the money needed for the project through fundraisers, corporate sponsorships and in-kind contributions, he said. The chapter will cover about half of the students’ travel costs and each student will donate about $2,000 more to cover the rest.

Schwickerath said the ISU chapter has about 60 members and meets weekly.

“This is really extra-curricular,” he said. “We’re all excited about it and we put in extra time outside of our classes to work on the project.”

The trip will take place entirely over Iowa State’s winter break, with the total time gone about 3½ weeks and the group getting back with about a week of break left. The students finished their semester finals on Thursday.

Schwickerath, the son of Alan and Dana Schwickerath of Charles City, said he plans to graduate after the spring semester, and he is looking for a job in the bioenergy sector.

“I’m really interested in ethanol or biodiesel,” he said. “Also, corn and crop science is a big interest of mine — corn production, studying how farmers can grow corn more effectively.”

According to its website, the ISU chapter of Engineers Without Borders “is focused on long-term partnerships with communities and ensuring the projects we design are simple and sustainable that the community can independently maintain.

The website describes Ullo as “a small village in northwest Ghana of about 1,100 people. Almost all villagers practice subsistence farming as a necessity since the area has a daily income of about $0.75 per person. Despite these conditions, the people of Ullo have strong, optimistic spirits and go about their daily lives with joy.”

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