OUTREACH NOW

Tomorrow I will have a poster in the OUTREACH NOW conference at the Virginia Tech Inn. Please feel free to come by and view my poster throughout the day. I will be "staffing" my poster in the afternoon between 3 and 5. The poster is on service learning through international outreach in the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) fields. The poster details two different areas of outreach. One is the study abroad class in the Dominican Republic taught by Dr. Younos. I have been the TA for this class for the past two years. The other project is the honors students project in Honduras called Ut Prosim, El Porvenir. I was a leader in this project throughout the past year. International relations and service learning have always been passions of mine. I am extremely pleased to be participating in this conference tomorrow! Come join in on the fun!

Veron, Dominican Republic

Here are pictures from Veron, Dominican Republic. Many households have water tanks on rooftops and much of the piping includes small, unburied, PCV piping. While in Veron, I not only took water samples to evaluate water quality, but I talked with several local people about water perception and water education. I found that while many people buy bottled water to drink, they still use untreated water for cooking and bathing. Often, the bottled drinking water is only preferred because it is cold when purchased at the store or colmada. When collecting samples, everyone was extremely nice and very willing to provide us with water. The trip was a success and I plan on returning one more time over winter break to collect data for my thesis project. Now however, I am working on my semester long research project on water and energy. I will be studying the possibility for coastal renewable energy to supplement energy needs for water treatment.