Engineers Without Borders
Oregon State University
Board meeting 10/30/08
October 31, 2008 at 9:18 pm | In Meeting Minutes | Comments Off
Board Meeting 10-30-08
Attendence:
- Aparna Shrivastava
- Kelly Kibler
- Brad Eagleson
- Nick Moses
- Evan Miles
- Rob Hess
- Carl Moen
- Brain Wood
- Kevin Boston
- Josh
- Mo
- Laura
- Kathleen
Announcements:
- Banquet:
- The banquet was light on attendance this year.
- Brian: its hard to get the word out for banquet, but we need a broader, more repetitive advertising plan next year. We also need to start earlier.
- Aparna: banquet coordinators shouldn’t have to be in charge of invitations too.
- Carl: whoever is in charge next year should meet before school starts to plan
- Evan: there also should be more time between the start of school and banquet.
- Aparna: after the holidays people are more likely to be donated out.We could still push the date back a few weeks, though.
- Brad and Aparna might take up the banquet next year.
2. Rob brought a financial report to be passed around.
3. Carl is talking to Aaron Paresky about joining with other similar student groups. We might be able to recruit or at least share contact information.
4. General meeting structure:
- Should we try do a workshop this term?
- We do have speakers for every meeting this term, so we will start next term.
- Brian: There are a couple good text books on low tech engineering we could use for workshops: Engineering Emergencies, and one other (he will find the name) which is available online.
- We should start figuring the first workshop out before winter break.
- Aparna: The structure might be a short powerpoint on the work, then 45 minutes or an hour for the workshop.
- Workshop ideas can be emailed to carl
5. EWB study sessions:
- Laura: there is a room in Wilson to we could rent.
- Carl: study sessions are a good idea, but it will be tough to coordinate people all at once. This could also be good for newer EWBers if others can tutor them.
- Aparna: we can set up a specific time and place, then send out email on listserv inviting people.
- Carl: It might have to be more organic, people will just come and go when they want to and organize their own groups of friends.
- Laura: we could just have open room so people can get together whenever they want.
- Evan: this is still a sidenote to EWB’s main projects, we don’t want to flood people with emails.
- Carl: we could move announcements to facebook
- Rob: could we find an EWB office for studying and to store group stuff?
- Aparna will ask at the MU about this.
- Kevin has room in Peavy, but we have had trouble getting into rooms like this before when we depend on someone else to unlock it for us.
6. Josh and Mo will take over our facebook page, too.
Project:
1. December trip funding request ($11,925 total):
- An updated map outlined the communities that have been helped and still need a water system.
- This trip will implement a large communal tank in Cerro Caballo.
- Tank specs: 50,000L. 42m^2 roof will collect water during the wet season for use during the dry months.
- Individual systems will also be built on each house so the main tank can fill.
- A laundry station will also be built.
- The laundry station that wasn’e built last summer will be finished in las Mercedes.
- Health/sanitation education:
- There are a lot of new people working in this this year.
- We will also be giving potters for peace filters out in the whole community.
- The TAC meeting went well this week. Kelly wanted to get funding approval before the final TAC conference next week.
Materials cost: $6025 (with 30% buffer)
Total cost: $11,925
- This includes a mason for tank and 6 plane tickets at $800 each.
2. Cerro Segovia funding request ($200):
- This community currently uses water from spring owned by local man. He volunteered to give water rights to the community members as a donation. The legal fees will be about $200.
3. Repairs to gravity system last summer ($60 approzimately):
- The pipe we installed in El Naranjito last summer is being cut by someone local.
- They are requesting galvanized pipe to replace the section that is being cut.
- The cost will be no more than $60.
- This raises several questions about what point we turn ownership over to local water board:
- We will fix anything due to engineering flaws soon after construction.
- We will tell them we will fix their problem now, but not next time.
- Evan: We should also check with nationals for instances of vandalism. Someone could contact the chapter relations manager, Diana Underhill.
Voting:
Motion to give Cerro Segovia $200 for legal process: 10 for, 1 abstain. Motion passed.
Motion to give approximately $60 to replace PVC pipe with galvanized in El Naranjito provided the community does the repairs and is responsible for future maintenance: 10 for, 1 abstain. Motion passed.
Vote on December trip funding approval:
Discussion:
1. There is $11,947 in the project account minus about $500 that hasn’t been accounted for yet and the previous two requests. There is also an additional $700+ in donations from the banquet and $1500 from ISA Mundo that hasn’t come through yet. This trip will drain just about the whole project fund.
- Kevin: We need to think about how we are going to raise money for future trips.
- EWB-USA usually asks students to pay for their own travel. For first three trips we asked students to contribute what they felt comfortable with.
- Kevin: he could give some of his airline miles. We could try to get 1-2 free tickets per trip from donated miles. We should make a point to ask people about this.
- There is already an account for donated miles.
2. Rob: its always been a goal for travelers not to have to pay. We don’t want to start pressuring them now.
- We should ask for them to raise funds, not ask for donations.
- Kelly: the lag between fundraising and actual travel makes it difficult for people to raise money for a trip they don’t know if they will be going on.
- Evan: this doesn’t matter. As long as travellers fundraise, the money will always go towards a trip.
- Rob: once the decisions for travellers are made, they should try to fundraise/help as much as possible.
- Kelly: We should also request travelers to stay with the group afterwards to give back. (Like writing grant proposals).
3. We are Having trouble getting san Salvador rotary on board
- Kelly: they haven’t shown much interest. We need a partnersip between a local and US rotary to get much money out of it.
4. Final considerations:
- Kevin: we don’t have money for more travelers, but we need at least six workers. He recommends going ahead.
- Evan: we should wait before we get some money deposited before we approve
- Aparna: we should approve it now given we have time to get more in account.
- Rob: we could approve the tickets, then wait on everything else.
- Kelly: it would be good to have a month to order materials.
- Carl: we could take loan from the club fund if we absolutely have to.
Motion to approve $5000 for travel for six travelers from the El Salvador project fund, then vote on the rest of the funding in two weeks. 8 for, 3 abstain. Motion passed
Other items:
- Kevin: the COE is working on a scholarship for engineering students based on a commitment to sustainability. They are asking for the criteria it should be based on.
- Right now they are thinking about GPA and work in some kind of sustainability based group.
- They will ask proof of involvement in groups like EWB.
2. Kelly: Ana Harding wants to become faculty advisor, what does she have to do?
- Kevin emailed her.
- She needs to add something to her job description about how she is sending students into potentially dangerous situations so the university insurance will cover her, not her personal insurance.
- Kevin: there is no established process for choosing advisors. It does get hard to get all of the advisors together for a meeting if there are a lot. We could possibly replace John Gambateese with her. He probably wouldn’t mind.
3. Kevin: we need a greater connection with the hydrophiles. They have a lot of alumni on their listserv as well as a lot of other good resources.
- Aparna: how do we get more involved?
- Kevin: we could invite their president to our next general meeting.
4. Organic growers club project: building electric bikes doesn’t really fit with our group goals, but it could be a good project to include new members.
5. Brad: we need to send out thank you’s for the banquet.
- PR (Kathleen) will do it.
6. Windturbine project:
- Laura, Jacob, one other woman are trying to get the program together. They are trying to talk with Jesse Boudart about the details.
- Right now they have an anemometer on the poultry science building to gather wind speed data, but want to move it to a higher building with less trees by West.
- They also want to make sure they put it in a visible place, and whatever it powers is noticed.
- They could have company donate turbine or let it be built as an ME project at OSU. Jesse talked to an ME professor about this, but we would need more specifics to do this.
- Evan: we would need a budget and customer requirements for the ME department to build this.
7. Evan: new project committee:
- They have narrowed their options to a couple of good projects. Some of them come with 10-20% of the funding included.
- The El Salvador project is still relatively economical due to its close proximity compared to many other projects. Travel is much cheaper than to Africa.
- A couple of projects are in central America. There are also a couple from outside of EWB, like partnering with well drilling orgaization in Africa, for example. This would require a lot more health testing/planning, but would be cheaper working with another organization.
- They will their choices to the to board on 12th.