STUDENT LIFE One of the things that helped their design was a four-hour car ride that took them to the house of a man who broke his back after being thrown by a bull. “His options were to either get on the bumpy bus to get to the hospital or have someone carry him all the way to the hospital,” senior engineering major Carlie Adair said. “Lucky for him, his brother owned some property by the road, so they built him a whole new house by the road.” Bender, Crosley and Van Dyke fixed the man’s wheelchair, which allowed them to gather ideas for a parking brake in their wheelchair design. “By the time we left he was smiling…he also was like feeding himself and moving more than when we came,” Adair said. “That was only a small part of that day. It was so long and so crazy and something that I could never forget.” After returning from Nepal, the mechanical engineering team continued working on the wheelchair’s design. Before leaving campus for Spring Break, they were almost ready to begin building their first prototype. Unfortunately, COVID-19 derailed their plans to have the model done by the end of the spring semester. The project will continue in the fall of 2020, as Bender and Crosley return to campus and the Collaboratory. In the meantime, the team can focus on fine-tuning aspects of the design that might otherwise be rushed or overlooked. By slowing things down, they can address questions that were brought up during a project review with other engineers.
Beyond the progress of the wheelchair, it was their experiences in Nepal that left a lasting impression on the team. “Spiritually, it brought a new dimension to communicating with God,” Bender said. “Even sitting in church, I couldn’t understand a thing because it was all in Nepali. TJ was whispering in my ear because he had a translator. But it was still a church service I felt spiritually led in. I don’t think it mattered — the culture or communication between people.” “We’re Americans, we live in the land of abundance,” Crosley said. “After going to Nepal and seeing that people are happy with very little, it’s humbling. It put me in a state of thankfulness after coming back. Even taking a shower, I’m reminded of when I showered in Nepal with a bucket. I have a sense of gratitude for being part of that experience and to God for putting me there.” “In work, it was seeing what they had to go through,” Quintilian said. “A lot of times, we would come up with an idea and the head engineer there would say, ‘We don’t have that here, we can’t do that,’ because they don’t have materials or what we would be used to using in everyday life. They always have to come up with alternatives.” Quintilian also found a personal connection to the hospital through his grandmother, who visited it when she spent three months in Nepal around 20 years ago.
“When I found out I was going to a hospital in Nepal, we talked about it,” Quintilian said. “I told her I was going to Pokhara and that’s where she lived. I said ‘I’m going to Green Pastures’ and she said ‘I visited that hospital!’ It was very cool to see that even in this big world, sometimes it’s tiny.” With personal connections, practical experience and the chance to visit a new country, the journey to Nepal was worth it. Though they experienced the trip differently, there’s no doubt that it left an impact on each member of the team. “I don’t think there’s anything bad about getting an experience like that,” Bender said.
SMALL WORLD TJ Quintilian, a member of the Collaboratory trip, discovered his grandmother (left) visited the same hospital as the team — two decades earlier!
THE SWINGING BRIDGE
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