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Students Receive International Award for Sustainable Development Project

Students in the Sustainable Futures Institute have received the prestigious International Mondialogo Award, sponsored by DaimlerChrysler and the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

They were honored for their research supporting the use of sustainable construction materials in the developing world.

Projects were judged on technical excellence, sustainability, feasibility and intercultural dialogue. A total of 412 teams including 1,700 student engineers from 79 countries participated in the competition, with 21 winners receiving awards during the May 27-31 ceremonies in Berlin.

“I’ve never been to anything like this,” said the team’s co-advisor, James Mihelcic, professor of civil and environmental engineering. “It was like being at the Academy Awards for engineering.”

At DaimlerChrysler headquarters, the red carpet was quite literally rolled out for the top teams, and events were tracked on a massive jumbotron screen. Dignitaries including the former president of Iceland and the deputy director-general of UNESCO made appearances. “They had a very impressive group of people there, all of them working on sustainable development,” Mihelcic said.

“The contest was a wild experience,” said team member Dan Nover, who is based at Pardito State University in the Philippines as part of MTU’s Master’s International Peace Corps Program in Environmental Engineering. “Living in the developing world, we rarely see the kind of monetary heft that DaimlerChrysler was able to throw around. . . . To win the prize was a spectacular sensation and will be appreciated tremendously by my university in the Philippines.”

But primarily, the contest was an opportunity to meet others working on sustainable development. “It was fantastic to see so many concerned individuals,” Nover said.

The team focused on the use of natural materials, primarily volcanic ash and rice husk ash, to replace Portland cement in the making of concrete. “This whole idea was unique, the use of natural pozzolans,” said Associate Professor Tom Van Dam, the team’s other co-advisor, who provided technical advice to the group. In addition to using cheap, readily available materials, the process sidesteps current cement production technology, which is a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions worldwide.

“It was a great feeling getting the award, knowing that our university, and especially the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, was ahead on sustainability issues and in getting its students to interact more in a multidisciplinary team to solve global problems such as extreme poverty and hunger,” grad student Helen Muga said.

In addition to Michigan Tech seniors, the team includes PhD students from the other partner in the Sustainable Futures Institute: Nelson Mandela School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs at Southern University and A&M College in Baton Rouge, La. In addition, a group of sanitary engineering students at Partido State University in the participated in the project.

The judges were impressed with the scope of the project, which coupled graduate-level research with outreach in the Philippines.

“We were one of the few groups doing public policy, because of our partnership with Southern University, and they liked the our partnership with Partido State University in the Philippines, which involved a strong outreach and community development component,” Mihelcic said.

With their Mondialogo Award, the students plan to construct water storage tanks for use with rainwater harvesting systems in rural Philippine communities, where many families do not have access to safe drinking water.

The team also received an honorable mention in the EPA People, Prosperity and Planet awards competition, held recently in Washington, DC. They were judged by a panel of scientists and engineers from the U.S. National Academies.

“It’s easy when there are good students,” Mihelcic said in praise of the team. “There were high-quality students here and at Southern University, and the integration of the undergrads and grad students went really well.

“I was really moved when they read ‘Michigan Technological University’ at the National Academies,” Mihelcic recalls. “And then to hear our name mentioned at the United Nations level was even bigger. It was an incredible experience.”

Sustainable Futures Institute
Michigan Technological University
1400 Townsend Drive
Houghton, Michigan, 49931 - 1295, USA
Department Phone: 1-906-487-2520
Department Fax: 1-906-487-2943
Department E-mail: sfi@mtu.edu