Civil and environmental engineering major Josh Wilde has nothing but respect for the nomadic villagers of Tibet who live thousands of feet above sea level. "There is little vegetation, few vegetables, no ovens and no wood supply for heating. Their whole way of life is based on the yak - yak yogurt, yak meat, yak butter, yak dung for heating fuel. Their standard of living is nowhere near ours and it was amazing to see how independent people can be with such limited resources."

Wilde traveled to Tibet last May with a team of USU engineering students and faculty mentor William Grenney.

The students raised the funds for the trip and were grateful for the experience. With some rerouting and other modifications in the village pipeline they surveyed, their Tibetan friends will soon have an uninterrupted flow year-round. The village well is fed by a rudimentary pipeline that transports water from a glacial stream high up the mountainside, and when the water flow is reduced to a trickle or temporarily cut off, families do without, and unbathed children suffer from rashes and other skin diseases.

USU's chapter of Engineers without Borders has sent teams of volunteers to three continents. Last year's Uganda trip resulted in the installation of a solar electricity panel at an orphanage near Kampala, the capital. Another orphanage now enjoys running water.

Dependent on the charity of overseas donors, orphanages in Uganda are stretched to the breaking point educating, clothing and feeding their charges. Every month another 180,000 children are added to the three-million-plus already orphaned and left homeless by the AIDS epidemic and civil warfare.

Another USU team just headed off to southern Peru, the second trip in two years to a remote, high-altitude village of 100 people. The women have to trek up to five miles for water and then they have to retrieve it from a 50-foot communal well. The installation of submersible pumps with faucets in family huts will free up time for other chores.

Wilde says he will volunteer again because he wants to help create a new kind of engineer, a socially responsible engineer who attends to the needs of the world. -Jane Koerner