A small rural boarding school for seventh- to ninth-graders in the mountains of Guatemala may hold one answer to improving the number of women in engineering here in the United States.

Eight Sweet Briar College students will visit the school in May on an engineering trip where they’ve committed to build concrete enclosures, called spring boxes, to secure two natural springs.

The group also hopes to complete a concrete water storage tank and connect it to the spring boxes by a submersible pump. The goal is to help provide access to clean running water for the 64 students who attend the school.

Meredith Newman '09 breaking ground. Newman and her classmates will build a prototype of the water system at Sweet Briar before going to Guatemala. Though the team has yet to leave, the project already has Sweet Briar sophomore Meredith Newman seeing engineering in a whole new light — and rethinking her major in sociology.

The engineering project that has Newman so excited is the focus of an interdisciplinary course called Technology and Society: A Global Perspective. She said she originally registered for the course because it satisfied two general education requirements and “sounded interesting.” At the time, she didn’t know she’d be heading to Guatemala.

Newman is emblematic of the many female students who don’t consider engineering as a career. The reason, experts say, is because they don’t see engineering as a way to help others.

“I want to go out there and make a difference,” Newman said. I thought I’d do it through teaching and coaching, but being an engineer would be a way to potentially make a really big difference.”

Engineering major Sarah Smiley agrees. “With engineering you can apply it to real life situations and can really help people. We’re going to give running water to all these people — really help them, not just give them money.”

Spring water runs out of a pipe. SBC students will build a concrete enclosure around the pipe to secure it and protect the water source from contamination. Nationwide, only 10 percent of engineers are women. Experts argue that if the United States is to remain competitive with other countries more women and minorities must be encouraged to join the profession. Sweet Briar is one of only two women’s colleges in the nation to offer degree programs in engineering.

“I’m pretty excited about the class. It’s my favorite one,” Newman said. “It’s making me second guess my major.”

“I took physics in high school,” she said. “My teacher told me to look into being an engineer. I didn’t know what it really entailed. I like math but didn’t have a good experience in middle school. I got it in my head that math was a problem. With this class, I’m looking back and rethinking.”

Newman, Smiley, six other students and three Sweet Briar professors will spend about two weeks at the school in Xix, Chajul, El Quiché, one of the areas hardest hit by Guatemala’s 36-year civil war.

The school is run by Foundations for Education, a nonprofit scholarship program that aims to improve educational opportunities for Mayan youth.

Students at work. Jim Durand, the trip leader and Sweet Briar associate professor of engineering, said several groups have visited the school but none have successfully finished a project.

“We went in with the idea that we were going to meet and listen to what the school administrators wanted,” Durand said. “The classic error is to go in and tell the people what you think they need.”

They listened to Foundations for Education manager Ramelle Gonzales, who “just wanted some simple things finished,” Durand said.

“The building of the spring boxes will help to protect the water from being contaminated,” Gonzales said. “Unfortunately the [2-acre] school grounds are not surrounded by a fence and the people from the village pass through the grounds on a daily basis with up to twenty sheep each.”

But, the team hopes to do more. They want to finish a water tank started by another group and then connect the spring boxes to the tank with a pump system so the school has running water all year.

“Rainy season up at the school is normally from May until December,” Gonzales wrote in an e-mail. “The few months that are dry soak up all the water. When the people run out of their water sources they take water from the springs at the school.”

“If we finish the water tank, then they can store and test the water,” Durand explained. “If we can connect the springs and the tank, the school will have running water all year.”

“Unfortunately we won’t have running water to use while we are there working on the project,” Durand said, laughing. “We will be pretty much immersed in the realities of daily life that these people face. It’ll be challenging and a great learning experience.”

To prepare, Newman and her classmates will build a full-scale prototype at the college. They’ve already surveyed the campus and selected two possible sites with elevations similar to what they will encounter in Guatemala. The students also are beginning to research and source materials locally.

“One of the points of this is for us to use local materials so if something breaks, it’s easy to repair,” Durand said.

“It will be a push to complete all of this work on site in just two weeks,” he said. “So building the same thing here first will teach the skills that are needed and ensure that in Guatemala the work moves as quickly as possible.”

Newman’s enthusiasm for the project is palpable.

“I brought my sketches and notes to Professor Durand the other day,” she said. “I spent two hours on the sketches. It was really fun. And he looked at them and asked, ‘So Meredith, why aren’t you an engineering major?’ ”

On Feb. 22, thousands of professional engineers across the country will be asking similar questions of more than 1 million girls as part of Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day. This mentoring program is part of National Engineers Week which runs from Feb. 18-24.