Milligan seniors to build water system at Mexican border

JOHNSON CITY, Tenn. (WJHL) — Months of preparation was down to a few finishing touches Thursday for Milligan University seniors Jacob Nance, Kaelyn Slaughter and Blake LaCroix as they prepared for a weeklong trip to Mexico that will start March 2.

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The trio is part of a team of around 20 engineering students whose senior capstone project will bring major relief to a refugee settlement in Piedras Negras across the Rio Grande from Eagle Pass, Texas.

In the same year it had its potable water source cut off, the site run by CrossRoads missions has seen its numbers swell from around 30 men, women and children to somewhere in the neighborhood of 150. Doctors without Borders and others have trucked in potable water — an expensive and unsustainable option.

“It’s really great to see just how much of an impact that we’re going to have on these people’s lives,” said Slaughter, who hopes to get an engineering job in the manufacturing sector after graduating in May.

“I’ve been in communication with some of the people trying to get our parts down there, and it’s just great to see how they’re so excited that we’re going to go, and we’re really doing a real-world thing and changing lives.”

Greg Harrell heads up Milligan’s 10-year-old engineering program and said the department tries to find annual capstone projects that combine useful experience with an impactful project. Last year’s senior class worked on a solar-powered air conditioning project that could be replicated in rural hospitals in the developing world, but that group didn’t have a specific site that needed their work product.

This year is different. Leaders from CrossRoads told Harrell their Piedras Negras site, which serves families from throughout Latin America and the world who have fled their homes, lost its previous access to water.

“We’re focused on solving the technical problems of providing drinkable water to the folks,” Harrell said of his students.

To do that, students have used skills from mechanical and electrical engineering they’ve learned in four years of classroom and lab work. Doctors Without Borders funded a pipeline to get non-potable water to the camp, which helped Milligan focus its project to getting the water to a tank high enough to gravity feed it to a filtration system — and then both filtering and disinfecting it.

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“We’ve got multiple teams that are focused on different things, but the main team that’s going to Mexico designed and has built and tested the entire water treatment system,” Harrell said. “We put solar panels on the roof of this building so that we could mimic exactly what the system is going to see down in Mexico.”

Slaughter said the experience has provided plenty of useful challenges for someone about to head to the job market.

“A lot of trouble came with our charge controller and our low voltage disconnect, so we probably spent a good week or two weeks working out those kinks and that was kind of really what stumped us,” she said.

Harrell said even for a professional engineering firm, this would be a big project.

“There’s a lot going on. We’ve got everything from power to fluid flow, fluid movement to disinfection and clean-up controls, and sensors. We’ve got the whole thing. It’s a big, big project.”

At this point, Harrell said, the group feels completely ready for a successful mission, having double and triple-checked its work.

“We’ve spent six months heavily focused on every aspect of this, and the folks that are working on it are very talented, they are very dedicated, they want this project to succeed,” he said. “We have a lot of great confidence that it’s going to be a great project.”

Slaughter said she can’t wait to head south and west come Saturday.

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“I imagine the first day we’re going to get there and kind of see what we’re working with. The next day, it’s going to be a lot of physically building the system, putting some pipe together, putting the tower up and kind of getting the pump and everything in place.

“And then I imagine the following days are going to be testing it. Running tests, making sure it’s working as we expected it to.”

While projects like this help Milligan place most of its engineering graduates into coveted jobs, Harrell said the program never loses its focus on impacting the world.

“If you want to see a picture of Milligan engineering, come take a look at this,” Harrell said. “This is exactly what we’re about. We are teaching mechanical engineering. We are teaching electrical engineering.

“These are essential aspects of technology and technological advancement, and we’re doing it from the Milligan mindset, which is how can we use our skills, our knowledge, our technology to make the world a better place.”

Slaughter expects the experience to stick with her for a long time.

“It’s crazy to think that there’s a lot of people out there that aren’t as blessed as we’ve all been,” she said. “To go down there and be in their space and experiencing what they experience is life-changing and something that we will never forget.”

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