On the first day of SEED we all didn’t really know much about each other. So of course the first thing we did was a bunch of icebreakers to introduce ourselves. I learned that we had students from different parts of the U.S., Malawi and Brazil. One of the best bonding activities was going to the zoo and competing against each other in a team scavenger hunt. My team (Borgestein, Chimwemwe, Saad) and I went through the entire zoo looking for the answers to the questions. We even got a bit lost, but we eventually solved the riddle. When we finished, we were super exhausted so we made our way back to Rice.

The next day we began to learn the steps of the engineering design process. Although a lot of the process is repetitive to some of us who have already taken ENGI 120, it is nice to be able to help and mentor the students from Malawi through the engineering design process.

After learning how to thoroughly understand an engineering problem, we headed back to the zoo. This time we went straight to the anteaters with the motivation of building an anteater enrichment device. We asked the zoo keeper many questions about the anteaters’ habits, interests, and hobbies in order to be able to create an adequate device. Using the information we gathered we began creating design criteria, ranking the design criteria and eventually brainstorming for potential anteater enrichment devices. Some great ideas were suggested including an anteater vending machine, an anteater mixtape, an anteater pool and anteater tongue painting. We are really going to have a tough time selecting a final solution!

I feel like we will definitely have a great summer experience. Having students here from Malawi is very exciting to me! Throughout the week I have been constantly asking the Malawi students questions about their home. It has really been nice to get to know more about them and the differences between our cultures. I look forward to spending more time with them!