UCI Global Engineering Brigades Take Third Place in Video Competition
July 28, 2020 – UC Irvine’s Global Engineering Brigades won third place ($500) in the 2019-2020 Association of Environmental Engineering and Science Professors’ student video competition. The AEESP competition seeks to encourage young innovators to learn more about stewardship of water, land, air, mineral and energy resources.
In celebration of the EPA turning 50 this year, the association requested videos addressing the question, “What might life in the U.S. look like without the EPA?” The UCI students’ video shows people watching a newscast of how an average citizen would be living today if the Environmental Protection Agency did not exist.
“We saw a colorless world with unbalanced weather patterns, poor air quality and lack of sufficient and clean water,” said Danielle Drake, environmental engineering student and co-president of UCI’s Global Engineering Brigades. “Therefore, we used this vision to make a video about Timmy and his average day.”
The video submissions were evaluated based on the effectiveness in reaching the target audience of middle and high school students, accuracy and creativity in describing the importance of the EPA, and entertainment value.
The Global Brigade students – Michael Blake, Danielle Drake, Kate Huynh, Gavin Ma, Enrique Pineda, Jorge Rocha, and Andrea Saucedo – were advised by Sunny Jiang, professor and chair of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering.
Global Engineering Brigades at UCI is a student volunteer organization whose mission is to provide sustainable development to underserved communities throughout the world. The students primarily work with leaders in under-resourced communities in Honduras, with either nonexistent or dysfunctional water systems, to design and engineer clean water systems.
– Megan Lohre
