Globetrotting Student Has International Impact

Story Posted: Wed, Feb 14, 2007

By Rachel Partin

OSU Honors student Kelsey Edwardsen is an avid rock climber and backpacker who has lived in Guatemala, Costa Rica, Spain, and Bulgaria. She's blending her love of international travel with engineering to help bring clean water and stronger buildings to Central America.

Kelsey Edwardsen, a senior in civil engineering and Spanish at Oregon State University, is using her engineering education and background in Latin American culture to improve rural villages’ access to potable water and the structural integrity of buildings in Central America.

Edwardsen, an avid backpacker and recreational rock climber, has been exploring the world since a young age. With a mother who teaches German and Spanish and a brother adopted from Colombia, Edwardsen has a strong family background in international issues and culture. Linguistic immersion has always been a focal point of her education beginning in elementary school where half of the day was taught in English and the other half in Spanish. Additionally, her eighth grade class took a trip to Costa Rica, and that same year, her family spent one month in Guatemala staying with host families and gaining first-hand experience in language and culture.

Edwardsen has continued her international education during her college career. “One of the reasons I chose OSU is because there is such a great opportunity for international outreach,” says Edwardsen. She is coupling the International Degree with her Honors degree in engineering and Spanish.

As part of the requirements for the International Degree, Edwardsen spent her sophomore year studying in Spain at the University of Cantabria. “My experience in Spain has given me a broader perspective on approaches to education and design,” says Edwardsen. Spanish professors tend to concentrate more on the technical aspect of civil engineering and the courses were very math intensive, she says. The engineering program at OSU includes many labs, coupling general theory with a breadth of practical application. She credits her well-rounded education in part to the varying teaching styles in Europe and the U.S.

During the winter and spring of 2005, Edwardsen lived in Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria and worked as an undergraduate research assistant for the OSU Department of Political Science after a semester of Eastern European studies in art, history, and religion at the American University in Bulgaria. She helped organized the housing, fieldwork, and interviews for the Oregon research students who traveled there, while also participating in the research and data collection for a research grant entitled “The role of science in environmental policy-making in Bulgaria.” The grant was funded by the National Academy of Sciences.

Edwardsen spends much of her time working with the OSU student chapter of Engineers Without Borders. She has been the project coordinator of the group since 2005 and was part of a team of five students and two professionals who traveled this year to two rural villages in the Ahuachapan region of northwest El Salvador to look into possible designs for water treatment and distribution. Approximately 70,000 gallons of water must be stored in order to supplement the needs of around 50 families during the critical dry months when they would otherwise have to walk very far to collect water from streams. Edwardsen and her team focused specifically on rainwater catchment when looking for good sites for which they are now creating and testing sustainable designs for water collection and containment.

This project is the subject of Edwardsen’s Honors and International Degree thesis. “I chose the El Salvador water project for my thesis topic in order to integrate my knowledge of and passion for Latin American culture with my technical background in civil engineering,” Edwardsen says. Through her research, she is discovering how social and cultural attitudes in rural villages affect the availability of clean drinking water.

Edwardsen aims to use her engineering expertise throughout her career to further environmental sustainability and improve the quality of life in developing countries. Her experiences in Spain, Bulgaria, and El Salvador inspired her to build a career around sustainable development. One particular interest of hers is helping countries in the developing world establish policies for building designs that can withstand higher seismic loading.

“Earthquakes kill thousands more people than they should because of infrastructure failure. It’s important that programs of overseas aid be more concerned with structural stability,” Edwardsen says. Whether she’s in the United States or abroad, Edwardsen plans to continue her work in international engineering.