Voices of Engagement

Welcome to HMC’s 10th Annual Voices of Engagement celebration, where we share and celebrate the different ways we collaborate with our community and engage in critical justice issues to make a positive impact. This year we will be celebrating on Wednesday Jan. 31, 2024 from 4–5 p.m. in the Platt Campus Center – Green Room.

We invite you to watch our previous Voices of Engagement videos on our Youtube Channel; and encourage you to learn about the different community engagement initiatives. You can learn more about previous initiatives below. (Note: Videos are from the virtual the Voices of Engagement in 2021 – 2023. The year’s 10th Annual Voices of Engagement event will be in-person)

Voices of Engagement 2023 Projects

Ana B. Studart ’25

Organization: Santa Luzia Middle & High School
Project: The Brazilian Public Educational System from the Inside
“I interned at Santa Luzia Middle and High School, which is a public institution in Fortaleza, Brazil. My goal was to better understand the functioning of the Brazilian Public Educational System and support the students there on their path to higher education. My main project was the summer classes for the National Exam (ENEM), which I organized together with the school’s coordination and other volunteers. I also worked as a substitute math teacher, reviewing concepts they missed due to the pandemic.”

Bryn Schoen ’23

Organization: Calleva Farms
Project: Transitioning AsylumConnect to InReach
“I worked as an agricultural educator and engineering assistant on the Calleva Farm. Over the course of 10 weeks, I assisted in the daily routine of farm maintenance and upkeep, as well as teaching campers and other visitors about sustainable agriculture. I was also responsible for several individually generated engineering projects to increase the sustainability and efficiency of the farm as a whole”

Cassandra Reudy ’23

Organization: InReach
Project: Transitioning AsylumConnect to InReach
“I helped the company InReach transition from its former company, AsylumConnect. The company’s original goal was to help people in the LGBTQ+ community find resources to help them seek asylum in the US, Mexico, or Canada. This summer, the founder, Jamie Sgarro, wanted to expand the company’s goals from Asylum Connect’s original mission to helping people from all kinds of marginalized groups find resources to help them with any mental or physical issues they were facing. I worked in the web development department and helped to add and organize services for the company.”

Mudders Making A Difference

Student Organization
MMAD works with the The Office of Civic and Community Engagement to provide Harvey Mudd students an opportunity to volunteer and participate in socially conscious activities. We serve as a connection between students and the outside community, providing an exchange of ideas and experiences that are a crucial to the HMC’s mission. In the Fall or 2021, HMC students gathered to walk dogs with the Priceless Pets dog shelter across the street from campus. (also note, we are happy to talk about other projects that MMAD works on besides dog walking like donating to Shoes that Fit and working with Habitat for Humanity).

Prison Education Project

Student Organization
“The Prison Education Project is a California-based, global organization bringing educational programming to incarcerated individuals. Harvey Mudd’s chapter has historically taught “Introduction to STEM Concepts” at local youth detention facilities over zoom. Currently, we seek to expand our course offerings to include engineering and physics. Through providing positive experiences with STEM education, we hope to foster interest in STEM careers and develop scientific reasoning, in incarcerated youth.”.

Ryan O’hara ’24

Organization: University of Washington
Project: Magnetic Folding of Origami Robots
“The University of Washington’s Fuller lab is committed to bringing affordable, easily implemented microrobotic systems to underserved communities. This presentation discusses the ways in which magnetic fields can be used to both automatically fabricate and self-repair microrobots. By improving robotic autonomy and developing low-cost, efficient robotic manufacturing pathways, underserved communities can more easily harness the incredible power of these transformative systems.”

Voices of Engagement 2022 Projects

Andrea Zavala ’21

Organization: ProjeKt Inspire
Project: STEM Education in East Africa
“After graduating in May of 2021, Andrea spent four months volunteering n Tanzania. She partnered primarily with ProjeKt Inspire, a STEM outreach organization. She taught STEM subjects to children ages 3-14, immersed herself in organizational management, and had an epic journey living on the other side of the world.”

Tristan Huang ’24

Organization: City of Hope
Project: A high-performance Pliable Silicone Nasopharyngeal Swab for Improved Patient Comfort.

Fletcher Nickerson ’22

Organization: Napier Initiative
Project: Lucy Parsons Lab & Stop ShotSpotter Coalition

Phousawanh Peaungvongpakdy ’22

Organization: Napier Initiative
Project: A Napier Initiative Project Proposal: Using Math Modeling for Social Justice
“I’ve proposed a plan to the Napier Initiative to combine mathematical modeling and social justice. My hope is if the project is accepted that students at Upward Bound will learn how to use mathematical modeling to understand the housing crisis in Claremont and in their community and its potential to impact social justice issues. I also hope this project helps begin a conversation and a push for housing solutions in these communities by having students participate in local nonprofit housing crisis organizations or local politics.”

Richard Chang ’24

Organization: HMC Biomakerspace
Project: Biomakerspace Software Engineer Internship
“This summer I worked on generating an adapter that will allow for variable sized labware objects to be attached onto the deck of an OT-2 Opentron machine. Labs that own an OT-2 Opentron machine may find it expensive to use since it can only operate on labware objects with the exact dimensions of its deck. By generating an adapter, labs can save a lot of money and utilize the labware objects they already own. I also worked on creating a website for a biofoundry that the Biomakerspace is trying to start up. The biofoundry aims to produce custom plasmids for labs around the Claremont Colleges in order to facilitate their research.”

Junyu Jiang ’24

Organization: Lucy Parsons Lab
Project: Surveillance & Privacy
“I interned with Lucy Parsons Labs, a non-profit organization in Chicago, this summer, and I mainly research on the relation between the Chicago Police Department, Mayor’s Office, and Crime Lab (an analysing laboratory founded by University of Chicago). Throughout the research, I collected information from county jails, the metadata of emails from the Mayor’s office, and more; also, I used Freedom of Information Act to obtain many government information to support my research.”

Voices of Engagement 2021 Initiatives

Andrea Zavala ’21

Project: The Power of Outreach
Organization: Napier Initiative Fellowship

Partnering with ProjeKt Inspire, a STEM outreach program based in Tanzania, Andrea plans to increase career development for youth in East Africa, including encouraging young students to explore STEM as a viable career option. She hopes to increase the female to male participation through encouraging efforts to recruit young women and to ensure that the ProjeKt Inspire STEM bootcamp and a soon-to-be-opened science center will be inclusive and welcoming of women.

Ginger Schmidt ’21 and Lilliy Johnson ’22 (3:15)

Project: Prison Education Project (PEP)

The Prison Education Project is the largest volunteer-based prison education program in the US. At Harvey Mudd, we fill an important niche within the organization by specializing in introductory STEM subjects. During the pandemic, we successfully shifted all courses to online delivery. Additionally, over 30 Mudders volunteered to teach remotely at the Prototypes Women’s Center and Riverside Juvenile Boy’s Hall. Our ultimate goal is to expose students to modern advances in STEM and help them feel empowered to pursue their own further education.

Roya Amini-Naieni ’22

Project: Genetic Engineering Research with the BioMakerspace
Organization: Claremont Colleges BioMakerspace
This summer internship opportunity was possible thanks to the Donald and Dorothy Strauss Internship for Social Understanding

In this community engagement project, Roya worked on increasing the pace of genetic engineering research through developing an augmented reality controller for programming a pipetting robot. Roya also worked on building a remote genetic engineering laboratory that she conducted research in to try to find the function of a gene originally found in pathogenic bacteria.

Grace Greenleaf

Project: PUSD Math Modeling for Primary Grades
Organization: Pomona Unified School District

Originally a 3-year $1.3 million National Science Foundation STEM-C grant was awarded to research how professional development in Mathematical Modeling affects teacher practice at the elementary level. After the successful completion of the research grant, in academic year 2019-20, the funding and program administration was taken over by Pomona Unified. The PUSD Math Modeling project continues to be a successful program and Harvey Mudd College continues to be a partner as needed.

Yoni Maltsman ’23

Project: Documenting Surveillance in Chicago
Organization: Lucky Parsons
This summer internship opportunity was possible thanks to the Nathaniel Davis Prize for Public Policy & International Relations

Over the past summer, I interned at Lucy Parsons Labs, a nonprofit in Chicago that researches, documents, and advocates around use and abuse of surveillance technology in Chicago and Illinois. I worked to revamp their primer on different surveillance technologies used by the Chicago Police, which was recently relaunched as chicagopolicesurveillance.com. I also helped LPL organize a broad coalition of groups in Chicago advocating against surveillance, which I am still involved in today.

Aubrey Egerter ’21

Project: Sports, Safety and Structural Engineering
Organization: KAV Helmets
This summer internship opportunity was possible thanks to the Ben Huppe ’14 Memorial Internship for a Sustainable World

Human contact is embedded in many sports and it is nearly impossible to separate it without changing the very nature of the sport—ice hockey is no exception. As such, KAV hopes to preserve the nature of the sports we love while simultaneously helping protect athletes from serious head injuries. My summer’s work with them focused on modeling and optimizing the internal energy management systems contained within their unique, customizable 3D-printed helmets in order to increase player safety.

Tom Fu ’22

Project: The DNA Printing and BioFoundry Projects at the HMC BioMakerspace
Organization: HMC BioMakerspace
This summer internship opportunity was possible thanks to the Donald and Dorothy Strauss Internship for Social Understanding & The New Millennium Experiential Learning prize 

With the support from the Office of Civic and Community Engagement, I led and conducted two projects over the summer at the HMC BioMakerspace, a student-initiated biology lab. The DNA Printing Project aims to enable users to print images on gels with DNA as the inks, while the BioFoundry project strives to create a plasmid cloning factory for microbiology labs at the Claremont Colleges. I created a user-friendly image submission and protocol generation platform for the DNA Printing Project to help people without coding backgrounds approach the results of our project. I also implemented a primer designer for the BioFoundry project to make the cloning experiments in the project more efficient.

 
Bhavana Bheem ’21, Justin Grant ’21, Trevor Nogues ’21, Sean Pine ’21, Fiona Plunkett ’21

Project: Improving Equity in Career Technical Education in the Los Angeles Unified School District
Organization: LAUSD Clinic Project

This semester our team is working with the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) to address inequitable funding allocations in Career Technical Education (CTE) programs. Students in CTE Pathways take sequenced courses that give them access to hands-on learning and connects them with a specific industry (like engineering or digital media). We have two main goals that we aim to accomplish: (1) improve the CTE funding application based on teacher feedback, and (2) deliver an automated funding allocation model that assesses how well pathways meet CTE standards (determined by the California Department of Education) and suggests a specific funding strategy.

Anna Krutsinger ’22

Project: On Cloud (Nine) Agronomics
Organization: Cloud Agronomics
This summer internship opportunity was possible thanks to Ben Huppe ’14 Memorial Internship for a Sustainable World

Cloud Agronomics leverages computer science, remote sensing, and mathematics to push the agriculture industry into the 21st century. Using hyperspectral imagery and artificial intelligence, they develop dynamic, predictive insights on soil health as well as their own scalable, remote soil organic carbon monitoring solution. Through these novel analytics, they quantify the effects of regenerative agricultural practices, empowering farmers to help combat climate change.

Tim Player ’20

Project: Impactful Visualizations
Organization: Arctic Ice Project
This summer internship opportunity was possible thanks to Ben Huppe ’14 Memorial Internship for a Sustainable World

Over the summer, I worked as an intern with Arctic Ice Project, a nonprofit seeking to preserve arctic sea ice to ensure the safety or our global climate. I helped Arctic Ice Project’s small team to visualize their climate modeling data so they could ensure their Arctic sea ice preservation technology is safe and effective. While working remotely, I grew as a scientist and engineer by interacting with the brilliant team, the nonprofit board, and engaged members of the community. I am grateful to Maggie and Bob Huppe for supporting me throughout this impactful summer.

Dylan Sotir ’21

Project: QuantAQ Summer Internship
Organization: QuantAQ
This summer internship opportunity was possible thanks to Ben Huppe ’14 Memorial Internship for a Sustainable World

QuantAQ makes low-cost air quality sensor networks and computational tools for those networks. These computational tools are intended to help customers understand and effectively work with their data. This internship focused on writing an educational app to help customers see how pollution leaves the air after it is introduced.

Swamik Lamichhane ’22

Project: Introductory CS Course For Students in Nepal
Organization: Nepal Mega College
This summer internship opportunity was possible thanks to Ben Huppe ’14 Memorial Internship for a Sustainable World

This initiative was to teach students in Nepal, who would normally not have access to a computer science curriculum, the basics of computer science and the field. The goal was to introduce these students to the field and hopefully spark interest that would lead to a future in the field.