Miranda and her students spent the year investing in tools to make the shop safer, including a table saw (Saw Stop) and a new chop saw to prevent major injuries. They also worked closely and built a strategic relationship with Giles Thompson who runs engineering and fabrication at De La Salle. This has set the stage for enhanced collaboration in the future.
Builds this year progressed from self, to shop, to school, to community. Students
began by building their own tool boxes, which required the use of all the shop tools to ensure each student safely knew how to operate each one. They then built new work tables on casters that could be moved in and around the workshop for our various projects.
Next, students got a crash course in CAD programming and designed a garbage collection system for the school so that we meet our sustainability milestones. Our students partnered with and collected feedback from facilities and our Green Team. At the end of the first semester, the team built seven systems that were painted over the summer and ready to test this school year.
The team then built four picnic tables for Hijas Del Campo (our client for whom we built the tiny house and rest station). They are cultivating a tiny house community and wanted outside furniture for their residents to use. It was the first build using conifer redwood (a much more expensive wood than the pine they had been working with previously), so the focus was on precision and attention to detail, as mistakes could be costly. Students learned how to budget and order lumber in this process as well. For this build they used plans.
After the fundamentals were acquired through the picnic table builds, students got into three groups and had to engineer something on their own, utilizing the same skills they just honed. They made two additional benches and four planter boxes, which took them to the end of the year.
The long term goal of Engineering for Social Good is to maintain and refine the build progression model of self, shop, school, community and to collaborate with our Director of Development to create pieces that can be sold at our auctions during the school year. This extension of student work to generate money for the Sisterhood Fund represents our mission-driven focus and puts the charism of the Sisters of St. Joseph into action.
