Students Complete Service
Projects for St. Paul's Center and Lakeside Conservancy

By Rex Graham I June 13, 2005

Litza Serrer field tests water quality at the San Diego River. She is a member of a Teams in Engineering Service (TIES) team that designed a remotely operated system to record, wirelessly transmit, and store data on the river water's physical and chemical properties.

Graduating UCSD students on June 7 demonstrated the results of an academic year of effort to build a computerized version of the patients' 24-hour log at St. Paul's John A. McColl Family Health Center in downtown San Diego. Octogenarians in wheelchairs rolled past 10 UCSD students as they described a professional-looking software interface to news media reporters, St. Paul's nurses and administrators, and UCSD professor of computer science and engineering William Griswold.

The final presentation was a fitting conclusion for the first year of the Teams in Engineering Service (TIES) program in which about 150 students received academic credit and a crash course in team engineering in multi-disciplinary, real-world environments. "When I first met with this group of students I told them that they have a spectacular opportunity to apply what they've learned over the past four years in a way that really impacts people's lives in a positive way," said Griswold. "They have exceeded all of my expectations and created a wonderful system and special relationships with the community."

The Jacobs School of Engineering launched the TIES program as a way to engage students in helping community organizations address challenging technology issues. "These students have been pioneers in a new paradigm of applying technical knowledge in the community," said Jeanne Ferrante, co-executive director of the TIES program and assistant dean of the Jacobs School. "Team engineering has become a centerpiece of engineering innovation and it's revolutionizing the way we do engineering."

"It's exciting because we're applying our various engineering skills to create a product that's never been developed before. We're helping to improve resident care and at the same time we're learning to work in a team of engineers, which is how everything in industry is accomplished." Chris Lee, Senior, Computer Science and Engineering TIES Digital Nursing Project

In exchange for participating in the program, nonprofit organizations get tech-savvy young engineers (and UCSD students from other majors) to work on projects the organizations could otherwise not afford. The students worked with the St. Paul's nursing staff to determine their needs, then used a design-development-feedback process to generate the prototype, which is more succinct, easier to reference, and permits multiple users to access the log simultaneously.

Cheryl Wilson, CEO of St. Paul's Senior Homes & Services said the long-term care facility had been hungering for a technology partner to help cope with the triple threat of reduced funding, fewer nurses and increasing demand for services.

"When you think about it, the only answer is technology," said Wilson. "You have to be very smart and creative about using technology to alleviate the crises we face, or we won't be able to provide care - and not providing care is not an alternative."

Another team of TIES students developed a wearable sensor device designed to alert nurses if the wearer of the device has an emergency. The interns have teamed up with Cox Communications to provide data transmission.

Another community client this academic year for the TIES program was Lakeside's River Park Conservancy, which is reclaiming a stretch of wetlands and deserted mining quarries along the San Diego River, turning the area into an ecological preserve and river park.

While one TIES team at Lakeside developed a network of remote sensors to monitor air, ground, and water quality, another team built Infostream 3000, a prototype solar-powered kiosk which will provide interactive maps, information about the flora and fauna in the riparian habitat, and historical information about Lakeside.

Yet another team of TIES students deployed to Lakeside completed preliminary design work on two models of an equestrian bridge linking two sides of the park and submitted the plans to the conservancy for its consideration.

"We were more than pleased with the kinds of products the students came up with," said Robin Rierdan, project manager of the Lakeside's River Park Conservancy. "They were innovative, they were thoughtful, and they far exceeded our imagination about what can be used in technology."

All of the student-designed TIES projects are provided at no cost to community clients. Students receive no compensation and projects are funded by grants and philanthropic donations. With an increasing number of students participating and requests from greater numbers of students to become involved, TIES administrators are now looking for community, engineering, and corporate support to add three new projects per year. Visit http://ties.ucsd.edu for more information.