Baltimore Service-Learning Program Expands Morgan’s Partnership With Purdue
There was nothing obvious last fall that linked their missions, but conversations soon revealed the strong connections between the Garden of Prayer Christian Church, in Baltimore City’s Better Waverly neighborhood; Purdue University, in West Lafayette, Indiana; and the Clarence M. Mitchell Jr. School of Engineering at Morgan State University.
Charese Williams is assistant director of High School Programs for Purdue’s Engineering Projects in Community Service (EPICS) program. EPICS, launched in 1995, has teams of Purdue students engage in design projects to benefit humanity, community and the environment. Since she joined EPICS in 2015, Williams’ main responsibility with the program has been to recruit K–12 schools to use the EPICS curriculum, which is designed to attract more young students to careers in engineering by showing them how engineers can benefit people in their daily lives.
Williams is also a native of Baltimore City; a 1994 graduate of Morgan, with a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering; and a longtime member of Garden of Prayer. Her home church was selected as the original site of an EPICS project, begun in September 2022, that has had undergraduates from Purdue apply their growing engineering design skills to the planning and construction of a new community outreach facility that may serve the Waverly community. Morgan engineering seniors are collaborating with the Purdue students in the service-learning, which is a component of the Morgan scholars’ coursework.
Praise and Purpose
Femi Epps, ’24
In October 2023, Morgan Civil Engineering graduate Femi Epps, ’24, who hails from New Jersey, praised the project at a meeting at Garden of Prayer during her senior year, with members of the church and participating Morgan and Purdue students, faculty and staff.
“This is my first time ever being a part of anything like this,” said Epps, who worked with the project’s hydraulics team, addressing stormwater management and other water-related issues at the site. “Granted, it is my school project, but this is actually a great opportunity to learn how civil engineers interact with the community and build buildings that can help bring people and the community together…. This definitely gives us the urge to keep wanting to do more.”
Morgan’s work with Purdue in EPICS is part of a growing, institution-wide partnership between the two universities that includes a 3+2 Dual-Degree program launched in 2021. The five-year program consists of a Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering or Engineering Physics from Morgan and a Bachelor of Science in Aeronautics and Astronautics from Purdue.
“…Being able to work with Morgan really, really excites me,” said Williams. “This summer (2023), we had four students from Morgan State come to Purdue and work on research, and then we had three students from Purdue come to Morgan and complete classes and do research. So this partnership between the universities kind of solidifies for me why I had to go to West Lafayette, Indiana.”
House of Magic
Williams and another Morgan graduate, James Hunter, Ph.D., have been strong forces in the development of the partnership. Like Williams, Dr. Hunter has ties to both institutions. He attended Morgan for his undergraduate studies, earning a Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering in 2000, then went on to Purdue for his master’s degree in Civil Engineering and doctorate in Environmental Engineering. Back at Morgan since 2009 as a member of the faculty, he’s now interim chair and associate professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at his undergraduate alma mater.
The EPICS project in Baltimore is continuing in the current academic year with a new cohort of Morgan student engineers. Williams anticipates the new community outreach facility will be complete within the next several years.
Williams recalls her single-parent family’s financial struggles during her childhood and admits that the prospect of a good salary as an engineer is what attracted her to the field. But, she says, participating in a service-learning program like EPICS as an undergraduate would have led her more quickly to her true passion.
Working with EPICS “combined everything that I had a passion for or a desire to do: engineering, education, because my graduate degree is in education, and then community service,” Williams said.
“This project is personal to me,” she added, “and that gives me the drive to make sure it gets done.”
