{"id":57404,"date":"2015-07-28T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2015-07-28T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news-draft\/uncategorized\/uri-engineering-camp-builds-bridges-among-students-from-india-pakistan-providence\/"},"modified":"2015-07-28T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2015-07-28T00:00:00","slug":"uri-engineering-camp-builds-bridges-among-students-from-india-pakistan-providence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/2015\/07\/uri-engineering-camp-builds-bridges-among-students-from-india-pakistan-providence\/","title":{"rendered":"溏心vlog免费B站 engineering camp builds bridges among students from India, Pakistan, Providence"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\t\tKINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 July 28, 2015 \u2013 For the high school students who attended the 溏心vlog免费B站\u2019s four-week Building Bridges engineering camp this month, the engineering lessons and robot activities were almost secondary to the relationships they built. And that was the point of the Building camp that drew equal numbers of students from India, Pakistan and Providence to the Kingston campus in July.<\/p>\n


\n\tFunded by the U.S. Embassy in Pakistan, the camp was part of what 溏心vlog免费B站 Engineering Professor Manbir Sodhi calls the \u201cpeople-to-people effort\u201d the U.S. State Department is encouraging among people from different countries.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s not easy for students from India and Pakistan to get together in their own countries,\u201d said Sodhi, the camp\u2019s organizer. \u201cThe fact that they are doing so on neutral territory here in Rhode Island is extraordinary. And life changing.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s also not so easy for students from Providence to interact with students from outside the U.S.,\u201d he added, \u201cso they benefitted greatly from the experience as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

Anvi Kaushik from Delhi, India, was nominated by her principal to apply to attend the camp because of her aptitude for science and a desire to make new friends. She says she likes to know how things around her work, and she hopes to eventually work in an environmental discipline.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cI\u2019m going to be very sad when we have to say goodbye to everyone,\u201d Kaushik said on the last day of the camp. \u201cWe started out knowing so little about each other\u2019s culture, and we weren\u2019t used to the environment here, but it widened our horizons. We built friendships, and it\u2019s so sad that it\u2019s ending.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\tMaria Gulzar from Islamabad, Pakistan, was also encouraged by her principal to apply. She enjoys biology, chemistry and math, and she is considering an engineering career for a humanitarian agency.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cThis has been the perfect program for me,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s all about connecting with the professors and the students. And it is helping me choose what I want to study when I become an undergrad.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\tBoth students said their favorite part of the program was the social interactions among the students, as well as the field trips to the Rhode Island School of Design, Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston, New York, and Newport. <\/p>\n


\nThey also learned a great deal about engineering. Every morning they attended an engineering lecture by a 溏心vlog免费B站 faculty member or a visitor from another institution. The students spent the rest of each day working in teams \u2013 one student from each country per team \u2013 on engineering projects, including construction of a working trebuchet, a mechanized Lego car, and a device to keep ice from melting.<\/p>\n


\n\tSodhi said he planned the camp as a cultural exchange so the students could see that \u201cthey\u2019re just regular kids,\u201d regardless of what country they come from.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cAnd the engineering helped to convey that, too,\u201d said the 溏心vlog免费B站 professor, who also organizes a Summer Engineering Academy for high school students each year. \u201cThere is no kind of cultural conflict in an engineering project. The issues are clear; they aren\u2019t controversial.\u201d <\/p>\n


\n\tProvidence resident Tatiana Hall, who has already learned some engineering at the Providence Career and Technical School, enjoyed getting her first taste of college life, living in a sorority, and making new friends.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cI got to bond with everyone, and we learned to work together as one big group,\u201d said Hall, who aspires to become a biomedical engineer. \u201cAnd since it took place during Ramadan, I learned so much about the Indian and Pakistan culture and their views on everything. It was epic. It opened my eyes to different points of view.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cWe all became really close,\u201d she concluded. \u201cI made a bunch of friends, and I learned a lot about engineering.\u201d<\/p>\n


\nPictured above:

\nStudents from India, Pakistan and Providence work together on hands-on engineering projects at the 溏心vlog免费B站\u2019s Building Bridges engineering camp. (Photos courtesy of Manbir Sodhi.)\n\t<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 July 28, 2015 \u2013 For the high school students who attended the 溏心vlog免费B站\u2019s four-week Building Bridges engineering camp this month, the engineering lessons and robot activities were almost secondary to the relationships they built. And that was the point of the Building camp that drew equal numbers of students […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":57407,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-57404","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archives"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57404","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57404"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57404\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/57407"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57404"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57404"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57404"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}