Back to Home Page
College Home
University Home
Past Issues
Contact the Editor
 
Signatures Cover
Download PDF of this Issue
 
 
Seeing the Big Picture
Talking Points
Taking Note
Making the Grade
Sharing Perspectives
Reaching Out
Staying in Touch
 
Reaching Out
Energy Week Battery Drain Home Bodies
We’ve Got it Covered That’s So High School Pretty in Pink
The Benefits of Collaboration Another Bright Idea  

The Benefits of Collaboration

For several years, Stephen E. Silliman, professor of civil engineering and geological sciences and associate dean for educational programs in the College of Engineering, has traveled to Benin, West Africa. He and several Notre Dame students, graduates and undergraduates, have been working in conjunction with Moussa Boukari, professor of earth sciences at Université d’Abomey-Calavi in Benin.

Silliman, Boukari, and students from both universities have been studying the quality of water derived from groundwater wells, including the development of technological and sociological means to empower the local population so they can collect water quality data from their village wells. Other projects that have developed from the collaboration involve studying the source of uranium in groundwater wells, modeling saltwater intrusion, developing collaborative drilling projects, promoting wellhead protection, and working with primary and secondary schools in rural Benin to establish an educational exchange with K-8 schools in Indiana.

The work, supported by the a number of foundations and private benefactors, as well as the National Science Foundation, has proved very rewarding. Silliman believes that this project holds a number of benefits to those involved. “The focus on research as applied to these complex issues in Benin has the potential to impact the local population through helping them better understand and maintain their critical water resources. It also has the potential to impact the students in Benin through providing access to new technologies (techniques in hydrology), as well as to ongoing collaboration with colleagues in the United States. Finally, it has the potential to impact participating Notre Dame students by providing them with a rigorous, multidisciplinary, international research experience, while challenging them to see the talents, strength, and beauty of both their Beninese peers and the Beninese people.”

For more information about the college’s work in Benin, visit www.nd.edu/~silliman/Development/benin.

Photos of Benin supplied by Pamela Crane and Stephen E. Silliman.