Student Philanthropy

Winter 2017

Andrew Stephenson

What started as a summer teaching job for Andrew Stephenson evolved into plans to build a kindergarten for underprivileged children in Saint-Louis, Senegal.

Stephenson, a senior studying civil engineering at Washington State University, says he fell in love with the area and its people after he taught English there in 2011 through a British volunteering organization called Projects Abroad.

“I’ve never seen people so excited to learn,” Stephenson says.

The kindergarten project, Foundations for Senegal, began when Stephenson reached out to Fina Senghor, a native of Senegal and a Projects Abroad deputy director, in 2016 to see how he could help Saint-Louis.

Senghor … » More …

Summer 2016

Looking over endangered creatures

Keeping a watchful eye in remote environments with aerial drones

Stealing through the shadowed plantation, an orangutan stops to feed on the tender shoots of a palm sapling. An instant later, she crumples from a rifle shot, her baby crying out in fear. The infant is eventually rescued and spirited away to a rehabilitation center for release back into the wild.

“At one time there were 2,500 of these orphans in Borneo,” says Chuck Pezeshki, a professor of mechanical and materials engineering at Washington State University. “It’s an enormous tragedy and the apes are now on the endangered list.”

Pezeshki says the native rainforest … » More …