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Roger W. Ruggles, associate professor and head of civil and environmental engineering at Lafayette College, has received a prestigious Fulbright Grant to teach and do research in Uganda for a year.
In Uganda, Ruggles is based at Makerere University in Kampala, the nation’s capital city. He is teaching courses at the university relating to water resources, one of his areas of specialty. In addition, he is conducting research focusing on the application of Geographical Information System (GIS) technology in solving regional environmental problems.
A GIS is a high-tech “map.” But while traditional maps are difficult and expensive to update, and desired information is often not easily extracted from them, a computer-based GIS allows users to update and extract information easily. A GIS also allows users to produce a paper map to their specifications, if desired, and perform data analysis and modeling.
“The purpose of my research under the Fulbright Grant is to identify, quantify, and analyze regional environmental concerns,” Ruggles says. “I’ll collect the required data, including maps, plans, surveys, databases, and other information, and enter them into a GIS. This will yield a set of geographically referenced information that can be analyzed to provide potential solutions to the environmental problems.”
Some key preliminary steps, including the vitally important initiative of collecting information from local individuals, will precede the assembly of the GIS, Ruggles says.
“In the first semester I’m working with Lafayette students to review the relevant literature and develop a plan for the information framework required for the GIS. Then I’ll collect information from individuals in the community to establish a local perspective on environmental issues. The local perspective will be combined with the information from the literature to establish the final informational framework and analysis components to be built into the GIS.”
Ruggles is collaborating with civil engineering faculty at Makerere University to determine the specific Ugandan regions and environmental issues to focus on. He says his interest in the environmental concerns of developing countries deepened when he led Lafayette student members of Lafayette’s Alternative School Break Club on a 10-day community-service trip to Honduras a few years ago. Alternative School Break is one of more than 25 programs of sustained voluntary service that Lafayette students conduct each year under the auspices of the College’s Landis Community Outreach Center.
“I realized that these environmental concerns require complex multidisciplinary solutions,” he says. He subsequently developed a course, Technology in Developing Countries, which, he says, gave him further incentive to keep exploring these issues.
“Because of the close ties between engineering and the liberal arts at Lafayette, there is an atmosphere conducive to exploring multidisciplinary solutions,” Ruggles says. “But you can only know and appreciate the culture, issues, and initiatives of a particular developing area by living and working there for an extended period of time. Doing this in Uganda will be an immeasurable aid in understanding the issues, their potential solutions, and their impact on the people and their culture. I will use what I learn in future classes I teach and research I conduct.”
For two Lafayette students working with Ruggles on his project via the Internet there is no delay in benefiting from what Ruggles learns. In fact, they are helping him learn.
The students are Beth Lee, a senior double major in anthropology and sociology and English from Rock Cave, W.Va., and Crystalann Harbold, a junior civil engineering major from York, Pa. They are working with Ruggles in the framework of an independent study course.
“In my career I’d like to concentrate on development in Third World countries, and that involves working with people from various fields,” Lee says. “The opportunity to work with Prof. Ruggles, to contribute my anthropological background to this engineering project, is exciting. We can work together to accomplish the goal.
“I really like and admire Prof. Ruggles and I’m grateful for this opportunity,” she says.
Since joining the Lafayette faculty in 1985 Ruggles has mentored more than two dozen Lafayette students in research projects.
“I have found that working one-on-one with students on individually designed projects is a rewarding experience and generally results in meaningful research,” he says. “I am also a proponent of hands-on, active learning in the classes I teach. I find that students develop a better understanding of material when they experience it.”
He hopes the work in Uganda will result in an ongoing opportunity for Lafayette students to engage in collaborative research with faculty and students at Makerere University.
Ruggles has taught 17 courses at Lafayette, in civil engineering and outside of the discipline. Building on the Fulbright experience, he plans to develop and teach a three-week course in Africa during interim session, adding to the extensive roster of courses that Lafayette faculty teach in locations around the world each January, between regular semesters.
“Most Lafayette students who take these interim-session courses abroad say they are among the most enriching educational experiences they have had,” says Ruggles.
In 1999 he taught an interim course in Kenya and Tanzania called Modern Sub-Sarahan Africa with Rexford A. Ahene, associate professor of economics and business. The course gives students first-hand knowledge of the precarious balance between traditions and modern developments in East Africa and includes an interdisciplinary examination of issues and policies for managing natural resources, economic and cultural transition, technology, and sustainable development there.
It was on that trip that Beth Lee got to know Ruggles for the first time.
“I wanted to go to Africa and do something outside of my field,” says Lee, who has applied to enter the Peace Corps after graduation. “The course emphasized development and environmental engineering, and it gave me the chance to see how important the anthropological dimension is in developing countries.”
Uganda lies across the equator in East Africa, bordered by The Sudan, Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, and Congo. Formerly under British control, it became an independent republic in 1962. English is its official language. Uganda ranks No. 17 in the list of the world’s least livable countries in the 1999 United Nations’ Human Development Index, which ranks countries according to their citizens’ quality of life as indicated by life expectancy, adult literacy, school enrollment, and per-capita gross domestic product.
Kampala, Uganda’s largest city, has a population in excess of 775,000 people. Makerere is one of the oldest universities in Africa. It was founded as a technical school in 1922 and attained university status in 1970.
Ruggles holds a Ph.D. in engineering science from Clarkson University. He also earned master’s and bachelor’s degrees at Clarkson. He completed the course New Techniques in Water Resource Management and Analysis conducted by the U.S. Geological Survey and the National Science Foundation. In the summer of 1992 he conducted research at the Naval Research Laboratory’s Polar Oceanography Branch in Hanover, N.H. He served in the U.S. Air Force from 1972-76, specializing in repair of long-range radar systems.
Nate Tyson ’04 worked with Roger Ruggles, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering, on an EXCEL Scholars project to map the bedrock topography of Northampton County.