“We helped them establish the entire value chain — how at every step of the way, every set of people involved can directly gain from these greenhouses,” said Mehta. “It’s not just about the technology. The challenge is in the implementation. You might have the best technology, the best business strategy — but it’s about making it happen. The execution is the challenge. That’s what we want the students to learn — how to execute, how to get things done.”
HESE students are required to work on original publishable research projects. Shayne Bement, an engineering science major from Hershey, will present papers this year in Texas and California about his efforts to use rice bags as a low-cost substitute for plastic greenhouse covering. In the end, Bement found that the bags did not work for greenhouses — but do work well as shade netting.
“We fail more often than we succeed,” said Mehta. “Even when we fail, we chronicle exactly why and share that with others.”
Bement, a senior, will go to Cameroon this spring to work on expanding the greenhouse project into West Africa. HESE has made him a different person, he said. “I’ve never really traveled and I never expected to travel, to be honest,” he said. “Now I’m interacting with a Cameroonian businessman, preparing to travel by myself for six months … I’m not daunted by it at all!”
The HESE program has won numerous awards, including the 2013 Award for Community Engagement and Scholarship given by Penn State’s Council on Engaged Scholarship. It was also recognized by the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities as the Northeast regional winner of the 2013 Outreach Scholarship W.K. Kellogg Foundation Engagement Award.
“The HESE project is just a wonderful example of engaged scholarship,” said Craig Weidemann, vice president for outreach and vice provost for online education and co-chair of Penn State’s Council on Engaged Scholarship. "The reciprocity between our students and the communities they engage is profound. There is huge learning on both sides of the collaboration."
Over the years the program has expanded to involve other campuses, including Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, which collaborates with HESE at its Kenya telemedicine site, and Penn State Erie, The Behrend College, where students in the plastics engineering program have been involved in the greenhouse project. “It’s a beautiful example of how we can leverage our strength as a large university,” Mehta said.
Faculty and students from Penn State Altoona have taken the HESE greenhouses to Rwanda, where they are working with a local school. “They’ve got the engineers who are developing the ideas — we see our role as being implementers,” said Lee Ann De Reus, professor of human development and family studies and women’s studies.