Department of Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering

Students helping the tsunami victims isn't the first time people in CCEE have made a difference in Thailand. Twenty years ago, Lisa Falk (BSCE 1984) joined the Peace Corps after graduation. She went to Thailand to bring running water to people's homes.

Before Falk's project, villagers carried buckets of water from a spring to do their washing, cooking, and cleaning. Falk led the villagers in building a pump house that pumped the spring water up to two storage tanks. Then the water traveled by PVC pipe to people's houses (either inside or outside the front door).

Because the water isn't purified in the system, villagers continue to drink and cook with rainwater. The spring water could be boiled, as it always had been, in case the clean rainwater ran out before the next rainy season started. 

Now, Falk is a civil engineer with the St. Paul Public Works Department in St. Paul, Minnesota. She occasionally returns to Iowa State to encourage students to consider joining the Peace Corps.