In addition to academics and research, Caltech has over 100 clubs and organizations completely led by students and other members of the Caltech community! These clubs can be technical (such as Caltech Racing, Parsec Rocketry, Girls who Code, etc), recreational (Caltech Turtle Club, Out of Context Acapella, Dance Club, etc), or affiliated with religious/cultural groups, amongst many others. In this post, I wanted to specifically highlight Caltech’s Engineers without Borders (EWB) chapter, a club that works on different engineering projects internationally to help sustain and empower communities around the world.
Affiliated with EWB-USA, the national Engineers without Borders organization, our club typically signs a contract for a new project every three to five years. We are then matched to a community that has a challenge that can be solved through an engineered solution. Currently, Caltech’s EWB chapter is partnering with Tandacato, a village in Ecuador, to help revamp their water infrastructure system. In 2022, Tandacto suffered many large landslides which destroyed their existing water supply system. The members of the village and Tandacato’s Water Board wanted to implement a long-standing solution, since many of their temporary fixes were unstable and led to a high amount of debris in the water. Therefore, our club is helping design a resilient water system for Tandacato so that the community has long-term access to clean drinking water. Some of our members were actually able to travel to Ecuador in spring 2023 as a part of their assessment trip, and we are planning to travel again in spring 2026 to actually implement our designs and solutions for the community. To get an insider perspective on the inner workings of the club, I interviewed some of my fellow EWB board members about their experience in the club!
Q1: When did you join Caltech’s EWB chapter, and what motivated you to continue working in the club?
Payal (Treasurer, graduating senior): I joined the club during my sophomore year. I thought it was a good way to practically apply what we are learning in our classes. It was also cool to have the experience of meeting with real life engineers and hearing their perspectives on things.
Sofia (Co-president, graduating senior): I joined the club in my freshman year, when we were in the process of choosing a new project after the pandemic.
Q2: For those of you who traveled to Ecuador in 2023, how was the experience and what did you learn from the trip?
Genevieve (Co-president, graduating senior): Traveling to Ecuador was a very unique experience! It was great to meet the community and get hands on experience. It was a very different terrain than what we were used to. We had the chance to hike through the forest, take water quality samples, collect data with a drone, and survey the community to obtain social data. Being physically able to meet the community and survey the land gave us a lot of information that you can’t get by being remote.
Sofia: Things were definitely unexpected, especially with the rainy weather. We learned how to adjust schedule on the fly, just like how engineers do in the real world. It was really good to meet the community as well. On the last day of the trip, the community made a home cooked meal at the town center, so it was really nice to be welcomed!
Q3: What was your favorite experience being in EWB?
Jordan (incoming president, rising junior): My favorite experience from EWB was presenting our project to a group of research scientists at JPL in February 2025. It was a great experience to share our research and designs! The chief scientist at JPL, Jonathan Lunine, also attended our presentation and was excited to hear about our progress.
Diya (incoming vice president, rising junior): One of my favorite activities this year was attending the UCLA Engineers without Borders conference. We got the chance to meet with other EWB chapters from southern California to hear about their projects and also talk to professionals about how to support our club in the future years.
Ana (incoming secretary, rising junior): One of my favorite activites was attending the big workshops we had to learn more about the project. Last fall, we had a CAD (computer aided design) workshop with Patrick, one of the engineers who has been helping us with out designs, to plan out the pipe system for the water.
Ama (incoming treasurer, rising senior): I really enjoyed the outreach activity we did recently in May! CHLA (Caltech Hispanic and Latino Association) planned an outreach event called Dia de Ciencias (Day of Science), where a group of middle school students came to Caltech for a day of activities and lab tours. We planned an activity for the students at this event, where the kids had to create a marble race track to simulate how water runs through a pipe. It was nice to see future bright minds!
Q4: As the board members of EWB, how do you motivate or inspire others to work towards a common goal?
Payal: One of the most important things is helping new members feel involved. When a new member joins the club, we always make sure to show them our old presentation slides to get them integrated into the project. We also make sure to document all of our work from our weekly meetings. We want to make sure members have enough information to be able to contribute and make a difference.
Genevieve: We do a lot of restaurant fundraisers to raise money for our projects. We’ve worked with a lot of restaurants on Lake Avenue, Chipotle included! We always make sure to tell our friends about these fundraisers so they can be aware of our project.
Sofia: During our team meetings, we usually split up the work into smaller sections (in terms of reports, design ideas, and drawings) to make everything more manageable.
Q5: Why should other students join EWB?
Genevieve: EWB is a club for everyone. We need people with a lot of different interests and skill sets, such as fundraising, outreach, project management, and others. You don’t need to be a mechanical engineering student to be a part of the club!
Sofia: Caltech doesn’t have a civil engineering undergraduate major, so being a part of EWB gives you a chance to participate in a civil engineering based project. It is also good to get familiar with programs like Autocad, which may not be taught formally in classes.
Jordan: EWB is a great opportunity to use what you’ve learned in classes to help real communities and have a real impact. You don’t really get this kind of gratifying feeling and experience out of every club.
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Caltech’s Engineers without Borders club is helping make real differences around the world, and it is a really great experience and opportunity! We’re always looking for more members from any major or field of interest. For more information about our EWB chapter, please visit our website or follow our Instagram page, @ewb_caltech!
