Photo by Matt Beyrouty An occasional mobile home dots the horizon of the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, where Purdue's Engineers Without Borders club is turning a portion of the vast prairie into a neighborhood. Club advisor Rabi Mohtar (left) is shown with two of the students who visited the site in May, Liz Hilkert and Gale Ruttanaphon (right).

The Pine Ridge Reservation sits on the north side of the Nebraska-South Dakota border. It is a place with few natural resources and, literally, no industry. Almost 50 percent unemployment and a severe housing shortage mean that many of the 18,000 Native Americans who live there are homeless or live in substandard accommodations. The reservation encompasses 2 million acres of land so poor it wouldn't sustain a dream.

There is a reason they call it the Badlands.

Which makes it the perfect place for Matt Beyrouty, West Lafayette, and Jennifer Allen, Elnora, Ind., a pair of juniors in Purdue's College of Agriculture. They joined the fledgling campus chapter of Engineers Without Borders last year so they could make a difference in the lives of others, and the Pine Ridge housing shortage is the first problem they are tackling.

Nationally, Engineers Without Borders was founded in 2000 to help disadvantaged communities worldwide improve their quality of life by implementing environmentally and economically sustainable engineering projects, while developing internationally responsible engineering students.

The Purdue chapter was established in 2003 when some students majoring in agricultural and biological sciences, engineering, environmental science, aeronautical engineering, electrical engineering, technology, management, and mechanical engineering took the initiative by looking for professors willing to advise them.

The students contacted three professors, Inez Hua (civil), Patricia Davies (mechanical and electrical) and Rabi Mohtar, an associate professor of agricultural and biological engineering.

"I was on sabbatical in France when they contacted me," Mohtar says. "I was quite excited, since my interest has always been international development."

Getting Beyrouty and Allen to join the group wasn't too difficult for Mohtar. After all, he was their academic advisor.

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