Tuesday, October 22, 2013 | TechNews

 

‘Eduroam' wireless internet service comes to MT

Utsav Gandhi
CAMPUS EDITOR

The IIT Office of Technology Services
(OTS) is pleased to announce that we have
joined the eduroam (educationroaming)
community. OTS’s Support Desk Manager,
Orland Carter spoke to TechNews about
the exciting new service which provides
some convenient benefits to IIT-affiliated
individuals situated and traveling across the
world. IIT members that visit another eduroam

participating university will be able to gain
access to the wireless internet on their personal
device, and in some cases additional local
resources such as printers, without the need for
a local user account at that university.
Originating in Europe, eduroam is
a secure, world-wide internet access service
developed for the international research and
education community. With IIT’s participation
in eduroam, students, faculty, researchers and
staff can obtain internet connectivity across
IIT’s campuses as well as when visiting other

participating institutions around the world.
IIT has provided the xpressconnect
software that will configure your device to
connect to eduroam. This should be done while
you still have an internet connection prior to
visiting the participating campus. You will
need to be an active student, researchers, stafl’,
or faculty of HT to access the service.‘
Eduroam is accessible at university
locations in many countries around the world.
A detailed location map can be found online for
the United States and the World at https://www.

\

eduroam.orgl?p=where. Current participating
universities in the Chicago area include:
IIT, UIC, Northwestern University and the
University of Chicago. Additional Information
on eduroam can be found at: httpszllwww.
eduroamorgl and also at https://www.eduroam.
us/ .

For any issues connecting to eduroam
please reach out to your home institution, in
this case, IIT OTS Support Desk (supportdesk@
iit.edu; 312.567.3375). The institution you are
visiting will not be able to provide support.

    

EWB-IIT partner visits llT, inspires students to
pursue career in international development

Utsav Gandhi
CAMPUS EDITOR

IIT’s Engineers without Borders
(EWB) chapter is currently partnering with
FriendsNE, a non- profit organization based
in Boston, MA, to help build a bridge in rural
Nicaragua. The project has been in conception
since October last year, after which a successful
evaluation trip was also carried out over spring
break last year (you can read more updates
about the project at http://ewbiitsanclaudio.
blogspot.coml). Over the past week, the HT
chapter hosted the Director of the partner
organization, Micheal Chipoletti, who delivered
a couple of inspiring talks on his journey
pursuing a career in international development
and inspired us students to find our passions,
and follow them whole-heartedly.

Chipoletti has educational degrees
from liberal arts colleges (BA, Stonehill College,
‘99; MBA, Boston University, ‘05), and Friends
New England. After speaking at EWB IlT’s
general body meeting on Monday afternoon,
Chipoletti also spoke at an event, “The Rewards

of Working in Global Health and International
Development Presentation,” co—hosted with
the Engineering Themes. The students who
attended received credit towards the Health and
Security themes. He added that his non-profit
organization exists to “provide aid, care, and
support for the needy, locally, nationally and
internationally,withanemphzmis on sustainable
development on behalf of the poor with current
projects in Nicaragua and Peru.”

While attending Northport High
School, Chipoletti was an active member of
Students for 60,000, an organization founded in
the summer of 1986 to work in solidarity with
New York City’s 60,000+ homeless persons. In
1992, the high school began student trips to
Nicaragua and in 1996, he coordinated with
the Director of Students to offer an alumni trip
to Nicaragua, wherein the team helped in the
construction of a school and improvement of
sanitation practices. This trip was the beginning
of Chipoletti’s 17 years of work in Nicaragua
and later with Peru. FriendsNE was born out
of a discussion between Chipoletti and both
current and founding FNE board members

after he participated in a medical relief trip to
Haiti following the earthquake in 2010. The
trip inspired Chipoletti to suggest a partnership
between the other project participants which

‘would link the work in Haiti to existing

projects in Nicaragua. He leads service trips to
Nicaragua and Peru multiple times a year for
students, families, service groups, and health
care professionals.

Chipoletti spoke at length about
EWB’s community development model, where
he listed “listening” and empathy as the crucial
drivers of development, with an emphasis
on preventing dependency and paternalistic
mentalities; as has been the traditional case
for the last forty years wherein aid was a
gift and money was just handed out without
any focus on local community building and
empowerment. FriendsNE has a policy of
maintaining communication with the local
communities. Their partnership model is
focused as a bottom up approach rather than
a top down one. He gave examples of medical
projects in Haiti which are not sustainable and
basically create patients that wait for the next

set of medical missionaries. It is more helpful,
rather, to work with the communities and follow
up consistently. When asked why he chooses to
focus on projects outside America even when
there is so much help needed in communities
here itself, he said that the poorest in America
are still much better off than many of the world’s
rural communities, and that the possibility
of realizing the ‘dream’ which is so prevalent
and possible here isn’t even likely in many
parts of the world. Chipoletti also believes in
empowering individuals here by taking them
on exposure trips abroad so that they may come
back and advocate about the issues they gained
awareness regarding.

“Education, cooperation, integration”
— following this principle, FriendsNE has
worked over the years with administration, local
politicians, dealt with social factors, religions
and customs. Trip experiences with them, like
the one that the HT EWB chapter was fortunate
to experience last spring, takes you out of your
comfort zone and challenges you to think
critically about problems from an empathetic,
human perspective.

 

 

 

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