College of Engineering celebrates first graduate with missions-focused minor

Nashvillian Reid Murdock adds to knowledge of safe clinic operation in disadvantaged nations through practicum to earn minor.

Abigail McQueen | 04/23/2024

Many students enroll at Lipscomb because of a desire to serve, and Reid Murdock (’24), a mechanical engineering major who will graduate this May, is no exception. On May 4, he will be the first Lipscomb graduate to complete the newly developed humanitarian engineering minor, a program focused on how to effectively carry out faith-based engineering projects in the missions field.

The new humanitarian minor builds on the core engineering skills and knowledge students learn in the Raymond B. Jones College of Engineering and is fueled by the college’s two decades of international missional experience, said Kirsten Dodson (’12), chair of the mechanical engineering program. 

“It’s teaching students how to tackle the complexity of developing a solution for a community with limited resources and challenges such as underserved populations, poverty and sustainability issues. You have to consider the social, economic and behavioral aspects of your design. The minor emphasizes these real-world challenging environments to encourage thoughtful, sustainable problem-solving.,” said Dodson.

Having attended several mission trips with his high school and with the engineering college’s Peugeot Center for Engineering Service in Developing Communities, Murdock, from Nashville, was particularly interested in pulling back the curtain on the complete administrative effort it takes to carry out effective, sustainable projects to benefit disadvantaged communities. 

“I have always been good at working with machines and tinkering with my hands,” he says, “But I wanted to explore deeper what goes on behind the scenes in relationships within humanitarian engineering.

“The things I learned in the practicum and the courses have really shifted my perspective and have provided a new paradigm of what engineering looks like in the developing world,” Murdock said, “It opened my eyes to what humanitarian engineering is in its totality, beyond the trips.”

Part of Murdock’s passion for service stems from the 2010 Nashville flood, which greatly impacted his family in Donelson. In the aftermath, he was amazed at how many people reached out to support them. “I want to carry on that banner of servanthood,” he says.
 

For his practicum, Murdock built on the work of a previous senior design team which designed a biomedical waste incinerator. The previous team created a prototype for Predisan Health Ministry, a nonprofit health care organization currently operating in Honduras. The incinerator is a safer way to dispose of hazardous waste, as opposed to the traditional method of burning the waste in an open pit. 

Before installing the incinerator in Honduras, the design team installed the prototype at the Beersheba Springs Medical Clinic in Beersheba Springs, Tennessee. That nonprofit clinic faces many of the same challenges as clinics in disadvantaged nations. Murdock is making sure the prototype incinerator design is fully documented and validated, and his results are being submitted to Engineering For Change, a non-profit organization that provides open access solutions for sustainable global development.

As part of his studies for the minor, Murdock also attended the Energy Accessibility Workshop at the IEEE Global Humanitarian Conference. The workshop was attended by professionals, students, entrepreneurs and professors to discuss what universities can do to encourage students to go into the humanitarian sector. Murdock presented at the workshop about his practicum work. 

The engineering college began consideration of a humanitarian engineering minor in 2018 and began offering the program in 2023. 

Aside from additional courses, the minor also includes opportunities for mentorship and professional development, said Dodson. Students complete a practicum project, which can be either local or international, in conjunction with the Peugeot Center. Finally, the minor requires one elective credit, which allows students to hone their focus on their desired career path. Elective areas could include health care, working with children with disabilities, foreign language or learning business as mission concepts among other things.

Dodson has vast experience personally with humanitarian engineering. While she was a student at Lipscomb, she helped to install a water system for a disadvantaged community in Guatemala. Additionally, in 2020, she won a grant to study the impact humanitarian engineering experiences have had on students and alumni who are now practicing engineers. 

Since the first project in 2004, Lipscomb’s engineering mission trips have increased in their scale and impact. Hundreds of students have participated in projects that have impacted roughly 56,000 people and received international acclaim.

“We are an exemplary program nationally and are working to expand our model to other universities who are considering creating positive impact in their work,” said Dodson. “We are building on those strengths with this minor. When students come in searching for a way to serve, this is a formal way to guide them.”

Having achieved its first milestone, the minor continues to grow. Several junior and sophomore students are interested and have begun the course work to complete the minor, said Dodson. She encourages all engineering students interested in missions, saying, “There are definitely opportunities for a career in humanitarian engineering.”