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Leah H. Jamieson '72

Engineering Projects Deliver Community Service Solutions

(First published in Technology Review, Dec. 2005/Jan. 2006)

Leah H. Jamieson '72

Somewhere, a child with cerebral palsy is opening the door of a toy refrigerator. An elementary school student is awakening to the exciting engineering concepts. A family, assisted by Habitat for Humanity, is moving into an energy-efficient and safe home.

They can all, in part, thank Leah H. Jamieson '72, professor of electrical and computer engineering at Purdue University in Indiana. Jamieson co-founded Engineering Projects in Community Service (EPICS), which involves student teams solving community-service problems using engineering and creative skills. The EPICS program won the 2005 National Academy of Engineering's Bernard M. Gordon Prize for Innovation in Engineering and Technology Education. Jamieson and her colleagues who shared the Gordon Prize declined most of their share of the $500,000 prize, earmarking the money for EPICS.

Jamieson and two other Purdue professors created EPICS 10 years ago to enhance undergraduates' engineering education and help the local community. The teams work on projects such as developing an admissions database for the Homelessness Prevention Network and creating high-tech educational toys for a local resource academy that provides education, job training, and ESL classes.

At Purdue, approximately 350 to 400 students are involved in EPICS each year and what began as an electrical engineering program now involves students from disciplines including sociology, psychology, education, and child development. The EPICS idea has spread now to 17 other universities. "The impact has just been phenomenal to watch," Jamieson says.

Jamieson has also been honored as the Indiana Professor of the Year in 2002. In 2005, she was elected to the U.S. National Academy of Engineering. She and her husband, George Adams, a research development manager at Purdue, have a 16-year-old daughter, Caitlin. And she has fond memories of MIT. "Being at MIT reinforced my confidence in the ability to learn."