Seniors Transform Rice Bags into Solutions
Seniors in the Wilson College of Textiles’ textile engineering (TE) and textile technology (TT) programs spent the first week of their semester creating solutions for real problems in developing countries through the Rice Bag Challenge. Get more news about
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The challenge? Transform two rice bags and up to $10 worth of outside material into an item that helps alleviate the day to day obstacles for residents in developing countries. Groups had one week to go from prompt to product.
Two officials with Rise Against Hunger, an international nonprofit that coordinates food packaging and distribution, visited Wilson College to judge the entries. Ultimately, nutrition technical designer Chelsie Kohlberg and programs manager Kristen Wassil chose a utility apron as the winning project.
“I thought it was multifunctional,” Kohlberg says. “I was envisioning the cooks in the kitchen at the school where I work, or even the farmers with their tools and their seeds, or just anybody out and about wearing it.”
This challenge serves as a sort of “test run” for the rest of Senior Design, a capstone course required for all senior TE and TT students. These same groups will spend the rest of the academic year developing a product sponsored by major brands such as The North Face and HanesBrands Inc.
“We want to really throw them into the design process and learn how to work as a team. We also get an idea of the types of ideas that they’re going to come up with,” Dr. Amanda Mills, interim co-director of Senior Design, says. “We want them to get their hands dirty and actually try and make something in prototype, so I heard some teams say that they made five different iterations, and that’s perfect. We want them to do that because that shows them it’s okay to not have a perfect first product, and it helps get them over the fear of not making a perfect version.”
