USAID BUILD-IT & Dow Vietnam STEM Program: Engineering Projects in Community Service

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Over 150 students from six universities across Vietnam will gather at the Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology and Education to share their engineering-based innovations at the Final Showcase of the USAID BUILD-IT & Dow Vietnam STEM Program: Engineering Projects in Community Service.

The Final Showcase concludes five months of student-led design innovation following the Engineering Projects in Community Service (EPICS) curriculum model. EPICS is an internationally recognized service-learning model where students learn by engineering a prototype designed to address a social issue. EPICS builds students’ design and technical skills, it pushes students help their communities as young engineers. Learn more about the showcase here.

This is the fifth EPICS program held in Vietnam, and the fourth year of collaboration with the Dow Vietnam STEM Program. Working together, the United States Agency for International Development’s (USAID) Building University-Industry Learning and Development through Innovation and Technology (BUILD-IT) Alliance, implemented by Arizona State University, and Dow Vietnam support student-led innovation and service learning at Vietnamese universities. To date, Dow Vietnam has leveraged over $110,000 to provide more than 800 opportunities for students to gain the confidence and capacity to engineer social innovations. Dow Vietnam provided funding for student projects, faculty support, and industry-based mentoring to motivate students to take on the pressing challenges Vietnam faces with COVID-19, flood prevention, waste recycling, and more.