Helping Better Society

At RWU, we are building the university the world needs now by addressing problems that matter most to society. Our students embody this work. For proof, look at Isabel Clark, who recently became the third RWU student to receive a national award recognizing a select group of student leaders who create lasting change in communities throughout the country and around the globe.

“Helping people and bettering society is the baseline concept of what an engineer does,” Clark says. “By default, an engineer’s job is to find a solution to a public need.”

Through her work with RWU’s Community Partnerships Center, she is proving that.

Among many projects through the CPC, she helped design a “teaching kitchen” at a local community center and create a Historic and Existing Building Energy Calculator (HEBEC) for the 1772 Foundation. Currently, she is working on projects with the Town of Coventry to select and design a municipal composting site, and with the Portsmouth Arts Guild to design a fun, safe space where high school students can hang out after school.

These experiences, she says, have “instilled within me a deep passion for community-engaged work, as well as the realization that a small group of like-minded and dedicated individuals can have a large impact on a community."