Juan’s NEWT REU Kickoff

Hi, I’m Juan Castorena, a social work major at the University of Texas at El Paso.

Day 1:

Before my orientation with peers from Rice and UTEP, I have to say I was anxious yet excited. I was anxious because I was about to meet persons from different career backgrounds and institutions. Still, I was eager to work and learn from their disciplines to have a conclusion or plan of action in this program. My social work peers, I and Dr. Chavez prepared a presentation that discussed the preliminary background of Hueco Tanks, TX, such as their history in terms of the demographics and knowledge-based findings given from the families we interviewed. My peers in social work and I presented the results to the entire research cohort, which was exciting to showcase what we had worked on before the beginning of the program. After we discussed the findings, we visited three homes in Hueco Tanks, which the social work group had prior, so I was happy to have a follow-up with them and see how they were doing. Later that day, we had lunch and went back to UTEP. When we were in UTEP, we discussed research. I have to say that although I know what research is, it was nice to discuss, as a group, what it entails in terms of how to research with the help of peer-reviewed articles effectively.

Day 2:

This day was very exciting as I learned about water issues worldwide. It’s interesting to find the root cause of these water problems. Caminos de Agua talked about water pollution, like wells when people dig wells and how the water gets contaminated with arsenic. However, their invention in San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato, impressed me the most, which made drinking water available to the colony’s people. After Caminos de Agua’s presentation, we headed out to the Kay Bailey Hutchison Desalination Plant. During the visit to the desalination plant, I learned how the water is filtered and the struggles they face when the water levels are low in the nearby rivers. Anyhow, we ate lunch and headed back to UTEP. Once we were at UTEP, we had a fascinating discussion. We had to find solutions so that we could have access to potable water in Hueco Tanks. My team and I had discussed how there should be other truck companies delivering water in Hueco Tanks because, as of right now, there is only one company providing water.

Day 3:

Our last day was fun as we visited the engineering lab where the water was tested. During that visit, Dr. Deemer discussed the laboratory’s many machines to test the water. This is interesting to me because there is a process to determine if the water is consumable, so there are a lot of tests. Approximately 100 tests must be performed to test the water quality. Nonetheless, we ended the day early and had our last meal together.

To end this, I had a great time in these short three days! I hope that through these three days of learning and the ones that follow, I will be able to appreciate my water more and become more aware of what is happening in the world. I hope to learn a lot more, and potentially, with the help of my peers in social work and engineering, we can have a potential solution.

Thank you all.