1. If you are the Chief of Police for Afghanistan, what solution would you develop to pay the cops that are actually working, reduce corruption, and boost their morale.

If our team were acting as the Chief of Police for Afghanistan, we would ensure that systems were set in place in order to help address the issue of corruption and boost morale. To begin with, we would ensure that additional administrators are hired in order to manually regulate the payroll system, this way we can help prevent Ghost policemen. These administrators must not only hold themselves accountable, but also hold their coworkers accountable for any acts of corruption. Yet, in understanding that the corruption present in Afghanistan is hierarchical, we must have a leverage point in order to prevent corruption at the administrative level. In this scenario, our leverage point would be increasing the countrywide literacy rate. By increasing the literacy rate we can:

• Increase education and knowledge among the general public
• Allow more Afghani citizens to be involved in their local services
• Increase voter turnout and accountability

These effects experienced by increasing the literacy rate will all directly impact levels of corruption and the likelihood for corrupt officials to stay in power. Additionally, we can also implement activities within the bureaucracy in order to build deeper relationships, increase teamwork, and boost morale.

 

A second solution is to create an anti-corruption agency (ACA) that works independently from the police. The ACA will be held to an international standard of monitoring corruption; its workers will have to go through an arduous screening process before employment to ensure they are noncorrupt. One way to accomplish this is to ask employees to report their official tax and financial records each year. It is important that there is a single ACA, however. In countries where there are multiple ACAs – like Iraq – certain areas are overlooked. Additionally, multiple ACAs compete for the same financial resources so it would deter it from its true mission – to limit corruption.

 

2. If you are the entrepreneur, what multi-final solution will you develop so that you succeed, your venture succeeds (takes water hyacinth off the lake), and the people living along the lakeshore also walk away happy. Please be specific on how your solution might function and precisely whom you would work with. For example, refrain from including vague stakeholders like entire communities.

 

One of our solutions will be hiring interested community members who want to work on removing the hyacinth from the lake and getting paid for it. This can especially work well with the fishermen or other community members who have boats, so that they can remove the moss from different areas of the lake. This will work by her giving a portion of her profits in the shape of wages for the workers. It is important to have community members involved in the venture, so that they don’t feel as if they are being excluded. Although this will likely result in having to let go of her current employees, it is more cost effective and a good way to take advantage of the community members’ navigation knowledge of the lake since they know it best and they may know which area of the lake the hyacinths are most densely populated.

 

Another one of our solutions is for her to give a portion of her profits back to the community through charitable donations such as removing wastes and donating to their environmental focused organizations. This will show community members that she is not just there for profits. Additionally, the community will be more willing to help her advance the venture forward if they notice she invests in the local community.  

 

In addition, another solution could be educating the community about the great advantage that she is adding to their environment by removing their water hyacinth infestation from their lake and improving their community’s fishermen’s access and ability to work on the lake without any charge to the community itself.

Q1: Describe at least 5 partnerships with individuals and/or organizations that have been formed to support your project and that impact the success or failure of your venture.

Please identify partnerships at the individual, team, and Lehigh / GSIF level.

1.What constituted the partnership?

2.How did the partner help you? How did you help them?

3.Was this a symbiotic relationship? Why or why not?

4.What would help strengthen this partnership and make it more equitable?

 

University of the Philippines Diliman (UPD) (HEED Program)

1. This partnership was born during the assignment or our project. We were given this connection initially.
2. UPD students and a professor have given us insights on conditions in the Philippines as well as contacts for the Philippine Coconut Authority.  
3. No, because of the pandemic we were not able to travel to the Philippines to collaborate with the UPD students. The UPD students were also sent home due to the pandemic where many of them did not have access to wifi so we shifted to communication with Jill Manapat only. However, due to poor connection it is hard to have productive zoom meetings
4. More communication efforts would help strengthen this relationship but given the circumstances of the Pandemic 

 

Prof. Jedlicka

1. Professor Jedlicka is the co-advisor to our project (for both TE Capstone team and GSIF).
2. She provides guidance and insight to our team based on her expertise. We give her more information about different aspects of the copra industry, which in turn allows her to provide us with more suggestions and direction.
3. This is a symbiotic relationship, as we are both reciprocating value. As we navigated through this complex coconut industry together as students and mentors, we taught and learned from each other: we taught her about the coconut knowledge that we found from literature, and she taught us how to better use that knowledge to advance our venture. 
4. An increase in the team’s efforts would strengthen this relationship since the more we put in allows for more input on Professor Jedlicka’s end. 

 

Prof. Haden

1. This partnership was built through GSIF and Professor Haden is a co-advisor to our project
2. She helped us organize our ideas and helped us with where we should start with our project. We have helped her by teaching her about copra and the marketing of it in the Philippines. Also we will eventually publish a paper which will reflect well on her. 
3. Yes, because Professor Haden acted as a guide for where we should start and we were able to teach her about our project. 
4. More communication would strengthen this partnership.

 

Wilber (Brian Slocum and Michael Moore)

1. Our partnership with the Wilbur Powerhouse is based on our need for help in designing and prototyping our dryer. We connected through our advisor and our own relations.
2. They have helped us through the design, but also mainly the physical construction of the prototype through their skill sets, expertise, and their access to Wilbur. 
3. This is less of a symbiotic relationship because they have given us more value than we have given them, through advising us through our designs and helping us build it.
4. A more proactive approach to our design methods and an increase in understanding of the building process from our team. 

 

Lynne Cassimeris

1. Cell Biology professor at Lehigh, whom one of our team members is taking a class with. 
2. This partner has helped in furthering the understanding of what goes on a cellular and molecular level inside of cells, which can be applied to copra.
3. This is less of a symbiotic relationship as she is providing her teaching on her profession and we are learning from it.
4. What would strengthen this relationship would be being in more communication with her and asking more directly about potential guidance on how to work on copra more effectively.

 

Gregory Lang

1. One of our team members worked at Dr. Lang’s Yeast lab
2. Dr. Lang answered an email about what to do about aflatoxins when our team member emailed him and he provided his knowledge as he is a microbiology professor and has experience working on bacteria and yeast.
3. This is less of a symbiotic relationship as we do not have anything valuable from our side of research to offer him in return for his teaching.
4. More communication and working alongside him would strengthen the relationship and bring more equity to our project as we would profit from the more knowledge we gain about how to counteract spoilage and molding.

1. List ten specific ways in which your teaming approach has changed/evolved since you started, teamwork skills you have developed, and lessons you have learned.

• I have become more confident in my purpose in this team and have a clear aim of what I need to accomplish for my time involved in this project.
• I have learned how to lead my team members in terms of accomplishing tasks and reassuring them of what we are supposed to do.
• I have learned more about the difficulties and benefits of doing research and experiments by yourself since I lead the science research team and have had to do experiments and research by myself since Mountaintop.
• I have learned what its like to communicate across different teams since our project is made of up the engineering, business, and science research teams.
• I have become more knowledgeable and experienced about the scientific processes that goes into browning and spoilage of copra as well as more experienced in doing experiments and proper research.
• I have learned how to think outside the box and go the extra mile to come up with new ideas to help advance the project forward.
• I have seen how much better team members work together once they know more about each other and have a good team bond.
• I have learned that it is better to do one thing really well than do multiple things not well.
• I have learned more about how much digging you have to do in your research to find articles and other resources that are what you are looking for or even better.
• I have become better at public speaking and communicating my thoughts.

 

2. Provide an updated Collaboration Plan, clearly articulating your Goals (Small g and Big G), Roles,Procedures, and Relationships.

 

Team Name: COPRA                                                                          Date: 09/29/2020
Goals	Personal goals: Brianna:  Make as much useful contribution as possible, positively influence the group, create strong relationships,Improve my group work skills, ask more critical questions.  Then I hope to use all these personal improvements to make a social impact that matters. Tri: Learn more about coconuts processing and get hand-on experience on making coconuts dryers! Build life-long friendship with peers at Lehigh and those in the Philippines Jake: Provide hands on help with computer aided designing, fabrication (if at all possible), and testing of our drying chambers. Provide next year’s team with the necessary information to build off of and move toward getting our venture going. Sammy: Gain experience in conducting meaningful research and working on an interdisciplinary team. Make valuable contributions to move the project forward and create sustainable impact. Improve my interpersonal skills and develop a new mindset  Ami:  Contribute to the project in a meaningful way, understanding my own strengths and weaknesses , and learning how I can efficiently and effectively work within a diverse team. Help to better enforce communications within the team and outside the team, and become a better researcher and writer. Improve my own hard and soft skill sets including communications, and better understanding design thinking, engineering design, and supply chain. Rozhin: Complete experiments and write results in a lab report Publish a paper about the experiments and their relationship to the overall copra industry and how the result is an asset to copra farmers. Michelle:  Publish a paper about the different antioxidants we have researched on Pinpoint one antioxidant we can use for the copra processing  Continue with our research and see if there are other things we can improve on Brianna C: Help team with adding background information to paper to provide readers with a deeper framework and history of its problems and clarity on why proposed solution are innovative and helpful Project Goal: The project aims to improve copra processing and process streamlining for elevating the livelihoods of copra farmers by generating additional income. Is our Project Goal scaled to our resources (dreams, materials, skills, differences, etc.) and constraints (assignment, time, skills, etc.)? As a team, we have the given resources and knowledge needed to design and prototype a device that can better process copra. Unfortunately, due to given circumstances, our access to both each other and the tools required are constraining the timetable for which this project will operate on.   Since COPRA is a multi-year project, we as a team will lay up a strong foundation so that we can transfer the knowledge to other teams. The hope is that future teams will be able to scale upon the ideas and designs we come up with throughout this year.   Metrics for Success Design, energy efficiency, and sustainability of the processing technique Amount of high-quality copra that can be produced using new methods Amount of additional income that can be generated for copra farmers Scalability and Sustainability of the business model (can we actually get people to use this)
Roles	Who is responsible for which deliverables? Rozhin, Michelle, and Brianna C. will be responsible for the antioxidant testing and the deliverables that come from this. Jake, Tri, Brianna W, Sammy, and Ami will be responsible for the engineering components and the corresponding deliverables that arise from this. Which deliverables that require collaboration, subgroups & individual work? Who does each person depend upon to succeed? Deliverables  Presentation – Collaboration Preliminary Design Concepts – Sub group/Collaboration Prototype – Sub group/Individual Testing Data – Sub group/Individual Final report – Collaboration Do we need a project manager to coordinate?  Yes, we do need one. However, specific to our group, we rotate our project manager once every three weeks so that everyone has a chance to step up and take responsible for the group’s success We realize the importance of having a manager to help organize and coordinate group work and research, but believe that having a rotating leadership position helps alleviate the stress from one individual
Procedures	Decision-making  Consensus, our group has had very few disagreements If consensus can’t be achieved we will default to majority rules/the advice of our project advisor Effective meetings We’ve conducting weekly meetings (along with multiple weekly sub meetings) to keep everyone on track and updated with all the key information regarding our project Before each meeting we lay out an agenda to increase efficiency of meetings and help steer the conversation in the right direction We write weekly briefs (in accordance with our TE 211 course work) to keep documented records on what work and research we do each week We plan to continue holding these weekly meetings over Zoom at the same time and in the same fashion Keep track of time during meetings At the end of every meeting we make sure to assign weekly work to each group member to ensure that we can hold each other accountable Meeting roles During meetings the leader will facilitate the meeting and assign a different scribe for each meeting. The leader role will be rotated every 3 weeks Communication Up until this week we had planned Zoom meetings once a week on Fridays from 2:00 – 3:00 PM Bi-weekly meeting with two sub-groups, Prof. Jedlicka, and Prof. Haden
Relationships	Teamwork Our team has been very agreeable up to this point – we’ve had few disagreements if any Our assumption is that transitioning to video chatting as our primary form of communication will not be a problem For the Engineering team: We have backgrounds in Materials Science Engineering, Mechanical Engineerings, Industrial Systems Engineering and Product Design The team also consists of different backgrounds such as athletics, international, cultural, and greek life. We have different interests outside of engineering: make-up and sports, band music, music composition, nature, and chess. The Science Research and Business teams have been added to the to Copra team The Science Research team have backgrounds in biology and are working on developing antioxidant research and experiments to help further the project The business has background in economics and international relations which will help further the project in terms of working on the business background of the project  Listening – As a team we enter group meetings with an open mindset and are ready listen to each other  Team Name– Copra