IPRO 322: Solar Panels

This summer I had the wonderful opportunity to be a part of an IPRO. As I had never done an IPRO before, it was a bit of an adventure. There is no program quite like the IPRO program, and I was a bit nervous, and more than a bit excited on what was in store for me.

The IPRO program works like this: each project is an individual class (IPRO 333, IPRO 322, etc) and you can register for whichever one interests you when you register for the rest of your classes. These projects come mostly from two main places--professors come up with a lot of them, but another large portion comes from outside companies who want students to work on an idea of own.

That's the wonderful thing about the IPRO program; all the work you are doing is not theoretical, because you are working on a real problem, for a real person, and you get real results. My IPRO, 322, came into being because a representative for SolarWind USA came to IIT asking for students to help develop a product, namely, a battery-ballasted solar panel mounting system with an integrated electrical system for industrial and commercial applications.

So an IPRO team was formed, consisting of students from many different majors (in this respect, working in this program is much like working in the field; you may be the only person knowledgeable on a particular subject, and you are looked to as the expert in your field) coming together to work on this one project--in this case, a solar panel mount.

Now, I can't go into too many details about our design and research, but I can talk about my experience in the program. And my experience was fantastic. The first thing we did as a group was talk to our sponsor (who actually came to campus about once a week to see how we were progressing). He told us what SolarWind wanted out of us and gave us some of his own ideas about how to proceed. We then started to form our own ideas, and did a lot of research on the subject of solar panels. Because, believe it or not, we knew nothing about solar panels, let alone the electrical systems. Fortunately, the electrical engineers on our team were more than up to the task, and the rest of us started coming up with ideas for the mount, how it would operate, how it would look, and how customers would react to it.

We then planned out a budget, which we ran by the IPRO department. We also had a large monetary contribution from our sponsor, since a lot of the equipment we'd need was a bit pricey. Our very first concept model (pictured above with two of my team members) was anything but, however; it was built mainly to visualize how our first coherent design would function. As we progressed we developed better ideas, and with the help of our extensive research we came up with something that we are all really proud of (you can see a component of our final design at the top of the post--I can't show the full design, but you at least have an idea).

At the end of the semester we presented our work to a panel of judges as part of "IPRO Day," as sort of collegiate-level science fair, with all the other IPRO's presenting their work, and setting up booths for faculty, judges, staff, and students to check out. At the end of the day the judges submitted their votes for who had the best project, and, guess what? We won! We won best in track (there are two tracks, each containing similar project themes, ours being sustainability), and we tied for best overall. It was so gratifying after spending all those weeks working so hard on a project that, eight weeks before, we knew absolutely nothing about. No other school has an IPRO program, and I feel lucky that I was able to participate in it. At IIT, students have to take two IPRO's while they're here, and I have seen only benefits from this program. I am definitely looking forward to my next one.

To see what kind of projects the IPRO teams are working on right now, you can check them out here.
To see a detailed description of my IPRO, IPRO 322, click here.

Song of the Day: Portugal the Man -- "Work All Day"

A Summer! I Had One!

Me on vacation in San Diego. Don't I look happy?

WHEW. And what a summer it has been! Granted, we're more than halfway through September and the semester started in late August, but NO MATTER. I will be telling my tale of summertime campus adventures over the course of a couple of posts, so for now, brace yourselves for part one.

In order to catch up on classes after switching majors from Architecture to Architectural Engineering (I'll get into that in another post) , I decided to take a couple summer classes, Calculus 2 and IPRO 322. The original plan was to commute every day (which from Naperville is not preferable for me--I like sleeping, and waking up at 4am to get here by seven just wasn't jiving with me), take two classes during the day and come home in the evenings. I had a similar he[ck] schedule last summer, except when I came home I still had the pleasure of going to a night class at the local community college. Fortunately for me, I was able to get a hold of on-campus housing for the summer not a week after the summer semester started.

You see, I am in a fraternity, Alpha Sigma Phi. When I got off the IIT shuttle bus at 7am, I would walk over to the chapter house on the Quad and would crash there for an hour or two before work and class (Did I mention? I work too! Joy!). Now, before you ask me, "Tony, why on earth would you go to campus so darn early if you don't have work for another hour or two?" The answer is thus: I have no transportation of my own, and, fortunately for me, my dad happens to be going my way, as he works here at Illinois Tech. So I have to go by his schedule, which, not-so-fortunately for me, means waking up before the sun.

This is where I stayed during the summer

The Resident Advisor (RA) of the chapter house noticed me hanging around so early in the morning (it's kind of hard to ignore a grown man sprawled across a couch, face pressed into the cushion creases), and asked me why I wasn't living in the house for the summer. I didn't really have a reply to that, so he offered me an empty room in exchange for some manual labor that needed to be done around the house that summer. So huzzah for me! No more waking up before dawn! No more falling asleep at the dinner table! And I could still get to work on time. And now I am an expert at replacing screen doors and shoveling ceramic (long story). What a beautiful thing.

During the weekday I went to class, studied, and generally was an academic. On the weekends I turned into my alter-ego, LaborMan, and toiled away in between hanging out with friends. And after the summer semester I got to spend two weeks in beautiful sunny Arizona, where I golfed my arms sore and napped in some of the most beautiful places in America, including San Diego, which we drove to from Phoenix. I could have not asked for a better summer (well, it might have been better had there not been classes at all, but that's how it goes).

In my next installment (this is sounding more and more like a radio serial) I will detail my first-ever IPRO experience. Tune in next week (or whenever I get around to posting)!