Students provide real-world value

The UTD EPICS Team with Kellermann Program and Volunteer Coordinator, Penny LaLanne

Longstanding partnerships are integral to non-profit organizations. Over the last five years, the Kellermann Foundation has partnered with students at the University of Texas at Dallas (UTD) who are seeking hands-on, real-world experience through the Engineering Projects in Community Service (EPICS) program. These students are part of UTD’s Johnson School of Engineering and Computer Science and have been working on semester-length projects where they can contribute their expertise while learning to assist with Kellermann’s projects in Uganda’s Bwindi region.

At first, the EPICS team worked to help the Bwindi Community Hospital integrate its records management system with that of Uganda’s Health Management Information System. But more recently, the EPICS team has been working on more strategic work centered on Kellermann’s Grant Database Project. Each year the Kellermann Foundation has to respond to dozens of grants. Once awarded, these grants fund a significant portion of Kellermann’s initiatives each year.

The EPIC team is in the final stages of development of a Grant Database that functions as a grant management tool. Utilizing an Azure SQL Database, the team has designed Kellermann’s platform to track grant income by producing a web application that can place donors into a database that lists crucial information associated with them, such as how many and which grants each donor has provided.

The application can also perform analysis on the database, allowing Kellermann to view how much funding is being held and upcoming due dates for grant submittals. Several users can view and manage the collection of grants at once and see the quantity of funds the Kellermann Foundation possesses at a glance.

In 2024, the UTD EPICS team plans to travel to see and understand the breadth of Kellermann programs in Uganda, hoping to identify and initiate a project on their own that can serve as a longer-term project for the EPICS teams that will follow.