Originally published by Brenna McIntosh, NC State News
Madison Mueller knew from a young age that she wanted to pursue a career that helped people in their everyday lives. The December 2023 graduate now works for a nonprofit, developing sustainable facilities across the globe.
Since graduating from NC State’s Department of Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering (CCEE), Madison Mueller has spent the last few years traveling across Africa.
Mueller knew from a young age that she wanted to pursue a career that helped people in their everyday lives. The December 2023 graduate and Park Scholar now works for Engineering Ministries International (EMI), a nonprofit organization that designs and develops sustainable facilities across the globe.
“I always dreamed of living overseas and being able to use some sort of skillset to positively impact people,” Mueller said. “My Christian faith is also something that’s super important to me. I dreamed of finding a way to meet people’s physical needs and spiritual needs.”
Mueller developed a special interest in water quality and sanitation access — which is how she landed at CCEE, studying civil engineering with minors in global public health, environmental education and outdoor leadership.
During her time at NC State, Mueller learned from excellent faculty, completed hands-on projects, studied abroad in Ireland and participated in the Alternative Service Break program in Rwanda.
“Studying abroad taught me so many lessons about living long-term cross-culturally,” Mueller said. “They were really valuable experiences.”
Since joining EMI, Mueller has worked in South Africa, Mozambique, Kenya and Uganda. Her work focuses on water testing, geotech testing, site surveying and planning for churches, hospitals and community centers in low resource areas.
In a recent trip to Kenya, Mueller and the EMI team worked to upgrade a local hospital’s infrastructure.
“The hospital is doing really amazing work to treat patients with quite limited resources in their community,” Mueller said. “Their biggest challenge was having access to clean water.”
Mueller explained that the hospital was strongly impacted by the weather, as its main source of water came from a spring.
“During the rainy season, they have an abundance of water in their spring, as well as a sophisticated rain water collection system that they use,” Mueller said. “However, two months out of the year, they get significantly less rain, and the spring that they use as their primary source of water starts to dry up. That was a limiting factor on how many patients they were able to serve.”
The EMI team made recommendations to the hospital for potential ways to counteract the dry season through a number of creative solutions, such as:
- Exploring opportunities to use additional nearby springs
- Installing more meters throughout the site to improve leak detection
- Coordinating with the local municipality to increase the capacity of their system
- Expanding their application of graywater (wastewater from household fixtures) reuse
For Mueller, moments like this make her work meaningful and exemplify what it means to be a civil engineer.
“When people ask about what civil engineers do, I say, ‘It’s a lot of behind the scenes work. A lot of times you don’t notice when infrastructure is working as well as it should, but when it isn’t working well, it’s very noticeable and can be quite detrimental.’”