Hanging on the wall of Clare Robinson’s office at The University of Western Ontario are three pictures.
The first is a calendar that shows the plains of Australia, Robinson’s home country. Next to it is a picture of a woman from Vietnam, one of the many areas of the world Robinson has visited.
Beneath these is a drawing of two women in colourful dress. This picture is from Bangladesh, an area that has influenced Robinson and played a part in bringing her to Western.
Robinson, 28, became an assistant professor at Western’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering in July.
After receiving a doctorate in her hometown of Brisbane, Australia and doing post-doctorate work in Switzerland, Robinson spent a year in Bangladesh working as part of the Australian Aid Organization. She wanted to put her educational experience to use in a different way.
“I felt like I wanted to apply my experience to try and make a difference,” says Robinson. “I think sometimes in academia you get trapped by the less important issues.”
It was her experience in Bangladesh that helped her realize she was interested in a career in academia.
She worked with a non-governmental organization in Bangladesh teaching locals about the risk of using waste water on food crops and about the dangers of drinking arsenic-contaminated water. Robinson would go into the communities with a translator and remembers being amazed by what she saw.
“You go into these communities where they’ve known about the arsenic contamination problem in their groundwater for a long time and people are still drinking the arsenic water,” she says.
“A lot of it comes down to education at the end of the day. They think, ‘it hasn’t hurt me yet so it’s not going to hurt me.’ They don’t really understand that this is going to happen to you in 20 years time if you keep doing this.”
While she knew she wasn’t going to be able to change the country in one visit, Robinson was still frustrated at times with the process.
“Things just work at a much slower pace.”
Her work in Bangladesh attracted Robinson to Western’s Civil Engineering and International Development Program. Robinson says the program, which is geared towards helping developing countries, doesn’t exist at a lot of other universities.
She left her family, which includes her parents and three older sisters, in Australia and is hoping to continue some of the research she began in Bangladesh at Western. She is working on developing sustainable water supplies and will be teaching a graduate program on aquatic chemistry.
“The good thing now is I have strong connections in Bangladesh.”
Her work also drew the attention of graduate student Tanvir Hassan. Originally from Bangladesh, Hassan chose to work with Robinson because she is doing work that may help his country. He believes the work they are doing could help predict the environmental problems Bangladesh will face in the future.
“If you model what features will happen, maybe we can do something,” says Hassan. “If you can find out what will happen next, definitely it will help.”
Robinson’s experience has taught her it takes more than one person to effect change. She felt the most productive part of her trip to Bangladesh was raising awareness among the locals.
“It’s taking one step at a time that’s important,” she says. “Sometimes the projects themselves aren’t what make the huge difference. It really is about educating people. It’s making people aware that’s important.”
Clare Robinson
· Enjoys hiking, running, mountain biking and travelling
· Has travelled in Europe, Australia, Central America and Asia
· Is also studying how ground water affects lake and coastal water
· Earned degrees at the University of Queensland in Australia
The writer is a graduate student studying journalism.