Joshua Shefner and Blue Mango
Posted by John Halbleib on Apr 20, 2017
Joshua Shefner presented “Blue Mango” to the Rotary Club of McHenry. He is a student at the Milwaukee School of Engineering and recipient of the Thomas W. Davis Student Leadership Award. Josh is a civil engineering major and team leader of an eight student team from MSOE’s University Scholars honors program; this team participated in a yearlong project to design and build a solar food dehydrator for a rural village in Jamaica. They were asked by the Blue Mountain Project, a non-profit located in the Blue Mountains of Jamaica, to design technology to dehydrate an often unused crop in the region – mangoes. This team now refers to itself as the “Blue Mango”. In addition to designing and building the dehydrator, Blue Mango also created a business model and training program to teach local residents how to use the equipment. This project serves to improve the health, education and economy in the region.
Josh is also a member of the successful MSOE student chapter of the American Society of Civil Engineers which in early April 2017 hosted the annual Great Lakes Region Student Conference. “Students from 19 universities participated, including Marquette, MSOE, Northwestern, Notre Dame, UW-Madison, UW-Milwaukee and others.” MSOE students organized the entire conference. The MSOE team achieved these awards: 5 – 1st place (including “1st place: Conference Overall”); 2 – 2nd place; and 1 – 3rd place.
Josh graduated from McHenry High School - East Campus as a member of the Class of 2015.
Pictured below from left to right are Josh Shefner and Terry Fitzgibbons (Club member, Associate Principal – McHenry Community High School District 156, McHenry High School, West Campus and Assistant Principal – McHenry High School, East Campus)