CEDC Institutional Amnesia
By Isabella Short and Vikramjit Singh
Imagine spending hundreds of hours working on a project, then having the students who come after you be unable to recall the work you did. This is a phenomenon known as institutional amnesia and is a challenge Clemson Engineers for Developing Communities (CEDC) is confronting today.
CEDC is a student-led College of Engineering, Computing, & Applied Sciences (CECAS) Signature Program at Clemson University. Being student-led is one of the program’s most unique elements but is a double-edged sword. Students do incredible work, but when they graduate, the knowledge created may easily become lost and not be passed on to the next group of students. Time is wasted by students reproducing work that was previously completed.
CEDC is actively working to combat institutional amnesia. A first step CEDC took was moving to Microsoft Teams during the Summer of 2019. Teams helps build a positive corporate culture and allows for easier collaboration. The new structure defends against institutional amnesia by allowing all project documents to be stored in a central location that everyone can access.
CEDC’s Cange Haiti Operating Room project is one of the projects that has benefitted from using Teams. The project, which began in Spring 2018, had been suspended for two years due to COVID. In Fall 2022, new students began rebooting the project, using archived material the graduated team members had left them. Because of Microsoft Teams, all prior project work was accessible, allowing them to quickly pick up where the project had stopped. The current team augmented the archived files with interviews of previous group members. This has allowed the team to fully understand the prior work and make new progress. The work of this semester’s team will be added to the project legacy file for future CEDC students.
Moving forward, CEDC will continue to combat institutional amnesia by focusing on proper documentation of project work. Using Microsoft Teams, CEDC will thrive by reducing the effects of institutional amnesia.
Pictured below on the left is the Cange Haiti Operating Room team in Fall 2018 and on the right is the team in Fall 2022. From left to right we have Maggie Downer, Jared Gaidjunas 22’, Elijah Harding, Bailey Leopard 21’, Nathan Edwards, Maria Chavez, Joann Lawhorn, and Olivia Eierman.
