Architecture student's studies land her in Africa
Alyssa DiPippa is camping out this week at the Butler Farm Show while her family shows sheep.
But it's just a temporary stop, she'll soon be on the move again as she has all summer.
DiPippa, 21, the daughter of Matt and Jacki DiPippa of Butler, just returned Aug. 4 from two and a half months in Colorado Springs, Colo. where she spent her time at the Engineering Ministries International headquarters drawing up a master plan and a conceptual design for a 12-acre nondenominational ministry retreat in the East African nation of Uganda.
DiPippa, a third-year student of architecture at Penn State University and a 2015 graduate of Butler High School, said, “I had an internship with EMI, a nonprofit organization that undertakes engineering ministries around the world.”
EMI, according to its website, was formed in 1981 on the island of Saipan which had recently been hit by a typhoon.While on a short-term trip focused on evangelism, one of the volunteers found that his abilities as a structural engineer were in great need. A two-fold opportunity presented itself: evangelism and engineering.Dan Kane, project manager for EMI, said after DiPippa's return from Uganda, she worked with other staff members on the plan for the retreat.Kane said, “She focused on the floor plan and the elevation views of the administration building, she did a very excellent job.”“It was me and two other interns, a leader on the staff with EMI and four volunteers,” DiPippa said.DiPippa spent June 3 through June 16 in Uganda, working with the other EMI interns doing soil and water testing and preliminary sketches of the future compound.DiPippa said she and the EMI team drew up plans for multiple buildings for the Uganda Jengan ministry, including an administration house, a prayer house, dormitories and single-family homes called bandas.DiPippa was near the Kenya border at the foot of Mount Elgon.
“It's pretty rural. It's very different from anything that you see in America. It's a developing nation. There are a lot of dirt roads,” she said.“I was there two weeks in June,” she said. “Then I went to Colorado Springs where I wrote a report, made a whole drawing set and sent it all to the ministry.”DiPippa considers her time in Africa as beneficial in two ways. “The biggest thing is learning to design in a different cultural setting. I was working with Indian and Ugandan architects,” she said.“The whole experience of going to Africa challenged my perspective on religion in general,” she said. “It was stretching my world view seeing how people live out there and faith in different cultures,” said DiPippa, who grew up attending St. Fidelis Roman Catholic Church.After finishing her drawings at EMI headquarters, she returned to Butler County. She's currently bunking in a camper at the farm show grounds.“We've been coming here since I was 8,” she said. “My family has been coming here since before I was born.”But come Aug. 20, she'll be leaving again to spend her fall semester abroad, studying architecture at the Pantheon Institute in Rome.“I've been studying Italian for three years,” she said in preparation.“I'm on a five-year program, so I don't actually graduate until 2020,” she said.
