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Third-year electrical engineering student Mike Bruce (right) works on computer hardware with Maka

Computers are permanent fixtures in the niches – cubicles, dorm rooms – of everyday life. Social networks, workplace operations, even individual identities have gone to the wires.

But few of the computer-dependent even understand what makes the hardware tick or the mouse click.

Students at Dorsey High School in the Los Angeles Unified School District had the opportunity to learn just that through an after-school program coordinated by the UCLA chapter of Engineers Without Borders.

Over several weeks, a group of high school students learned to identify the parts that make a running computer, take them apart, put them together, and ultimately take it home.

“Engineers Without Borders usually does international humanitarian work situated in the ideas of sustainability and environmental consciousness,” said Christine Lee, fifth-year chemical engineering student in the Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

While brainstorming with a friend on ways to locally spread the message of sustainability, Lee came up with the idea of recycling computer parts into the hands of high school students.

“You’re reducing waste and you’re recycling things, but at the same time you can still use these perfectly functioning computers,” Lee said.

With the groundwork laid and the materials collected, a workshop was held at the beginning of the quarter to teach interested UCLA students how to build a computer.

A surprising number of engineering students, herself included, did not know the basics of computer parts, Lee said.

When the members of Project BOOTUP began making weekly trips to Dorsey High School, the vocabulary and technical details they had learned were reinforced through teaching.

“The first step was just to open it up and not be intimidated by all the wires and things sticking out,” Lee said.

“Once I got past that and once the high school students started asking me a lot more questions about what things were, that helped me learn at the same time,” she added.

Through the weekly visits to Dorsey, the UCLA students taught their high school counterparts the vocabulary of hardware and software, motherboards, and drivers.

Before BOOTUP’s involvement, the school’s computer lab contained machines that were obsolete and dysfunctional. The project helped provide the school with new computers from a seemingly endless supply provided by personal, corporate and several university departments.

“We hope to make it a learning process so they could do it later on if they had to,” said Henry Pai, a fourth-year electrical engineering student.

“Giving them some technology and helping them understand some basic parts of it can cause some intrigue, and they might want to learn more,” Pai said.

The education was dualistic, as the engineering students were exposed to an educational environment so lacking in technology. Michael Bruce, a third-year electrical engineering student, considers the technical skills he gained secondary to the experience of gaining perspective.

“I’ve learned a lot about people from different backgrounds, and people growing up with different experiences,” Bruce said. “These kids don’t have laptops. These computers that we’ve helped them put together and take home would be taken for granted by a lot of other kids, but it means so much to them.”

The project is expected to continue through the summer, and hopefully in the years to come.

“From the engineering standpoint you’re absorbed into school without any direct contact with how you can help other people with their education,” Pai said.

In its short existence thus far, Project BOOTUP has upheld the outreach and sustainability efforts that distinguish Engineers Without Borders.

“Most of the engineering student groups are very technical, and that’s cool because they apply the things they learn in the classroom,” Lee said. “But if you can bring it out in the community, it’s exposure for engineering students and for the profession and exposure for people in the community just to know what we’re doing.”