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Project Summary | Project Information |
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St. Joseph's House of Hospitality is a Catholic Worker community in downtown Rochester. It operates upon the principles of the Catholic Worker movement, which are found in the writings of the movement's founders, Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin. "Catholic Worker communities remain committed to nonviolence, voluntary poverty, prayer, and hospitality for the homeless, exiled, hungry, and forsaken." [1] St. Joseph's House serves free lunches seven days a week to 80-100 people and offers shelter for 20 homeless men during the winter months, among other services. However, the House is not optimized for the services it provides. Only the first floor of the facility can be used for serving lunch and providing winter shelter to a general population, so the furniture in the dining and hospitality rooms must undergo a complete changeover twice daily. The mattresses upon which shelter guests sleep are removed from the shelter room and lifted to an elevated storage location every morning, then dropped from their storage location and carried to the shelter room each night. This is an arduous task for the guests and shelter staff, and causes the mattresses to wear out rapidly. The P17431 members are teaming up with Autodesk, Inc. to develop a new solution for St. Joseph's shelter operation. The goals of this project are to develop a sleeping arrangement which is space-efficient, more hospitable for guests, more sanitary than previous solutions, easier to set up and store, durable, and repairable, and to develop a personal belongings storage system which is organized and provides efficient access to guests' belongings. Autodesk is providing financial support to the team as well as training in its Fusion 360(TM) cloud-based computer-aided design software. A single-page summary of the project can be found here. Detailed background information on the project can be found in the Project Readiness Package and on the problem definition page. |
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Team Members

P17431 team members. From left: Sharon Im (industrial engineering), Alice Komrowski (industrial design), Ezra Weinstein (mechanical engineering), Ken Postel (industrial engineering), Connor Pierce (mechanical engineering).
Member | Role | Contact |
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Sharon Im |
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ssi5709@rit.edu |
Kenneth Postel |
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kep8296@rit.edu |
Ezra Weinstein |
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elw9333@rit.edu |
Alice Komrowski |
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alk9209@rit.edu |
Connor Pierce |
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cdp8962@rit.edu |
Descriptions of the specific expectations for each role can be found at Team Member Roles Definition.
Acknowledgements
- A special thanks is due to Autodesk, Inc. for training the team in the use of their Fusion 360(TM) software and for their sponsorship of this project.
- Thanks to the faculty of the Kate Gleason College of
Engineering and the Industrial Design department for
their assistance on this project. The team would
especially like to recognize:
- Sarah Brownell
- Dan Harel
References
- ↑ The Catholic Worker Movement, http://www.catholicworker.org
The Autodesk logo and Fusion 360 logo are registered trademarks of Autodesk, Inc.