|
News
and Views
NJIT
summer programs encourage technology studies
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| These
girls learned about chemistry first hand in NJIT's
Center for pre-college Programs summer workshops. . |
Newark,
NJ - This summer, the New Jersey Institute of Technology
(NJIT) ran several summer workshops for ele-mentary and
high school students. The workshops, sponsored by the Center
for Pre-college Programs (www.njit.edu/precollege) at NJIT,
were designed to encourage academically talented students,
including many girls and minorities, to pursue education
in science, math, engineering and technology. Instructors
for the program were NJIT engineering students, recent grads
and grad students.
One
workshop was the Pre-Engineering Program (PrEP), a four-week
project for students who have finished sixth grade. It offered
an introduction to various disciplines in engineering. The
Algebra Prep Program (APP), a four-week preparatory project
for post-seventh and post-eighth grade students, prepared
participants for success in Algebra I, a cornerstone of
the secondary school mathematics curriculum, and encouraged
them to choose advanced mathematics courses in high school.
The Introduction to Chemical Industry for Minorities in
Engineering (IChIME) program offered post-eighth grade minority
students a four-week look at the fields of chemistry and
chemical engineering. The Urban Civil Engineering Summer
Institute (UCESI), for post-ninth grade students, immersed
participants in the profession of civil engineering for
five weeks. The Engineering Physics Prep Program (EPPP),
a nontraditional approach to the study of physics for post-tenth
and eleventh-grade students, helps students succeed in high
school physics, the basis of the engineering curriculum.
EXplore Careers in Technology and Engineering (EXCITE) encouraged
post-seventh grade students to learn about careers in technology
and engineering.
Students
who started eight grade in fall 2003 and completed the EXCITE
or algebra programs could attend ten free prep sessions
for the Grade Eight Proficiency Assessment tests.
The
Center for Pre-college Programs was established to increase
access to scientific and technological fields among traditionally
underrepresented populations and to improve the teaching
of science and mathematics in secondary and elementary schools.
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Cal
State LA students win prize in bridge-building contest
Los
Angeles, CA - Cal State LA's student chapter
of Society for the Advancement of Material and Process Engineering
(SAMPE) won the third prize for its glass bridge model at
SAMPE's 2003 super lightweight composite bridge-building
contest in Long Beach, CA.
On
the SAMPE team were Romel Bravo, junior, from Glendale;
Marco Ibarra, junior, Los Angeles; Patrick Doan, junior,
Chino Hills; Christina Mannino, postgrad, Arcadia; Estela
Donoso, junior, Chino; Andrei Tcharssov, senior, Los Angeles;
and Francisco Garcia, junior, Los Angeles. The faculty advisor
is Narendra Taly, professor of civil engineering at Cal
State LA.
The
object of the bridge-building contest is to design and build
a weight-efficient bridge using composite materials. Nominal
bridge dimensions were 24" long by 4" wide.
Teams competed in carbon bridge, glass bridge, boron bridge
and braid bridge categories. The most weight-efficient bridge
won. Teams were also required to submit a poster presentation
highlighting a material, process and/or design aspect of
their bridge.
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NASA
and Alabama A&M students collect soil moisture data
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| Collecting
soil samples in Georgia: two college students with SMEX03
co-investigator Dr Charles Laymon. |
Huntsville,
AL - Soil Moisture Experiments in 2003 (SMEX03), led
by Dr Thomas Jackson of the U.S. Department of Agriculture
(USDA), involved both NASA scientists and student and faculty
researchers.
The
Center for Hydrology, Soil Climatology, and Remote Sensing
(HSCaRS) of Alabama A&M University in Huntsville is
a NASA-sponsored Minority University Research Center that
promotes minority and women student involvement in earth
science research. The project is a collaboration among HSCaRS,
NASA, the USDA's Agricultural Research Service, the
Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation and several
other academic institutions across the United States.
The
project's field operations, which began in Huntsville
in June, gathered data from Alabama, Georgia and Oklahoma
and finished in Brazil in September.
The
project aims to validate moisture measurements made by remote
sensing instruments like Aqua, a NASA satellite launched
in May 2002. NASA research aircraft also provided data,
and teams of scientists, college students and volunteers
took measurements of soil moisture and temperature, ground
cover type and plant height.
"By
gathering comprehensive soil moisture data from space, air
and land, we hope to better understand how these measurements
correlate and how this information can help farmers, weather
forecasters and others," said Dr Charles Laymon,
a hydrologist and remote sensing scientist with Universities
Space Research Association at the Global Hydrology and Climate
Center (GHCC) in Huntsville.
"The
students had an opportunity to get hands-on experience in
field research as well as laboratory analysis of soil samples,"
said Dr Tommy Coleman, director of HSCaRS at Alabama A&M.
"It also gave them perspective on how to approach
research tasks in an orderly fashion."
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Samantha
La Hée is first HDR Howard University engineering &
technology scholar
 |
| Samantha
La Hée, fourth from left, with HDR officers and
Howard University faculty members. |
Omaha,
NE - Samantha La Hée is the first recipient of
the HDR Engineering/Howard University engineering and technology
scholar award, offered through the HDR Howard University
fellowship program.
HDR(www.hdrinc.com)
is an architectural, engineering, planning and consulting
firm in Omaha.
The
program was created to support graduate students through
two years in the Howard department of civil engineering,
and to give them opportunities for real-world experience
in the field of water and wastewater treatment.
La
Hée got her BSCE at Howard in 2003, and started her
grad studies this fall in water and wastewater treatment,
specializing in membrane technology research and applications.
Under the fellowship program, she will be a research assistant
on HDR projects involving membrane technology, and will
intern at an HDR office.
Membrane
technology has been used for many years in the beverage,
pharmaceutical and electronics industries to purify small
quantities of water. Its use for large-volume drinking water
is more recent. "We're seeing strong demand
from water systems clients around the country, and it's
critical that HDR has a well-educated workforce. Howard
University is in the forefront of providing education in
this emerging discipline, and we're very pleased
to offer this fellowship," said George Little, president
of HDR Engineering.
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MentorNet
receives AT&T grant, improves programs
San
Jose, CA - MentorNet, the six-year-old online mentoring
network, is rolling out several enhancements to its program.
New this academic year is an academic career e-mentoring
program for grad and postdoc scholars interested in faculty
careers. Application deadlines for students and volunteer
mentors have been eliminated, and retired and unemployed
professionals as well as faculty members are invited to
join the ranks of potential mentors.
In
April, Mentornet announced a $100,000 grant from AT&T.
In
the last five years, MentorNet has connected nearly 20,000
professionals and students in higher education in one-on-one
online mentoring relationships. In addition to its relationship
with AT&T, the group has ties to major colleges and
universities, as well as other corporate giants like IBM,
Intel and Microsoft.
"We
believe these enhancements will help our mission of ensuring
that more women are represented in scientific and engineering
professions," says Carol B. Muller, MentorNet's
founder, president and CEO.
Most
mentors spend only an average of twenty minutes a week corresponding
with their mentees. Interested mentors can sign up now at
www.mentornet.net.
MentorNet
won the U.S. presidential award for excellence in science,
math and engineering mentoring in 2001.
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James
E. West, Bell Labs inventor, joins Johns Hopkins
 |
| James
E. West: A prof at Johns Hopkins. |
Laurel,
MD - James E. West, co-inventor of the electret microphone
used in most telephones, tape recorders and other devices,
joined the faculty of the Whiting School of Engineering
at Johns Hopkins University last fall. He is serving as
a research professor in the department of electrical and
computer engineering.
When
West retired after more than forty years as a researcher
at Bell Labs, he decided to look into the academic life.
"I'd had a great life in research,"
he says. "So I set up interviews with ten universities
and discovered that Johns Hopkins is a lot like Bell Labs.
The doors were always open and we were free to collaborate
with researchers in other disciplines."
West
looks forward to engaging in joint research with faculty
members in areas like ME, materials science and biomedical
engineering. He also plans research to improve teleconferencing
technology by transmitting stereophonic sound over the Internet.
"I
like the fact that I won't be locked into one small
niche here. I want to be in an environment that allows 360
degrees of vision," he says with pleasure.
West
was born in Prince Edward County, VA. He studied physics
at Temple University, despite his father's warnings
that he would never find a job in the field. "Dad
said I was taking the long road toward working at the post
office," he recalls with amusement.
He
began working as an intern at Bell Labs during summer breaks
and joined full time in 1957. In 1962, West and his colleague
Gerhard Sessler patented the electret microphone; some 90
percent of all mics produced today are based on the principles
they developed.
West
has more than 200 U.S. and foreign patents and has authored
or contributed to more than 100 technical papers and several
books on acoustics, solid-state physics and materials science.
His
professional honors include election to the National Academy
of Engineering and induction into the National Inventors
Hall of Fame. He is a Fellow of the IEEE. He is also past-president,
as well as a silver medalist, of the Acoustical Society
of America. He has received a Golden Torch award from NSBE
and an honorary doctor of science degree from the New Jersey
Institute of Technology.
West
is also active in programs aimed at encouraging more minorities
and women to enter the fields of science, technology and
engineering. At Johns Hopkins he plans to help recruit more
minority and women faculty members and students and will
mentor undergraduate engineering students.
Time
to slow down? Not for Professor West. "My hobby is
my work," he says. "I have the best of both
worlds because I love what I do."
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Tech
students win Ford diversity scholarships
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| Ford
dealer John Shelton, left, gives a big check to Pablo
Antonio Rodriguez. |
Detroit,
MI - Ford Motor Co's new "Economic empowerment
through entrepreneurship" program recently awarded
twenty scholarships.
From
North Carolina A&T State University, recipient Nicolaus
Rhenwrick is a junior in ME and William Johnson is majoring
in EE. Pablo Antonio Rodriguez, Jr, from Texas A&M,
is majoring in communications.
Ford
has a long history of diversity and helping to develop minority
communities. In the 1920s, Henry Ford recruited Southern
blacks to work in his Detroit, MI factory, and paid them
the highest wage in the automotive industry. The company
also boasted the industry's first African American
executive, James Charles Price.
For
information on Ford minority programs, visit www.dd.ford.com.
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Native
American students join NASA scientists in North Pole exploration
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| Live
webcasts were broadcast from the North Pole via Internet
link terminal. |
Greenbelt,
MD - Sponsored by the Department of Defense through
various grants, a group of six Native American students
traveled to the North Pole. Their mission was to team with
NASA scientists to gather on-the-spot data about the nature
and thickness of moving ice floes near the Pole. The project
included measurements of the concentration of aerosols and
pollutants in the Arctic.
The
American Indian students are from the tribal-serving Bay
Mills Community College (Brimley, MI). Their project, called
Field Research Investigating Geophysical Interface Dynamics
(FRIGID) 2003, landed them on a sheet of sea ice for a week
this April. It included two live two-hour webcasts to share
their scientific adventure with college and high school
classrooms.
A
sixteen-foot antenna on a NASA tracking satellite relayed
the webcasts via a high-speed Internet connection from Ice
Station Borneo at the North Pole.
 |
| A
Russian An-74 comes in for a landing on a sheet of Polar
sea ice. |
The
purpose of the DoD grants is to inspire Native American
students to seek out careers in technology and science.
Their joint scientific adventure gave the Bay Mills students
a chance to perform hands-on field data collection in a
remote icy location in accordance with established scientific
procedures.
The
webcast audience included tribal and other colleges in the
U.S. and Norway. The work of the FRIGID 2003 team will provide
an extensive survey of a large area of sea ice, which will
be correlated with spot measurements by scientific buoys
that various scientific institutions are placing on the
same floe.
For
more information, explore http://aeronet.gsfc.nasa.gov.
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Fulbright
grant brings Afghan women teachers to Stevens for training
Hoboken,
NJ - Stevens Institute of Technology has received a
J. William Fulbright grant from the Bureau of Educational
and Cultural Exchange of the U.S. State Department. The
grant is financing an intensive summer training program
for ten women science and math instructors from universities
in Afghanistan.
The
program provides professional development in math and science
education and the use of technologies to support classroom
learning in Afghanistan's high schools. Mentoring
and leadership skills are also introduced, to help the women
serve as models and mentors for their young women students.
During
the years of Taliban rule in Afghanistan, women teachers
were barred and girls were denied the opportunity to learn.
Women and girls have now returned to classrooms throughout
Afghanistan, eager to make up for lost time. The Stevens
program is intended to jump-start that process with particular
focus on preparing teacher-trainers of science and math
at the high school level.
The
program is a joint project of two education R&D centers
at Stevens, the Center for Improved Engineering and Science
Education (CIESE) and the Lore-El Center for Women in Engineering
and Science. Besides academic activities, CIESE and Lore-El
designed a series of discussions, cultural events and opportunities
for the women to interact with their American counterparts
at Stevens and in the larger community.
Two
not-for-profit organizations that are already active in
Afghanistan are providing significant support for this program.
Schools Online (Redwood Shores, CA) is donating laptop computers
and software for use by the participants in Afghanistan,
and Relief International (Los Angeles, CA) is collaborating
on coordination and implementation of program activities
in Afghanistan.
Sponsors
hope this project will be the first stage in an ongoing
effort by Stevens Institute of Technology to support education
in Afghanistan. Stevens has a long record of working to
promote education in Afghanistan. For more information about
CIESE, visit www.k12science.org; for more about the Lore-El
center and its program try http://attila.stevens-tech.edu/lore-el.
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ExxonMobil,
SWE and SECME co-host a roundtable
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| On
the panel, from left, Dr Yvonne Freeman, exec director
of SECME, Jacqueline Thomas, chair of the National Press
Foundation (moderator), Betty Shanahan, exec director
and CEO of SWE, and representative Eddie Bernice Johnson
of Texas. |
Irving,
TX - This spring, the ExxonMobil Foundation, the Society
of Women Engineers (SWE) and SECME (formerly the Southeastern
Consortium of Minority Engineers) co-hosted a roundtable
discussion. "Advancing women and minorities in science
and engineering - What remains to be done?" was
held in Washington, DC.
The
forum was moderated by Jacqueline Thomas, chair of the National
Press Foundation. It featured a panel of U.S. government
officials and members of organizations that promote educational
excellence for women and minorities in science and engineering.
ExxonMobil also announced its continuing support of SECME
and SWE initiatives, including three-year grants to each.
Ed
Ahnert, president of the ExxonMobil Foundation, notes that
African Americans, Hispanics and Native Americans continue
to be underrepresented in technical fields. "As a
company dedicated to the advancement of these subjects,
ExxonMobil supports programs that have positively influenced
thousands of students and teachers nationwide," he
says.
Panelists
included U.S. Representatives Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX)
and Ruben Hinojosa (D-TX); Dr Yvonne Freeman, executive
director of SECME; and Betty Shanahan, executive director
and CEO of SWE.
At
the roundtable, participants addressed the general ignorance
in the U.S. about what an engineer does; the importance
of technical training for teachers; the need to grow technical
talent domestically, particularly among women and minorities
and the importance of role models for women and minorities.
An
NSF representative encouraged women and minorities to apply
for special funding; special interest groups asked their
representatives for support and networking opportunities
abounded at the forum. Many attendees stayed behind to network
long after the roundtable discussion was completed.
ExxonMobil
Foundation's three-year grants help underwrite SECME's
Summer Institute, Leadership Academy and state scholarships
awarded each year to seventeen graduating seniors.
The
latest grant to SWE will support the society's "Girls
Do Science, Engineering and Technology" program,
which involves K-12 teachers, and will help develop female-oriented
technical curricula. The ExxonMobil Foundation is SWE's
largest corporate donor for outreach programs. It has provided
more than $1 million in contribution commitments since 1998.
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Inroads
honors Northrop Grumman
Herndon,
VA - Inroads' Greater Baltimore/Washington affiliate
has named Northrop Grumman Corp (Los Angeles, CA) this year's
recipient of the Inroads Corporate Plus Award. The award
goes to the company judged by a number of factors to have
the greatest commitment to the Inroads mission of training
and developing talented, ethnically diverse students for
corporate and community leadership. Many Inroads students
study engineering or IT.
"Attracting
interns from a broad range of backgrounds goes hand-in-hand
with Northrop Grumman's commitment to diversity,"
says Jeffrey Shuman, VP, HR and admin for Northrop Grumman
IT. "Our involvement with Inroads helps us build
our future workforce."
Shuman
himself was honored with the Inroads Chair Award for helping
the local affiliate achieve its mission.
Christopher
Chen, an intern with Northrop Grumman IT, received an Inroads
intern of the year award. "I feel privileged to have
gone through the Inroads experience and would recommend
it to anyone," he says.
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ASCE
elects Galloway first woman president
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| Patricia
Galloway: "I don't view my election as
a milestone but a validation." |
Reston,
VA - Patricia D. Galloway, PE, has been elected the
first woman president of the 150-year-old American Society
of Civil Engineers (www.asce.org). "It seems implausible
that it took so long for a woman to be elected president
of ASCE, considering that women have long been breaking
barriers and making astounding contributions to the engineering
profession," says Galloway.
"I
don't view my election as a milestone, but instead
a validation on how far we have come in accepting people
for their abilities and skills."
Galloway
brings to six the number of women who have headed major
engineering societies. The other five are LeEarl Bryant,
2002 president of IEEE-USA (www.ieeeusa.org), the U.S. arm
of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers;
Dianne Dorland, 2003 president of the American Institute
of Chemical Engineers (www.aiche.org); Teresa A. Helmlinger,
PE, the first woman president of the National Society of
Professional Engineers, who took office in July 2003; and
Susan H. Skemp, the 2002-03 president of the American Society
of Mechanical Engineers International (www.asme.org) and
its first woman officer in 125 years.
The
Society of Women Engineers (www.swe.org), of course, has
had woman presidents since its inception. Alma Martinez
Fallon is the current president.
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