Volume 4, Number 10, July, 2008
Welcome to Ahoya! Engineers - Marquette University's College of Engineering e-Newsletter for alumae, alumni, students and their families, faculty, staff, and MU friends. We want you to know what’s happening in your College of Engineering. This newsletter will be published periodically to share our accomplishments, milestones and activities.
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Transformational Program. Imagine the opportunity to get a sneak peak at being an engineer and thinking like an engineer before you begin your engineering education - to experience firsthand some of the excitement, challenge and learning of an engineering design project; to work with junior and senior engineering students, high school STEM teachers, engineering faculty and industry engineers on a design project related to clean drinking water in villages in Tanzania; to begin to get a feel for the impact that an engineer can have in the world. Pretty interesting and exciting, right?
This is exactly what 125 incoming engineering freshmen did during the Transformational Design for the Developing World Program, June 17-19th here in your College of Engineering. All incoming freshmen engineering students were invited to the College for this intensive “deep dive” design program for the developing world. Students were housed in Straz Towers residence hall. Their days were filled with informative and inspirational speakers; an intensive short course on the engineering design process; working on a team with their fellow freshmen engineering students, current engineering students, faculty and industry mentors on a design project; and finally a presentation of the team design. A trip to a Milwaukee Brewers’ game and other social activities rounded out the program.
Access, transportation and storage of clean drinking water in villages in Tanzania are monumental and complex problems with an enormous impact on the daily life of people in the region. Information on Tanzania, the problems related to safe drinking water and current solutions to the problem were presented. The challenge to the design teams was to choose one aspect of the problem: access, transportation or storage and work to develop an effective, cost-conscious, sustainable solution.
Woman draws drinking water from
traditional well in rural Tanzania
Safe Water for Dignity and Life (SWDL) is a non-governmental organization (NGO) on the ground in Tanzania that works to bring safe drinking water to 20 villages in and around the city of Morogoro, Tanzania. SWDL provided information to the program participants on life in Tanzania and their solutions to the problems of providing safe drinking water. The student teams had daily video conferences via the Internet with the members of SWDL. MU students asked questions and discussed their proposed solutions. SWDL provided information and feedback. It was an amazing opportunity for everyone to meet people and learn about life on the other side of the world. These information exchanges were vital to the many creative and innovation solutions that were proposed.
SWDL ring well project provides safe drinking water
Lukonde, Tanzania
The generosity of corporate sponsors made it possible for the COE to offer the entire program to the incoming freshmen students at no charge. Dr. Kevin Craig, Greenheck Chair in Engineering Design, and Jessica Bulgrin, carried out the program with the help of COE students and faculty, STEM teachers from local high schools and volunteer engineers from industry. The goal was to use this intensive design experience to jumpstart the engineering education of our incoming freshmen students – to start them on the road to become engineers. We look forward to building on the success of this first Transformational Design Program during their time here at Marquette.
Lead Picture: Student team members present their design project at Transformational Design Program.
Assuming New Role. Mr. Chris Perez has been named the Assistant Dean of Academic Affairs for your College, effective July 1st. Serving as the Computer Systems Manger since 1999, Chris assumed his new position after Dr. Barbara Silver-Thorn, former Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, decided to return to teaching and research in the Department of Biomedical Engineering.
Arriving at Marquette from Guam in 1988, Chris received his B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from Marquette in 1992, followed by a Master’s degree in 1996. He then earned an MBA degree in 2003 and is currently pursuing a Juris Doctorate degree with a concentration in Intellectual Property on a part time bases. In his “free” time, Chris enjoys bird watching and wildlife rehabilitation and is a big fan of audio books.
In his new role in Academic Affairs, Chris is responsible for supervision of Engineering undergraduate and graduate programs, student records, registration and advising, new student admissions, transfer students and articulation agreements.
Mr. Chris Perez
Alums - Remember to Register for Reunion Weekend! Whether you are celebrating your reunion year or not, we invite you and your families to the College of Engineering’s Centennial Celebration in conjunction with Marquette’s long-standing tradition of Reunion Weekend. This celebration will reflect on the history of Alpha Omega Epsilon sorority and Sigma Phi Delta and Triangle fraternities while looking forward to the next 100 years for the College of Engineering and the Discovery Learning Complex. It’s a great occasion to create new memories as you reconnect with friends from the past, catch up on what has been happening on campus and celebrate where your lives have taken you since joining the proud ranks of MU alumni.
Events have been planned from Friday, July 25, through Sunday, July 27. Feel free to participate in any or all of the activities, tours, dinners, etc. It’s important, however, that you register for the activities in which you’re interested. Click here to view the calendar of events and to register.
COE Highlighted in the Press. Your College of Engineering continues to receive extensive media coverage. A front page article in the business section of the Sunday Milwaukee Journal Sentinel focused on Opus Dean Stan Jaskolski’s vision for the college, including a new facility, endowed faculty chairs and increased student scholarships. Click here for the complete article.
This was followed by an editorial in the paper acknowledging the progress being made by your College.
The five-day summer academy “Engineering for Young Women” was also featured in an article focusing on the need for more young women to pursue an education in engineering. This particular article is being reprinted by media across the country.
"Engineering for Young Women" participant Zaira Guerrero
displays her pasta bridge project
Writers' Boot Camp. During the week of June 2, five engineering doctoral degree students - Anne Schauer (Civil), Prateek Grover (Biomedical), Yao Ren, Steve Vitullo, and Jennifer Black (Electrical and Computer) - and Drs. Mike Johnson and George Corliss (Associate Professor and Professor respectively in Electrical & Computer Engineering) were locked into the Straz Tower residence hall and the Raynor Library for a "Dissertation Writers' Boot Camp.” They were joined by 14 other doctoral degree students from Marquette and two faculty members from the English department.
For the students, it was an opportunity to make great progress writing their dissertations, free from the normal interruptions of the day. Prateek in fact produced initial drafts of THREE journal articles! For your faculty, it was a challenge to assist students in disciplines from English and Theology to Counseling and Education, as well as their more familiar Engineering turf.
We all know that good engineers are good writers. Do you have a favorite story of writing (or speaking) that saved your project/job? Send your story to Dr. Corliss.
Some of the Boot Camp crew
High Performance Computing at Marquette. Many faculty members in the College of Engineering are using high performance computing (HPC) to advance their research. HPC is combining many computers together in different ways to perform large computational tasks. These large compute jobs were once impractical but are now possible in a reasonable amount of time with HPC. The first MU HPC newsletter describing some of our research was published this spring and is available on-line.
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