Currents Magazine Is Published Twice a Year by the Michigan State University Currentscurrentscollege of Engineering for Alumni, Faculty, Staff, Students, and Friends
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING MAGAZINE MAGAZINE CURRENTSCURRENTSVolume 1, Number 1 Spring/Summer 2001 Prof’s Recent Notoriety Benefits Students MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING MAGAZINE MAGAZINE Volume 1, Number 1 Spring/Summer 2001 Currents Magazine is published twice a year by the Michigan State University CURRENTSCURRENTSCollege of Engineering for alumni, faculty, staff, students, and friends. Contents 9 E-WEEK POETRY CONTEST 10 PROF’S RECENT NOTORIETY BENEFITS STUDENTS 20 COMMENCEMENT 2001 21 RICHARD H. BROWN NAMED CLAUD R. ERICKSON DISTINGUISHED ALUMNUS 22 GIRL SCOUTS EARN WATER WONDERS BADGES Janie M. Fouke, Dean Editor: Laura Luptowski Photography: Craig Gunn, Walter Kuhn, Laura Luptowski, Cathy McGowen, Ron McQueeney, and Harley J. Seeley Design: Blue Pencil Creative Group Printing: Lawson Printers, Inc. We welcome your comments and suggestions. Please direct all correspondence to Editor, Currents Magazine, In Every Issue 3412 Engineering Building, MSU, East Lansing, MI 48824. 2 FROM THE DEAN Telephone: (517) 432-1303 Fax: (517) 355-2288 3 DEPARTMENT NEWS & RESEARCH E-mail: [email protected] 14 FACULTY, STAFF, & STUDENT AWARDS Copyright © 2001 Michigan State University 18 DEVELOPMENT College of Engineering. Seeley Harley J. Photo by All rights reserved. ABOUT THE COVER: Robert Hubbard, 24 CLASS NOTES & OBITUARIES professor of materials science and mechanics, holds the patent for HANS®, MSU is an affirmative-action, a head and neck support device for race equal-opportunity institution. car drivers. Michigan State University College of Engineering 1 From the Dean Many new and exciting things are happening in the College of Engineering. First, welcome to the premier issue of our new Currents Magazine. In the past, Currents was published twice a year as a two-color, 16-page newsletter. Beginning with this issue, Volume 1, Number 1, Spring/Summer 2001, we are going to a four-color magazine format. You will notice more photos and shorter stories; this will enable us to cover more events and bring you a wider variety of information. In this premier issue, you will read about many “firsts.” Thanks to a design team of four mechanical engineering students, eighth-grader Korbi Bare, for the first time, is able to join her friends when they ride their bikes. Student teams in the Department of Agricultural Engineering continue to win first place honors in international design competitions. During Engineering Week in February, for the first time, the college sponsored the MSU Engineering Poetry Contest. We discovered what we knew all along—engineers can write! The College of Engineering recently received the largest gift in the history of MSU. Janie M. Fouke Mechanical Dynamics, Inc., an engineering software development company headquartered in Ann Arbor, has donated virtual prototyping software with a commercial value of $60.7 million—their largest gift ever—to be integrated into our mechanical engineering courses beginning this fall. Our cover story features Bob Hubbard, who has patented the HANS®—a head and neck support device used by race car drivers. You may have seen the extensive national news coverage that he received this year. What an exciting time to be in engineering! As you will see in these pages, there are more and more opportunities for our students, our faculty, and our staff to get involved in a hands-on way. Not only will you find examples of clever designs and innovative approaches to problem solving, you will find that we are dedicated to improving our world and the quality of life for the people who inhabit it. I’m certain that as you read these stories, you will feel as proud as I do about what we’re accomplishing. Currents Magazine will be published twice a year for alumni, faculty, staff, students, and friends of the College of Engineering to keep you up to date on all the latest happenings. I hope you enjoy reading this first issue of the new magazine. And as always, we welcome your comments and suggestions. Janie M. Fouke Dean 2 CURRENTS MAGAZINE Spring/Summer 2001 Department News & Research A winning team in the 11th Annual International ENGINEERING AGRICULTURAL Environmental Design Contest, from left to right: Nichole Ritchie, Maria Suparno, Megan Laird, Kathryn Streams, and Molly O’Flaherty. They competed in Las Cruces, New Mexico, in April 2001. and vegetables have been subjected to fecal contamination. The team developed a detection method in which fecal contamination is revealed by a chemiluminescent reagent that emits light only in the presence of beta-galactosidase, an enzyme peculiar to coliform bacteria. Concentrations as low as 10 cfu per ml can be detected in about seven hours. The FDA’s current method requires 24 hours. This same team had placed second in the MSU University Undergraduate Research and Arts Forum with their presentation earlier in the month. According to Evangelyn Alocilja, assistant professor in the Department of Agricultural Engineering and the WERC competition team advisor, “Developing rapid methods for detecting human pathogens of animal origin is critical for food and environmental safety, consumer protection and health, and sustainability of agriculture and food industries.” In another competition, sponsored by the American Society of Agricultural Engineers (ASAE), an MSU team won first place out of Biosystems 27 entries for a drain tile laying system. Kris Wardin and John Phillips designed, built, and field tested an Estate-Scale Tiling System. Engineering Students Their project is unique in that a lot of other designs stop at the drawing and computer Winners in Seeking Sustainable Solutions animation stages; Wardin and Phillips carried theirs out to the actual testing phase. The iosystems Engineering students are but foreign farms may use sewage sludge on objective of their system, which is designed Bseeking sustainable solutions. And they their fields. Since it is impossible for U.S. for use on public golf courses in Michigan, is are coming up with winning ideas. agencies to inspect foreign farms’ fertilizer to reduce the amount of time and labor Several students in the Department of practices, there is concern over the safety of involved in the tile-laying process. Optimal Agricultural Engineering have won design imported fruits and vegetables. drainage allows players to use the course competitions during the past few months. The students developed a method using soon after a rainfall, resulting in a more Last spring, a team of six students chemiluminescence to reveal the presence of profitable business. traveled to Las Cruces, New Mexico, and Salmonella (a human pathogen) at won first place in the 10th Annual concentrations of 10 colony forming units International Environmental Design Contest (cfu) per ml or greater. The test requires sponsored by WERC: A Consortium for only six hours to complete, as opposed to Environmental Education and Technology the FDA’s current method, which requires Development. It was the first time ever that 72 hours. This same team garnered first place Biosystems Engineering had a team in the in the MSU University Undergraduate competition. Jennifer Davis, Keith Depp, Research and Arts Forum last year. Patricia Huddas, Jamie McConville, April This year’s team, Megan Laird, Molly Pasutti, and Sharon Vennix took first place in O’Flaherty, Nichole Ritchie, Kathryn the Task 6 category of the competition— Streams, and Maria Suparno, also took a Pathogen Detection on Fresh Fruits and first place in April in WERC’s 11th Annual Vegetables. WERC awards a cash prize and International Environmental Design Contest trophy to the first place team in each task. in Las Cruces, New Mexico. The team’s Using raw sewage for soil amendment is task was to demonstrate a novel process not allowed in the U.S. agricultural industry, that can rapidly determine whether fruits Michigan State University College of Engineering 3 Department News & Research “The folks in that program are going to have a monumental head start,” notes Felder. The Writing’s Today’s technology is certainly helping to move teaching and training in these new directions. Distance learning used to mean pointing a on the Wall—Or Not camera at someone, videotaping the lecture, “ riting on the wall” is not the best Group work in the classroom can prepare and putting it on the Web. But if sitting in Wway to teach today’s engineering students for that. Just as in real-world jobs, a classroom watching someone write on a students, according to Richard M. Felder, when students are placed in a group situation wall is ineffective, watching a video of Hoechst Celanese Professor Emeritus of in the classroom, they not only have to someone writing on a wall is even less Chemical Engineering at North Carolina complete the task at hand, they have to figure effective, Felder says. State University. out how to work with the other people and “The Murky Crystal Ball: Current Issues personalities involved. and Future Directions in Engineering The traditional way of structuring CHEMICAL ENGINEERING Education” was the title of Felder’s engineering curricula has been to: presentation at the Department of Chemical 1. teach the basics (science, math, Engineering’s Third Johansen-Crosby chemistry, physics); Lecture in April. 2. go into applications later; and 3. end with the capstone design project in the senior year (where everything comes together). But many students are practically versus theoretically oriented, Felder says. “They have trouble understanding things that they can’t anchor clearly to the real world. When they don’t get to see the real world until their Seeley Harley J. Photo by senior year, it doesn’t work particularly well.” Faculty and students attend the Johansen-Crosby Lecture. Using nontraditional methods to train graduate students and new faculty members Today’s definition of distance learning is just as important as teaching undergraduate includes lectures supplemented with Web- students. In 90 percent of the cases, there is a based, interactive modules.