Great teachers are at the heart of every great university. From college professors to kindergarten teachers, one thing all educators have in common is a sense of the impact they can have on the life of a child - or a college student, for that matter. Whether they teach math, engineering or art history, Missouri S&T teachers do so with dedication and determination, sharing life lessons along the way.
My first interaction with Ronald Bieniek occurred in the fall of 1996, a few days after my first Physics 23 exam. I got a “D” on the test and I was very upset. After all, this was the first D I had ever gotten on an exam. It wasn’t supposed to happen because I had been a top high-school student, I was good at physics (or so I thought), and I had studied the night before the exam. I explained to Professor Bieniek that clearly there must have been something wrong with his test.
When I enrolled in college there were certain things I expected and certain things I conceded. I expected to have to work hard to still be enrolled when Greek Week and St. Pat’s came around, and that if I wasn’t successful at this balancing act I would be reduced to something less than I aspired to be.
Throughout my time at Missouri S&T, Dr. Chris Ramsay, MetE’83, MS MetE’85, continually challenged me and fellow members of Pi Kappa Alpha to be better men, and to become an integral part of the university and the Rolla community. He is a central part of the continued success of Missouri S&T’s PiKA chapter. He encourages the chapter to think strategically, to develop a road map, and to manage by tracking progress to milestones. We all use these important lessons after graduation. Ramsay is a firm believer that the fraternity is a proving ground for the development of the leadership skills that are required for success in today’s global marketplace.
When I think about the teachers who made a difference in my life, Diana Ahmad is one that sticks out in my memory. She is the one who convinced me, and a great deal of other students, to pursue a history minor.
Probably the course that taught me things that have been most interesting to me over the years was Photography, taught by Ernesto Gutierrez, Engl’77. Ernie taught me, among other things, that using the smallest aperture behind my camera’s lens would give me the most accurate focus.
I never had a class with Jeff Cawlfield during my time at Missouri S&T. Of course, I knew him. He was the head of the department, he frequently attended Association of Engineering Geologists meetings, and he had a pretty good reputation as a teacher.
If helping a wandering undergraduate student find focus and, in the process, a career qualifies as an “impact,” then I would say that Daniel Stutts made a huge impact on my life.
When I came to the United States from South America for my master’s degree at Missouri S&T, I did not know anyone in the whole country, except my adviser, Francisca Oboh-Ikuenobe, and her family.
I would imagine that someone who never met Gary Patterson, ChE’60, PhD ChE’66, would be impressed by his intellect, humility and energy. He is a person who some people would call a go-getter, a driven, type A personality with integrity and passion. I never heard him utter a discouraging word, a complaint or a negative comment about anyone or anything. He seemed to accept whatever happened as a challenge to overcome or resolve. As you can see, he has several admirable qualities.
William Andrews was my favorite professor and, without a doubt, the most brilliant, perceptive and best teacher I have ever known - but he was also my very special friend. I struggled with addressing him as “Bill” (which after my graduation he insisted on) because of the utmost respect and admiration I carried for him. While he was most comfortable being referred to as “Bill,” to me it seemed too ordinary for such an extraordinary man.
It was the final exam in fluids class. I had studied hard and I was tired. I wore my Army fatigue jacket to classes that cool morning and, back in those days before most of us could afford the really good calculators, most of us had the old standard four-function calculators. I had a Commodore. It added, subtracted, multiplied and divided, and it had a “k” factor for repetitious multiplication, like in accounting, and that was it! It wasn’t the most useful calculator for a scientific class with integrals, “diffy q,” square roots, etc., but that’s all we had (other than the slide rule, of course, and I never did master that very well).
By anyone’s standards, Mariana Rodriguez, CE’80, is a trailblazer. After graduation, she returned to her native Peru to become a leader in the field of higher education, helping found two universities and two technical institutes in the country.
A Missouri S&T graduate in Istanbul (not Constantinople) is running one of the fastest growing retail outfits in the world.
Ozgur Tort, EMgt’96, is CEO of Migros Turk, a $4 billion (U.S. dollars) business based in Turkey. Tort started working for Migros, a grocery store chain, about 13 years ago. “This is actually my first and last employer,”he says.
If Darrin Talley had it to do all over again, he would have spent more time with people from other cultures during his college years.
It’s no secret that Canadian winters can be brutal. But at 8,000 feet below the Ontario surface, the temperature is a toasty 82 degrees year-round.
During a near-shore practice in rough seas, a United Kingdom Ministry of Defense naval frigate struck a rock and the hull was breached. The ship took on water and began to list heavily to one side. But because it was equipped with a special tank monitor, the ship’s crew was able to balance its ballast tanks long enough to beach the ship and keep it from sinking in deep seas.
Andrew Ryan, MS ME’87, insists, well aware of how strange it may sound, that his Spanish classes at S&T sculpted an unpredictable future for this Irish engineer.
To date, Ryan has lived in five countries, worked in 20, and visited more than 50. He is also fluent in eight different languages, but that wasn’t always the case.
The Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw once described England and America as “two countries separated by a common language.” Karen Bard, PetE’81, thinks Shaw’s saying also holds true for America and her current home, Australia.
In February, Sandra Magnus became the first person to study fire aboard the International Space Station.
For a long time, Yankee Stadium was famously known as “The house that Ruth built.” But as far as the Missouri S&T family is concerned, the new Yankee Stadium could technically be called “The house that Michael Lancey built.” Or at least the house he helped to build.
Darla Ellis begins her workday like many of us do - standing in front of an open closet, pondering what to wear. She takes the time to find the pair of shoes that will coordinate perfectly with her outfit. But her decision never involves pumps or flats. No, for Ellis the perfect shoes are Nikes, every time.
Doug Duchardt, ME’87, pictured above, right, is living life in the fast lane and there doesn’t seem to be any slowing him down.
Bob Elliott, MetE’64, was a successful engineer for more than 20 years, but his work as an amateur magician and memory expert, and his generosity to fellow magicians, is what makes him truly remarkable.
Missouri S&T has a lot of graduates who do things that might attract attention from the Discovery Channel show “Dirty Jobs.” Some of them toil under a hot sun in the oil fields. Some of them study muck from the bottom of rivers. A lot of them work in dirty underground mines. But Brandon Freeman, CE’08, might have the dirtiest occupation of all.
The flagpole might be in a different place, and the flag has a few more stars, but Old Glory is raised and lowered by ROTC cadets on the Missouri S&T campus today just as it was back in 1873, when MSM’s first company of cadets was formed.
The Battle of Cassino Pass, the first large-scale battle of World War II between the U.S. Army and the German Army, began on a miserably cold, rain-soaked Friday in February 1943.
As Germans advanced, Lt. Jerry Berry, a platoon leader in the 19th Engineer Regiment Combat, and his men - armed with dump trucks and engineering equipment - faced the daunting task of holding back the German forces, led by Gen. Erwin Rommel.
It’s T-minus zero, and as the main engine ignites, Lt. Col. Scott Peel’s mind begins to race. As commander of the range operations team at Vandenberg Air Force Base, he knows that now there’s no turning back.
Linda (Desilet) Smith, AE’88, was interested in planes back in high school. Her uncle, an Air Force pilot, impressed her, and she was thrilled by the aerobatics of the Thunderbirds air demonstration squadron.
Shooting a spy satellite out of the sky is the stuff of science fiction movies. For Andrew Jackson, petty officer second class in the U.S. Navy, it’s just another day at the office.
Courtney Buck, Econ’03, was just finishing his senior year at Missouri S&T when the United States invaded Iraq. After graduation, he started work at Missouri S&T public radio station KMST as marketing manager, but the thought of American soldiers fighting overseas weighed heavily on his mind.
An issue focused on Missouri S&T’s connection to the military wouldn’t be complete without a word from military historian John C. McManus, associate professor of history and political science. Missouri S&T Magazine staff sat down with McManus to ask a few questions.
The patrons at McDonald’s have noticed us. A few of them eventually come over to thank the two uniformed soldiers at our table for their service. What these civilians don’t realize is that a third soldier at our table, an older gentleman in plain clothes, is an honest-to-God general who started his service to the country during World War II.
This fall, Miner athletics is sporting a different image. The design highlights the university name and gives it an athletic feel, while paying tribute to our roots as the University of Missouri School of Mines and Metallurgy.
The Miners sent 13 swimmers to the national meet in March.
At 6 a.m., when most other students are still asleep, Miner swimmers are already in the pool. Their hard work in practice has paid off in a big way: Missouri S&T posted a national runner-up finish in March. Since 1997, the Miners have finished among the top 10 at the NCAA Division II Championships 11 times.
Countless Missouri S&T alumni say they are who they are today because of the lessons they learned through college sports. Many still feel a personal connection to their coaches, who shared as many life lessons as they did tactical ones. Missouri S&T Magazine asked a few of our alumni to share their thoughts on four campus legends.
By 2008, Beta Sig’s membership had grown to 46. Based on early recruitment numbers, Gross, who is now president of Beta Sig, expects at least a dozen new members in the fall.
When Lawrence George was growing up in New Orleans, he was curious about the fraternity antics of young college students in his community. “I used to see them on Canal Street sitting on blocks of ice,” George says. “And when I became a pledge, things that are now considered ‘hazing’ were accepted.”
On the afternoon of Saturday, Oct. 28, 1972, 12 young women gathered at Christ Episcopal Church in Rolla, Mo., dressed in white. The occasion was one of ceremony and celebration, marking the beginning of a new opportunity for the female student body at the male-dominated Missouri S&T campus.
If it’s all Greek to you, click here to learn more about fraternities and sororities at Missouri S&T.
Farouk El-Baz, MS GGph’61, PhD GGph’64, used remote sensing technology to help NASA officials determine where the Eagle would land in 1969. The producers of Star Trek: The Next Generation were so impressed by his work that they named a spacecraft, The El-Baz, after him.
As director of the Center for Remote Sensing at Boston University and a member of the National Academy of Engineering, El-Baz continues to be a man on a number of missions.
“I would compare my excitement about plug-in hybrid technology to where we were with the Internet in the 1980s,” says Mariesa Crow, the Fred W. Finley Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and director of the Energy Research and Development Center. “The utility industry should be going gung-ho about plug-in hybrids.”
Last summer’s collapse of the Interstate 35W bridge in Minneapolis served as a stark reminder that the nation’s infrastructure is aging, and was a dramatic example of the type of disaster researchers at Missouri S&T are working to prevent.
The housing market may be soft, but one neighborhood in Rolla is seeing a building boom. Okay, so it’s really just a little village on campus property with a current population of two. But this is a village of the future, and the site developers are thinking long-term.
Thanks to Chang-Soo Kim, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at Missouri S&T, people living with diabetes may one day have an alternative to the daily routine of pricking their fingers to monitor their blood sugar.
St. Patrick lived roughly 1,600 years ago and historians will tell you he wasn’t really Irish – he was probably Welsh. Legend has it that he was kidnapped as a teenager by pirates and taken to Ireland, where he was enslaved. He escaped and eventually became the patron saint of Ireland. (After becoming a Bishop, he went back to Ireland and ultimately died there.) He was never an engineer and there haven’t been snakes in Ireland since before the last ice age.
“I have nothing to do with it. You’ll have to ask Mary.” That was Sarah McCrae’s response in 1916 when a caller asked if her daughter would serve as the first Queen of Love and Beauty elected by the junior class at MSM. (Technically, the first queen, Helen Baysinger, the daughter of a Board of Curators member, was crowned in 1915, but had not been elected.)
Get on your green and join UMR for an event 100 years in the making at this year's Best Ever St. Pat's, starting Monday, March 3.
On Lance Haynes’ first day as an assistant professor of speech and media studies back in 1984, his colleagues took him to lunch in the old University Center-East cafeteria. As they walked across campus, Haynes noticed students walking around in green jackets, which seemed unusual in such warm weather.
Every year at dawn on this special day, a procession of figures wearing green jackets (some of them showing quite a bit of wear) makes its way toward Pine Street.
For more than four decades, students chosen to become knights of St. Patrick underwent a baptism into a pool of soupy, slimy concoction that came to be known as “Alice.”
Bob Fitzsimmons was a high school freshman when he started working part time for the Rolla Daily News in 1956.
The cover image of the Winter 2007 issue is a Photomosaic (R) of the shamrock that adorns the jacket worn for decades by St. Pat’s Committee members. It features 1,150 unique images of St. Pat’s through the years. The Photomosaic was created by artist Robert Silvers. See more of Silvers’ work at www.photomosaic.com.
Even in war time, UMR alumni will find a way to celebrate the Best Ever. For an article that appeared in
a 1991 issue of the magazine, MSM-UMR Alumnus staff interviewed Gene Boyt, ME’41, about his experiences meeting up with two MSM alumni as prisoners of war in the Philippines during World War II.
While stationed in Africa during World War II, Thomas W. Kelly Jr., MetE'40, wrote a will establishing an MSM scholarship fund with money he inherited from his uncle.
The UMR Magazine staff asked alumni to share their fondest memories of UMR"s grand tradition.
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Here are the 98 St. Pats that have been selected at MSM and UMR.
Here are the 91 women who have been named a Queen of Love and Beauty at MSM and UMR.
Honorary Knights of St. Patrick, chosen each year by the St. Pat’s Committee and the UMR chancellor, are chosen for the service they’ve performed for the campus, the Rolla community, the state of Missouri, the nation and/or the St. Pat’s tradition.
Jennifer Babb was introduced to science and technology at UMR in 2005 when she attended Summer Solutions Camp for girls who are freshmen and sophomores in high school. Babb then attended the Jackling Introduction to Engineering camp the following year. During one of those visits to campus, she heard about a new UMR camp that sounded intriguing. “A bunch of my friends were really jealous when they found out I was going to Explosives Camp this year,” says Babb, now 17, of St. Louis.
Finding shelter from the acid rain is the first order of business after crashing on Planet Zak. This is accomplished by taping plastic garbage bags to the edges of tables and hiding underneath. “The lights flash on and off and the teacher comes around with a spray bottle,” says Sophie Vojta, 10, of Rolla.
Gathered around the small stone furnace in Room 142 of McNutt Hall, a group of middle school girls watched in awe as Nathan Wyckoff, a graduate student in materials science and engineering at UMR, poured hot, yellow liquid glass into a ceramic mold to cool. While pouring the liquid, he explained to them that glass is formed at 1,050 degrees Celsius (1,922 degrees Fahrenheit), noting that brownies bake at only 350 degrees as a reference point.
Explosives Camp director Paul Worsey instructed one of the high school students to get ready to activate the firing unit, which was connected to the shot cable, which was connected to the detonator, which was connected to the detonating cord – which, finally, was connected to several cans filled with ether. After Worsey’s last warning of “Fire in the hole!” was sounded, a frighteningly loud boom erupted, accompanied by a huge ball of red fire and black smoke.
Ask any member of UMR’s Engineers Without Borders chapter why they devote so much time to the organization (time they could otherwise spend prepping for exams or relaxing with friends) and you’ll likely hear about their desire to help others. Diverse in majors and life experiences, the students are unified by their desire to bring safe drinking water and improved sanitation to the world's poorest countries. This year, more than 60 students traveled thousands of miles to establish sustainable solutions for residents in Bolivia, Guatemala and Honduras.
On Jan. 1, 2008, our university will become Missouri University of Science and Technology (Missouri S&T). Our new name will reflect this university’s mission as one of the nation’s leading technological research universities.
UMR capital campaign seeks to strengthen campus is key areas
If there is one common quality among UMR alumni and friends, it's loyalty.
UMR needs to attract quality students, to encourage diversity and to recruit students interested in studying biotechnology and other emerging fields. The scholarships established through the Advancing Excellence Campaign will create opportunities for future generations of Miners.
Endowed faculty positions attract top educators and researchers to UMR.
Meet the Advancing Excellence leadership team
National Chair
Gary Forsee, CE’72, chairman and CEO of Sprint Nextel Corp.
Forsee believes alumni can have an invaluable influence on UMR’s legacy of educational excellence. “As part of the campaign leadership team and as a member of the Board of Trustees, I believe the ability to help set an agenda for the university based on a wide range of inputs is a critical step in the campaign process. A lot of voices need to be heard and they will be. From that we can in some measure ensure that the future remains bright for this institution.”
On Thursday, April 19, UMR Chancellor John F. Carney III announced the launch of the largest capital campaign in the institution’s history. Titled “Advancing Excellence: The Campaign for the University of Missouri-Rolla,” the goal is to raise $200 million by June 2010 to achieve the university’s vision of becoming a top five technological research university. To date, the effort has raised more than $115 million for UMR students, programs, faculty and facilities.
As the Order of the Golden Shillelagh celebrates its 30th anniversary, it’s tempting to relive the past and reminisce about how individuals “picked up the shillelagh” to provide financial support for the university. After all, that group of concerned individuals, like a grain of sand to an oyster, supplied the foundation for what became a lustrous organization.
Assigning names to generations is nothing new. Look at the list below to see where you fit in.
The year was 1982. E.T. phoned home. Cable News Network, more familiar to most as CNN, was launched. Time magazine’s Man of the Year was, for the first time, given to a non-human: a computer. And the elders of the millennial generation were learning to crawl.
Spend a few moments on any college campus and you’ll come across members of this newest generation. Often described as collaborative, optimistic, open-minded, and achievement-oriented, these tech-savvy millennials have higher expectations (of themselves and others) than any generation before them, except perhaps the Silent Generation with which they share many of the same values.
Generation Xers’ lack optimism, Baby Boomers seek individual freedom, and members of the Silent Generation were cautious and, well, silent. Stereotypes were made to be broken. The UMR Magazine asked alumni during Homecoming to share thoughts about their generation. Here’s what they said.
View imageThe plan called for increasing fundraising, research and student recruitment efforts to help attain the goal. At the same time, Carney wanted to reduce the university’s deficit and flatten the administration to break down “silos” among the academic departments – moves that were also necessary to ensure the campus operates at peak efficiency.
Toomey Hall phases include demolition, construction and renovation
The old Mechanical Engineering Annex, built in 1902, is history. The demolition, which took several months, started last winter. Now, concrete has been poured on the vacant site and the steel beams of a brand new structure have risen.
In the fall of 2007, phase one of the creation of Toomey Hall will be nearing completion. The new structure, just north of the main Mechanical Engineering Building, will be a modern facility housing laboratories and space for student research. Most of the classrooms and office spaces will remain in the Mechanical Engineering Building, which is scheduled for an extensive renovation during the final phase of the project.
UMR is experiencing dramatic enrollment growth at a time when student interest in science, computing and engineering has fallen to an all-time low.
The official fall 2006 enrollment numbers show an increase for the sixth consecutive year. A total of 5,858 students are currently enrolled for the fall semester. That figure represents a 4.6 percent increase over last fall’s enrollment and a 27 percent growth over the 4,625 students attending in the fall 2000 semester.
One of the goals UMR Chancellor John F. Carney III set when he arrived last fall called for increasing research to help propel UMR into the ranks of the top technological universities in the nation. So far, the campus is right on track.
Public universities like UMR can no longer rely on as much state support as they have in the past. Fortunately, UMR raised more private money during the last fiscal year than in any other year of the university’s history.
The total amount of private funds raised in fiscal year 2006 exceeded $21 million, topping the $19.4 million raised in fiscal year 2005. These private donations will go a long way toward helping UMR maintain and grow its reputation as the state’s premier technological research institution.
If there were ever any doubts about UMR’s standing as a top technological research university, two major rankings during the past year should have put those doubts to rest.
First, UMR was named one of the nation’s 25 “most connected” campuses in a survey conducted by Forbes and The Princeton Review. That report, posted on the Forbes.com website last January, identified UMR among the universities “closest to the cutting edge” of technological innovation.
Last June, UMR made CIO magazine’s 2006 “CIO 100” list for its unified web presence. The annual list highlights businesses, universities and other organizations the magazine sees as the most tech-innovative.
All of this is happening in one of the nation’s best small towns, according to a recent report from BizJournals.com. Rolla is 13th on the BizJournal list of “America’s Dream Towns,” and second in the Midwest region.
For 42 years, this campus has been known as the University of Missouri-Rolla, or UMR. But does that name really reflect the university’s true identity?
That’s one of the questions UMR alumni, students, faculty and staff are pondering as the university community considers the possibility of changing the campus’s name.
During his “State of the University” address on Oct. 9, Chancellor John F. Carney III called upon students, faculty and staff to enter into a discussion about the university’s name. He’s also seeking feedback from alumni.
Whether he says it in Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, French or Arabic, Perrin Roller, GeoE’80, is ready to tell anyone who will listen why he loves UMR.
“Going to a technically oriented school like UMR is so different than going to a comprehensive university because it is so specialized,” Roller explains. “You’re immersed with people you’re going to work with the rest of your career, you make a lot of life-long friends.”
One of the greatest challenges facing the United States in the 21st century is how energy is produced and consumed. The country’s dependence on foreign oil is often cited as a security risk, the Achilles’ heel of our economy. The concern is understandable: America consumes a quarter of the globe’s daily production, producing high levels of carbon dioxide and other emissions that many believe are contributing to global warming.
Imagine thousands of Plexiglass tubes stored underground much like wine in a temperature-controlled cellar. While grapes are the prime ingredient in a bottle of Chardonnay, these tubes are full of odorous algae. And the long tubes of green slime are stored vertically, with carbon dioxide bubbling up from the bottom. Timed pulses of water push overflow algae – engineered to replicate four times daily – out the top of the tube and into a collection system, where the overflow is squeezed to yield, get this, crude oil.
Cattle and corn may soon connect at the gas pump
Ethanol pulled into the fast lane in Missouri this year when Gov. Matt Blunt approved a bill requiring that gasoline sold in the state be blended with at least 10 percent of the corn-based biofuel by Jan. 1, 2008.
As with most alternative sources of energy, ethanol has significant benefits: it‘s a clean-burning, high-octane fuel that can help keep gas prices down by increasing and diversifying the nation‘s fuel supply. Yet there‘s a major catch: energy is needed to grow corn and turn it into ethanol.
In ethanol production, the starch portion of the corn is fermented into alcohol and then distilled. Natural gas and electricity are used to run the ethanol plant, powering everything from the hammer mill that grinds the feedstock into a fine powder to the boilers that liquefy the starches.
By 2015, drivers may be less concerned about gas mileage than about hydrogen storage. By 2030, the United States’ dependency on foreign oil to power our cars and trucks could be a thing of the past.
A few years later, homeowners might be able to drop off the grid, generating their own power from in-house fuel cells and leaving behind nothing but clean, potable water.
Yangchuan Xing, assistant professor of chemical and biological engineering, is working to bring these possibilities into reality using polymer electrolyte membrane (or PEM) fuel cells.
In a PEM fuel cell, electrons are conducted across two electrodes with a polymer membrane sandwiched between them. The anode is fueled with hydrogen to produce protons and electrons. The polymer membrane conducts the protons through to the cathode, where they recombine with electrons and oxygen to form water, the only byproduct of a PEM fuel cell. The process creates the electricity to power devices from laptop computers to cars to homes.
“It’s a very environmentally friendly process,” Xing says.
Norman Cox figures his 1977 Volkswagen Rabbit gets the equivalent of about 130 miles to the gallon – primarily because it doesn’t run on gasoline.
Cox bought the Rabbit in the 1980s with the idea of converting it into an electric car, an idea he’d been kicking around since the oil embargo of 1973. “I drove it for a year, and it was a real lemon,” says Cox, an associate professor of electrical engineering at UMR.
Soldiers at Fort Leonard Wood, Mo., may soon get the chance to reduce their use of fossil fuels and ease the strain on their wallets – just by sitting down.
The idea is simple. A public transit system would transport commuters along the Interstate 44 corridor, from Fort Leonard Wood to Rolla and Lebanon. If successful, hydrogen-powered shuttle buses would then retire the gasoline-powered fleets, creating the first rural test site for the federal government’s hydrogen technology program.
When Samuel Frimpong thinks about the world’s ever-increasing dependence on crude oil, his mind turns to sands and statistics.
The UMR Magazine staff caught up with John Sheffield of UMR’s Industrial Assessment Center to find out what the average consumer can do to conserve energy. The IAC conducts energy audits for companies to help them cut their energy costs. Sheffield says real energy savings come through the use of energy-efficient appliances. And apparently, it’s all about reading labels.
It was “a time of tremendous excitement” for engineers when Harry J. “Hank” Sauer Jr. entered graduate school at MSM-UMR 50 years ago. It had been nine years since Chuck Yeager had broken the sound barrier, and the U.S. seemed poised for even greater breakthroughs in flight. Fueled by the post-World War II economy and federal funding for research, MSM-UMR’s graduate programs were also poised for takeoff.
But a year later – as Sauer, ME’56, MS ME’58, joined the mechanical engineering faculty while continuing his graduate studies part time – something happened that further accelerated the research activities at MSM-UMR and other universities throughout the nation. That something was the Soviet Union’s launch of the world’s first satellite, a basketball-sized sphere known as Sputnik I.
After Columbus and before globalization, we realized the idea of a flat world was a myth. We’ve known for a long time that the world was really quite round. But, recently, we learned the world is being flattened by global competition. Or is it?
Kim “Mac” McGinnis, ME’79, hasn’t missed a single St. Pat’s celebration since graduation – even though, for the past five years, he’s had to travel halfway around the world to get back to Rolla.
William J. Daughton, chair of engineering management and systems engineering, reviewed Thomas Friedman’s book The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the 21st Century for the American Society for Engineering Management’s Engineering Management Journal. Friedman’s book, Daughton writes in his December 2005 review, “brings into focus trends and events that most readers would recognize but perhaps have not thought about in the larger context of flattening the world.”
In April, UMR convened a panel of alumni and faculty to discuss a variety of issues related to globalization. The forum – “UMR in a Global Society” – was held on Friday, April 22, as part of the annual Order of Golden Shillelagh (donor society) Weekend on campus.
There's nothing like wrapping your mind around a good problem, and getting your hands on it too. This requires a certain amount of trial and error. Take, for instance, wheelbarrow racing - which can be tricky. Jon Schneider, an aerospace engineering graduate, says participating in a wheelbarrow race during St. Pat's Games was one of his most memorable experiences at UMR.
It inspired Matthew Gann, ECE’05, to pursue graduate school, and instilled in Michael Ellebrecht, ECE’05, a newfound love for writing. It could save the lives of firefighters, preserve countless acres of natural resources and cut the huge annual costs of firefighting.
UMR’s mascot, Joe Miner, recently swapped his traditional stubble for a more modern five o’clock shadow. The new Joe would have fit in with the freshman class of MSM’s early years, when upperclassmen forbid freshmen to wear beards.
The no-beard rule was one of many restrictions upperclassmen imposed on all male freshmen, according to Stephen Foster, a senior history major who is investigating the rituals surrounding MSM’s infamous “freshman fights,” an annual event during the first half of the 20th century.
Anne Maglia, assistant professor of biological sciences, has likened frogs to the "canary in a coal mine" because physical abnormalities occurring in the amphibians could foreshadow similar problems for humans.
As materials for orthopedic implants, titanium-based alloys have given millions of people the opportunity to live fuller lives. But patients’ lives could be even better if the materials used to bond the implants to bone could be strengthened. Stronger bonds could mean fewer problems with the implants later in life. Trini King, BioSci’05, a naval medic for six years prior to attending UMR, has been testing materials in hopes of finding a method to improve the longevity of implants.
Paving the road for less U.S. dependence on foreign oil are Kylee Hyzer and Kyle Anderson, Chem’05, whose research at UMR could lead to a soybean-based replacement for the petroleum used in roadway paint.
As the nation’s nuclear reactors approach middle age, they’re starting to show their age, and that means maintenance is becoming more of a chore. But monitoring the infrastructure near the core of a reactor can become quite dangerous due to the high levels of radiation there. This is where Dave Brown’s research comes in.
If NASA selects a miniature satellite designed by UMR students for a launch in 2007, Adam Grelck’s research project will really take off. That’s because Grelck is researching various options for the onboard computer of the Missouri-Rolla Satellite (MR SAT), a miniature orbiter designed by a team of students as part of NASA’s Nanosat IV competition.
UMR senior Katherine Downs has a thing for blueberries, but not the kind that grow on plants. Downs’ blueberries are of a more celestial makeup.
Called “martian blueberries,” these marble-sized rocks, found on Mars, are actually “concretions,” or formations of the iron oxide mineral hematite. They are called martian blueberries because they give the soil and rocks of the red planet a blueberry muffin-like appearance, and they could have huge implications about the existence of water – and possibly even life – on Mars.
Gazing out the window of his son’s new digs on the second floor of UMR’s Residential College, Vincent H. Grelle, EE’81, MS EMgt’87, acknowledges that the four-lane, landscape-lined boulevard below doesn’t much resemble “the old road to frat row” he remembers from his days on campus.
In 1950, the year the Missouri School of the Mines opened its first dormitory, the New York Yankees could afford the best baseball players in the world, tensions were high overseas and Americans were embracing new technologies at home. In Rolla, the annual St. Pat’s celebration was, no doubt, the best ever.
It looks like a puck. At least, it’s shaped like a puck. It must be a puck. That’s what UMR students decided after a rather mysterious concrete and rock structure, shaped like a huge hockey puck, showed up on campus in the early 1970s.
Over piles of paperwork on his desk, through the summer rain streaming down his office window, Ashok Midha, chair of mechanical and aerospace engineering, looks out at an old building now called the Mechanical Engineering Annex. He likes to point out that the annex, which is not long for this campus, was originally constructed in 1902 – a year before the Wright Brothers made their historic flight. Today, he says, the students in UMR’s largest department work on hypersonic vehicles and conduct virtual reality simulations.
While Stephen Grelle sorted through his CD collection in his new room in UMR’s Residential College, his girlfriend, Emilie Lueker, was thrilled that her spacious abode, one floor above Grelle’s, accommodated a collection of another sort.
“The rooms are big, and I have space for all my shoes,” she says, opening her closet to reveal a stack of flip-flops.
To paraphrase the late painter Bob Ross, who made a living making landscapes come to life on public television, “Maybe a happy tree lives right over here...” Well, from crab apples to dogwoods, from oaks to maples, the UMR campus now has more than 3,000 happy trees.
Visitors to UMR no longer follow a beaten path to campus – and the university couldn’t be happier. The once homely, well-worn passage known as University Drive was transformed this year into an attractive entryway that welcomes travelers from U.S. Interstate 44, guiding them into the heart of campus.
Two sculptures on the UMR campus that celebrate the passage of time – Stonehenge and the Millennium Arch – were recently joined by MSM-UMR 20th Century, a new mural by Jack Guth, CE’50, that portrays scenes from campus history.
There’s something slightly justified about the name of UMR’s new student and campus center, named after Gary Havener, the 1962 UMR mathematics graduate whose $5 million gift to UMR helped make the student haven a reality.
No team is made of one person alone, but junior Maggie Thompson, a pre-medical student from Marshall, Mo., does her fair share of helping UMR athletic teams.
Eleven months ago, John F. (Jack) Carney III was wearing his trademark Boston Red Sox cap around the campus of Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Worcester, Mass., with more pride than usual. And that’s saying something, because Carney, a lifelong Red Sox fan who grew up idolizing Ted Williams, is known for wearing his passion for Boston baseball on his sleeve as well as his head.
When it comes to traffic safety research, Jack Carney is no crash-test dummy. An international expert on impact attenuation devices, Carney holds 10 patents in this area of research.
The quest to find a new UMR chancellor began just days after former Chancellor Gary Thomas’ Sept. 1, 2004, announcement that he would retire in August 2005.
Jack Carney’s ability to balance work and family life impressed many of his colleagues at WPI. “Jack always balanced a very heavy workload here but always found time to spend with his family,” says Laurie Smith, an assistant to Carney when he was WPI provost. “He was very busy,” adds Kent J. Rissmiller, an associate professor of social science and policy studies at WPI, “but he would walk home to lunch with his wife many days – not every day, but most days.” So who are the people in this family Carney holds so dear? Here’s a snapshot:
You’ll get to know Jack Carney a little better over Homecoming Weekend. Until then, put your knowledge – and your instincts – to the test.
Take a guy with a bachelor’s degree in biological sciences and a gal with a bachelor’s degree in psychology and a master’s degree in management. Marry them and combine their talents in the workplace.
What do you get?
The Hermann Brewing Co., established in October 2002 — a friendly eating establishment and haven where those who love the taste of microbrew beer can meet and eat.
UMR connection: Professor of mining engineering, explosives expert.
Claim to fame: Teaches the world’s only for-credit class in pyrotechnics and started the first college commercial demolition class in the United States.
