International Activity Reaches Record Levels
by Don Buskirk, associate professor for industrial technology and study abroad coordinator
Over the last five years, the College of Technology has increased student international participation by 140 percent. The faculty and staff have embraced new and exciting opportunities to become involved in international education. They have recognized that to be successful in today's world of work, especially in technology, that students need to understand global differences.
Today’s workers may very well find themselves traveling around the world working in many countries and societies. It is very important that our technology students be able to function in another culture with a variety of business and industrial practices. The College of Technology has been very successful this past year in providing students study abroad opportunities. About 84 students seized the chance to travel and learn in a foreign country. The data for this coming academic year, thus far, looks even more promising and should surpass 2006-07 in numbers of students wishing to participate.
Among the international endeavors for the college include:
- Increased faculty activities in traveling abroad to deliver lectures, papers, and recruitment of graduate scholars
- Active pursuit of collaborations with many foreign institutions in such countries as South Korea, Turkey, Afghanistan, Australia, Germany, Finland, India, China and several more
- Establishing new avenues to increase visibility with international links to international education by both departments and the college
- New discussions on incorporating international components, minors, languages, internships, and graduate and undergraduate research are taking place in several departments
- An increase in international grant activity that resulted in an award, which allowed seven College of Technology faculty and administrators to explore foreign institutions
- Faculty receiving numerous invitations to lecture abroad and being awarded distinguished professorship honors
- New international awareness and promotional strategies are being worked out in the form of brochures and information packets, and study abroad has been given a college-wide presence on the Web site: www.purdue.edu/tech/academics/study abroad
The college will be developing strategies and metrics for the coming academic year to further expand international education. The support from top administrators in the College of Technology has given everyone more opportunities to participate than ever before. We anticipate the interest and enthusiasm to continue for years to come. The world changes only for those that make an effort to understand and change through education.
Faculty and Student Endeavors
Nathan Harter, associate professor of organizational leadership and supervision at Greensburg, was a Purdue representative at the "Leadership Across the Liberal Arts Curriculum" conference held June 14-15 in Claremont, Calf. About 50 liberal arts institutions from around the nation were represented at the conference, which was the capstone of a three-year initiative funded by the W.M. Keck Foundation. The project has been dedicated to integrating topics of responsible leadership across the liberal arts disciplines.
Eric Kukula, PhD student in industrial technology, and Stephen Elliott, associate professor of industrial technology, represented the United States at the ISO/IEC JTC1 SC37 working group and plenary meetings for Biometric Standards in Berlin, Germany.
Industrial technology doctoral student Shimon Modi, Eric Kukula and Stephen Elliott presented papers and posters at AutoID 2007, IEEE Workshop on Automatic Identification Advanced Technologies, Alghero, Italy.
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Faculty & Student Endeavors (cont.)
Mileta Tomovic, W.C. Furnas Professor of Enterprise Excellence and interim MET department head, was conferred with the honor of "guest professor" by Beihang University during his recent visit to China. Tomovic was serving as co-chair of the International Conference on Comprehensive Product Realization (ICCPR), hosted by Beihang University. The honor was bestowed on Tomovic during a special ceremony, which was posted on the University's Web site.
Mark French, assistant professor of MET, conducted his summer guitar building workshop last week. Participants came from various walks of life and many parts of the county. Lafayette Journal and Courier visited the classroom and developed a video report that depicts the group in action.
CoT Sponsored Research
For an updated look at sponsored research activities within the College of Technology, visit the applied research section of the CoT Web site.
CoT News Submission
Report your CoT news through the online reporting form. The next e-newsletter is scheduled for distribution on Monday, August 20. The deadline to submit items for consideration in the next edition is Tuesday, August 14.
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In the News
Cheerleading camp introduces girls to the technology field
Purdue College of Technology graduate student Christi Jacobs designed a camp for high school cheerleaders where they'll program robots to dance and create digital cheerleading routines.
Jacobs, a former captain of the Purdue cheerleading squad who is writing a master's thesis on how to attract women to technology, spoke with Gannett News Service about what she hopes to accomplish. More Info.
Technology students win trip to Google with virtual rendering of campus
Eight Purdue students and a staff member captured a top-seven finish in a Google competition to replicate campuses in 3-D by using computer technology.
The winners were announced July 10 on the computer search engine giant's Web site, and each of the top seven teams from the registered 364 entrants will receive an all-expenses paid trip to Google headquarters in Mountain View, Cal if., on August 6 to 9.
College of Technology undergraduates Micah Bojrab, Joe Farris, Carson Del Greco, Eddie Leisio and Andres Maldonado worked on the project, in addition to Meiqui Ren, a doctoral student in computer graphics technology who works in the Envision Center, doctoral student Tim Rogers and Gary Bertoline, assistant dean for graduate studies in the College of Technology, director of the Envision Center for Data Perceptualization and professor of computer graphics technology.
The students were recruited from one of Nicoletta Adamo-Villani's animation courses in January. The project was sponsored by ITaP and the Envision Center. More Info.
Purdue makes distributed rendering available at SIGGRAPH 2007 via TeraGrid
Academic animators and researchers doing scientific visualizations have a new resource that will allow them to render their 3-D animations in a fraction of the time it can take on a single computer.
Attendees of the 2007 ACM SIGGRAPH conference in San Diego on August 4 to 9 can bring animation files with them and submit them for rendering at a Purdue-sponsored "render farm."
The rendering service will use distributed computing and will be available to any university staff or faculty member who receives an account on the National Science Foundation's TeraGrid. The Purdue resource is called TeraDRE, which stands for TeraGrid Distributed Rendering Environment. During SIGGRAPH 2007, the TeraDRE will be available to attendees in the Guerilla Studio, without the need to request an allocation. Animations can be created and submitted for a variety of applications, including Maya 8.5, Blender, POVRAY and nVidia's Gelato.
Laura Arns, assistant professor of computer graphics technology and associate director of Purdue's Envision Center for Data Perceptualization, said the TeraDRE was run as a pilot version at the July 2006 SIGGRAPH conference.
Nathan Hartman, assistant professor of computer graphics technology, said the TeraDRE will benefit academic institutions around the globe. More Info.
Summer boot camp provides academic boost for incoming freshmen
Students entering Purdue will get an academic jump start through a summer program that shares strategies for adjusting personally, socially and academically to college.
Fifty-six incoming freshmen who are registered in the colleges of engineering, technology and science are participating in Purdue's STEM Academic Boot Camp, which runs through August 3. Founded by the Minority Engineering Program, the camp features intensive seminars that provide tools for succeeding in and outside of the classroom.
Antonia Munguia, College of Technology diversity director, said last year's camp had a positive impact.
"I definitely saw the different in the students," Munguia said. "They were more confident, familiar with their surroundings and could tackle the academics. It was neat to see the transformation." More Info.
Ben Davis grad guides Purdue plane crew
Crystal Mathews knew early she liked aviation, and that she was good at it.
As a girl, she steered a Cessna twin-engine plane over the San Francisco Bay area.
With a pilot friend of her dad's in the next seat, young Mathews -- her feet didn't reach the pedals -- soared past the Golden Gate Bridge.
"It was amazing to be able to control something like that, so high in the air," said the 2003 Ben Davis High School graduate. She added, chuckling: "They told me I did a good job."
Last week, Mathews put her skills to work as part of a nine-member Purdue University ground crew that helped boost Purdue's team to first place in the collegiate division of the Air Race Classic for the second year in a row. More Info.
Purdue stages energy workshop
Purdue University joined the Terre Haute Children's Museum to offer a free, two-hour workshop that explores the pros, cons and future potential of various types of energy sources, including coal, biomass and hydrogen.
"Energy: Myths and Reality" was held July 21 in the museum. The event is sponsored by Purdue's Energy Center at Discovery Park and the museum. More Info.
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