January 2013 eNotes

Increasingly, as engineering and science challenges are growing in scope, complexity and sophistication, there is a need for students to learn to work efficiently within large multicultural environments.

Four CU-Boulder students got to practice these skills over the last several months as part of the Project-Oriented Learning Environment (POLE) project, led by the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland. CU-Boulder is partnering with the Swiss school on POLE, with Professor Alexander Repenning serving as a disciplinary coach.

Each year, POLE focuses on a single problem, with this year’s project challenging students to develop innovative, new ticket vending ideas for the Swiss railway and transportation company A-Welle, based in Aargau, Switzerland.

Four CU graduate students -- Sadie Zukowski, Rosalind O’Brien, Jeeeun Kim, and Abigale Stangl —were selected to participate and flew to Switzerland in September to meet up with more than 30 other students and multi-disciplinary industry partners in Switzerland and Germany.  

The students split into five teams, with each CU student on a different team, and after the initial five-day kickoff meeting, the teams continued to work on solutions to the challenge from their home universities, meeting weekly over a virtual platform throughout the semester. Final team presentations are set for Jan. 9, and Jeeeun Kim will travel to Switzerland again while the rest of the CU students participate from the U.S.

“While at times the project has been difficult, each challenge presented a great learning opportunity--learning that only comes from hands-on experience and taking risks. Through immersive and intensive exposure we have each found ways to work with language barriers, time barriers, cultural misunderstandings, and ambiguity, all the while experiencing the intrinsic joys of working collaboratively within a unique context,” the CU students wrote in a report.

Congratulations also to the following individuals on their outstanding achievements:

Faculty

Abbie Liel of civil, environmental, and architectural engineering was selected to receive an NSF CAREER Award for her work in the area of multi-scale modeling to evaluate the impacts of retrofit design and policy on a community for earthquake risk reduction.  The $400,000, five-year grant starts in June.

Bernard Amadei of civil, environmental, and architectural engineering was awarded an honorary doctorate by Drexel University in Philadelphia, in recognition of his powerful impact on the engineering profession through his founding of Engineers Without Borders.

Dan Scheeres of aerospace engineering sciences has won the prestigious American Astronomical Society's Dirk Brouwer Award for 2012.  The award was established to honor significant technical contributions to space flight mechanics and astrodynamics. 

Angela Bielefeldt of civil, environmental, and architectural engineering received the 2012 Best Reviewer Award for the Journal of Professional Issues in Engineering Education and Practice.

John McCartney of civil, environmental, and architectural engineering received the 2012 Associate Editor of the Year Award from the ASCE Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering.

Matt Hallowell of civil, environmental, and architectural engineering was selected as a 2012 Outstanding Reviewer for the ASCE Journal of Construction Engineering and Management.

Staff

Linda Rose (Dean’s Office), Sarah Melssen (AES), Stephanie Morris (CS), and Pam Aguila (ECEE) received the college’s Commitment to Excellence Award, which is given in the spring and fall to staff who are celebrating a 5-year milestone of employment and have earned the highest performance rating in each of the last three years.

Sharon Powers of the Dean’s Office was selected to receive the Employee Recognition Award for November.

Ruth Rindin of the ITL Program was selected to receive the Employee Recognition Award for December.

Students

Waqas Qazi, a PhD candidate in aerospace engineering sciences (Bill Emery, advisor), won best poster in oceanography at an annual poster session hosted by CU-Boulder’s Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences. Qazi also was recognized as the Muneeb Kamal International Student of the Year at CU-Boulder.