Faculty News
Conferences & Papers:
Prof. Joost Santos (EMSE) was invited by the University of Southern California to a Global Climate Change Workshop on February 25th – 26th. He chaired and moderated the session entitled “What can we do about risk?”
Other:
Prof. Joost Santos (EMSE) served as a panelist on the NASA Aeronautics Scholarship Program on February 19th.
Student News
Huda Asfour, a graduate student working with Prof. Matthew Kay (ECE), presented her research at the Biophysical Society 54th Annual Meeting (February 20th – 24th) in San Francisco, CA. The title of her presentation was "The inter-dependency of local myocardial metabolism and epicardial electrical activity during acute ischemia and reperfusion."
Other News
Graduate Student R&D Showcase: Don’t miss your chance to participate in the 4th Annual Graduate Student Research & Development Showcase, where you can show your R&D projects to local companies and federal labs. The event includes a poster contest with cash prizes for the best presentations: First Place = $2,000; Second Place = $1,200; Third Place = $800. The Showcase will be held on Friday, April 30, 2010, from 10:00 am until 1:00 pm in the Marvin Center’s Grand Ballroom. The deadline for applications to participate is Wednesday, March 31, 2010. Go to: www.seas.gwu.edu/RDShowcase for more information and to apply.
EPS Fellowships: GW’s Office of International Programs announces the following 2010-11 fellowship opportunities through the U.S. Embassy Policy Specialist Program (EPS):
- Turkmenistan (US Embassy, Ashgabat): Alternative Energy
- Azerbaijan (US Embassy, Baku): Alternative/Renewable Energy
EPS provides fellowships to U.S. scholars and professionals for up to eight weeks to serve U.S. Embassies in Eurasia as policy specialists on a chosen topic and pursue their own research project independently. The EPS grant covers the cost of travel and in-country housing and provides a stipend for living expenses. Scholars and professionals with advanced degrees (PhD, MA, MS, MFA, MBA, MPA, MLIS, MPH, JD, MD) and U.S. citizenship or permanent residency are eligible to apply for the EPS Program.
The EPS application and instructions are available on the IREX website.
Completed applications are due no later than March 15, 2010
Guest Vignette
Getting out of my comfort zone is hard to do. It is comfortable to me to be able to solve a problem that I've solved before but with different values for the variables or to write a program that implements an algorithm I know. But, that is not where the fun is. The fun, for me, is to solve the new problem or write the code for something I've never done before. The same holds for teaching. I have courses in my repertoire, courses I have taught many times. It is comfortable! But, the time comes when I have to prepare something new, either a new approach to my existing material or taking on a new course.
When I taught the CS networks course, I took the route to revise the course to include a WID (writing in the disciplines) approach. That meant, to me, that students in this course should know how to draft an RFC (a request for comment), which is the mainstay of the networking community. Grading such a student product is not easy, and there are no guidelines on how to do it. That's when I turned to colleagues in the writing program. Professor Zeff suggested that I “give up a bit of class-time” to enable the students to create their own rubric for grading. It did take about 30 minutes, but the students reviewed a few RFCs, indicated what they wanted out of them, and created a matrix that each student could follow to judge the value of their own work-product.
Now, I am thinking of teaching a course that I have never taught before. I decided that the best way to learn might be to be a student again. So, I have been sitting in a classroom twice a week, taking notes, doing homework (but I drew the line at taking quizzes and exams!). It has been an outstanding experience. Not only have I learned current material; I have also been treated to new approaches in teaching.
To me the lessons learned are clear—being at a university means that there are many resources and we should take advantage of as many of them as possible. Whether it is a center, such as CITL, a department other than our own such as UW20, or a department colleague, there are many opportunities to improve our own teaching. (Provided courtesy of Prof. Shelly Heller of the Department of Computer Science)
Upcoming:
CANCELLED: CS Colloquium: “Technical Publications in the Age of Social Networking: The Periodicals of the Computer Society”
Speaker: Prof. David Grier, GW Elliot School of International Affairs
Monday, March 8th at 4:00 pm
736 Phillips Hall
CS Colloquium: “Advancing Robotics through Simulation and Modeling”
Speaker: Evan Drumwright, University of Memphis
Tuesday, March 9th at 2:00 pm
736 Phillips Hall
ECE Colloquium: Faculty Candidate Presentation
Speaker: Daniel Bernards, University of California, San Francisco
Wednesday, March 10th, 11:00 am -12:00 pm
640 Phillips Hall
ECE Colloquium: “Telemedicine”
Speaker: Neal Sikka, MD, GW Hospital
Thursday, March 11th, 2:30 -3:30 pm
640 Phillips Hall
CS Colloquium: “Software Engineering @ Google”
Speaker: Lindsay Webster, Google Inc.
Monday, March 22nd at 4:00 pm
736 Phillips Hall
More info . . .
MAE Colloquium: “Textile Composite Structures for ‘Green’ Vehicles: Toward Predicting Compression Strength Allowables”
Speaker: Anthony Waas, University of Michigan
Thursday, March 25th, 3:00 - 4:00 pm
640 Phillips Hall
CS Colloquium: “Models of Motivation”
Speaker: Glenn Becker, Unisys Corporation
Wednesday, April 14th at 6:00 pm
736 Phillips Hall
ECE Colloquium: “Biomagnetics: An Interdisciplinary Field Where Magnetics, Biology, and Medicine Overlap”
Speaker: Dr. Shoogo Ueno, University of Tokyo/Kyushu University
Thursday, April 22nd, 4:00 – 5:00 pm
640 Phillips Hall
SEAS Seminar Series on Entrepreneurship:
Please join SEAS for the remaining two seminars of the four-part Seminar Series on Entrepreneurship. These events are free and open to the SEAS and GW community. To register, please visit alumni.gwu.edu/calendar.
Access to Capital
Wednesday, March 24th
6:00 pm: Reception, 7:00 pm: Panel Discussion
Funger Hall, Room 103
Product vs. Service Entrepreneurs
GW Summit on Entrepreneurship
Thursday, April 15th
10:30 – 11:30 am: Panel Discussion
Duques Hall, Room 652
Sponsored by the GW School of Engineering and Applied Science and the Engineer Alumni Association.
SEAS Seminar Series in Engineering Challenges of the 21st Century:
SEAS continues the seminar series it initiated last semester with more discussions on engineering challenges facing us. More information will soon be available. In the meantime, please mark your calendars for the following dates:
Pervasive Computing and Its Integration Into Our Day-to-Day Life
Prof. Susan Cheng
March 9th
6:30: Reception; 7:00: Presentation
640 Phillips Hall
Integrated Vehicle Safety: The Challenges and Opportunities for Intelligent Vehicles
Prof. Azim Eskandarian
March 23rd
6:30: Reception; 7:00: Presentation
310 Marvin Center
Arms Control and Environmental Treaties: The Challenge for Engineers and Scientists
Nicholas Kyriakopoulos
April 6th
6:30: Reception; 7:00: Presentation
414 Marvin Center
Systems Architecting: Taking a System from Concept to Reality
April 20th
6:30: Reception; 7:00: Presentation
101 Marvin Center
Sex, Lies and Videoclips: The Perils of Life Online
Prof. Dianne Martin
May 4th
6:30: Reception; 7:00: Presentation
309 Marvin Center
Academic Success & Professional Development Series:
Putting it All Together: Resumes, CV’s, and Dossiers
Tuesday, March 9th
4:30 – 5:30 pm
309 Marvin Center
The Academic Career Search
Tuesday, March 11th
5:00 – 6:00 pm
405 Marvin Center
Funding your Dissertation Research
Monday, March 22nd
4:00 – 5:30 pm
101 Marvin Center