VOLUME 12, NO. 2     JANUARY 1999

Glorious Goddard Gala

PI and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration celebrated the success of the University's first residential Major Qualifying Project center at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., in grand style in October.

President Edward Alton Parrish and H. Richard Freeman Ô61, Ph.D., chief engineer for Goddard's Engineering and Technology Directorate, welcomed nearly 150 guests to the gala, which was sponsored by the President's Advisory Council and the Alumni Association. During the evening, members of each MQP team summarized the work they'd done under the tutelage of their Goddard and WPI faculty advisors.

Established in the fall of 1997 as a partnership between WPI and NASA, the center provides WPI students with opportunities to complete real-world, meaningful engineering projects at one of the nation's premier centers for science, technology, and spacecraft design, development and operation.

This year's faculty advisors were the program's director, ECE Professor Fred J. Looft III, CS Professor David Finkel, Shaukat Mirza, interim director of the Manufacturing Engineering Program, and Karen M. Rutledge, assistant professor of chemical engineering.

On the day preceding the reception, Parrish and other WPI administrators met with NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin to discuss WPI's unique engineering education opportunities. The following day, Parrish, Provost John F. Carney III, and William W. Durgin and Lance Schachterle, associate and assistant provost for academic affairs, respectively, and other members of the faculty toured some of Goddard's technology and test facilities and participated in a dialog with key members of the center's engineering organization to investigate potential project and faculty partnering opportunities.

"The meeting identified a number of topics of mutual interest," said Freeman. "Hopefully this visit will help us expand Goddard-WPI project center activities in the future."

For more information about the center visit ece.wpi.edu/~fjlooft/gsfc/new1998.htm.

Goddard