The Wire @ WPI Online - November 2000

VOLUME 13, NO. 2 NOVEMBER 2000

In This Issue:

Honoring our volunteers
Hopefully, the alumni volunteers who attended WPI's first Alumni Leadership Conference in September returned to campus with less-burdensome memories of their undergraduate days than this beanied and overbooked freshman of the 1960s.

Realizing a dream
Construction is under way on the University's new campus center. The building's unique shapes and angles, including its octagonal entrance tower, have been taking form in steel, cinderblock and brick over the past few months.

New coach knows how to make a point
English may be Arut Akskalyan's second language, but WPI's new fencing coach is fluent in fencing. An expert in foil and épée, the Tbilisi, Georgia, native is a former member of the Armenian Fencing Team.

Reunioners reminisce amid the raindrops
Neither a downpour nor the detours created by the campus center construction could dampen the spirits of the alumni revelers who came home to WPI to reminisce and reconnect to friends and faculty.

Worcester still mourning its everyday heroes
It has been nearly a year since the evening of Dec. 3, 1999, when the worst firefighting disaster in the United States in two decades claimed the lives of Paul Brotherton, Timothy Jackson, Jeremiah Lucey, James Lyons III, Joseph McGuirk and Thomas Spencer in the Worcester Cold Storage and Warehouse Co. building. But, despite the passage of time, the memories of the fire and its aftermath remain strong.

AT&T chairman tells graduates about change
In his address to the members of the Class of 2000, C. Michael Armstrong, chairman and CEO of AT&T, focused on change and three principles for meeting and navigating it. Armstrong began his address by noting that WPI is widely admired within AT&T for its history of educational excellence and for the long list of graduates who have gone on to become leaders in their fields. He recounted the story of Bell Laboratories engineer Harold Black, a 1921 WPI graduate, who authored the blueprint for the negative-feedback amplifier, a device that played a vital role in 20th century electronics...

Hoop Dreams makes college a reality for local youngsters
Forming connections between schoolchildren and college students has been the goal of Hoop Dreams for four years. This year, WPI's community outreach program received a new vote of confidence when it received a $1,200 Massachusetts Promise Mini-Grant from the Massachusetts Service Alliance. The money was combined with support from the...

Studying the world's tiniest machines
Imagine a machine so small it can travel through your bloodstream to fix a clogged artery. Imagine one so smart that when its job is complete, it shuts itself off and is eliminated from the body. Imagine that same technology at work in myriad applications, from automobile airbags to computer security...

Want not, waste not
Each academic year about 91,000 pounds of food goes to waste at WPI. An imaginative effort is reducing that waste, at the same time benefiting the Worcester community. Since the Hunger Campaign Clean Plate Award was inaugurated in August 1999, students who eat everything on their plates have been...

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Last modified: Tuesday, 25-May-2004 15:00:42 EDT