• Issues
• Related Sites
  • WPI Connection
  • Transformations
  • The Bridge
  • The Hill
  • The Fountain

Welcome to @WPI Online

September 26, 2008

Around Campus | People | Publications & Presentations | Recent Grants | Calendar

Around Campus

Community Council Announced

The Sept. 26 Town Meeting introduced to faculty, staff, and students WPI's Community Council, whose charge is to foster an inviting, inclusive, and vibrant environment for the entire WPI family. Council Chair Liz Tomaszewski told Town Meeting attendees that council members are available to listen to concerns, with the goal of cultivating a positive and enriching experience for all campus community members. Above all, the Community Council strives to create a welcoming environment, to celebrate successes, and to promote campus-wide engagement.

"WPI's Community Council exists to work to bring the community together - to draw out the achievements of our community members and to address issues that affect us," said Tomaszewski, who serves along with Biomedical Engineering Professor Chris Sotak as a campus ombudsman. Tomaszewski added that she wants campus community members "to understand that the council represents the community, and that members are accessible to work to make the community better, stronger, and more welcoming."

Those wishing to speak with the council may contact any of the members, who represent all areas of campus. Members are Jose Arguello, professor of chemistry and biochemistry; Patrick Arsenault, a biology and biotechnology PhD student; Eric Chojnowski, benefits administrator in human resources; Jillian Cohen, a junior management engineering and pre-dental student; Thomas Collins, CCC staff member; Mike Ellsworth, campus police officer; Karen Goudey, associate director of international admissions; Arthur Heinricher, associate dean for the First Year Experience and professor of mathematical sciences; Brenda May, administrative assistant in the Department of Military Sciences; Eileen Brangan Mell, public relations director; Shelley Errington Nicholson, director of women's programs and assessment coordinator for the Division of Student Affairs and Campus Life; Lawrence Riley, Facilities Department custodian for Higgins Labs; Bhavika Shah, sophomore biomedical engineering major; Jeanine Skorinko, assistant professor of psychology; Greg Snoddy, associate dean of students and director of Healthy Alternatives, Recreation, and Club Sports; Liz Tomaszewski, facilities systems manager and ombudsman; and James Wong, manager of information systems for the Division of Development and Alumni Relations. The council meets monthly and reports to President Dennis Berkey. Its email address is communitycouncil@wpi.edu.

Cyber Awareness Month in October

WPI's Information Technology Division will observe Cyber Awareness Month in October through a series of seminars to teach students, faculty, and staff how to protect themselves and their loved ones from online predators, cyberbullying, and identity theft. Cyber Awareness Month is a national program sponsored by Microsoft and the National Cyber Security Alliance.

• Oct. 2 - Data Security Awareness: Sessions will be held in the TV Studio in Fuller Labs, Room 126. The times available are 9:30-10, 10-10:30, 10:30-11, and 11-11:30 a.m. This is a fast-paced, general introduction to data security awareness that applies to your professional and personal computing. What is sensitive data? Why it is important to secure this data? The Helpdesk and Information Security team up to answer these questions, and inform you of the tools WPI provides for you to accomplish this.
• Oct. 7, noon - Keeping Your Kids Safe Online: This seminar is aimed at parents, grandparents, and other caretakers of children. The IT Division will partner with Worcester County District Attorney Joseph D. Early Jr. and his staff to present a session focusing on protecting children while they use the Internet. Attendees will be presented information, software, and video examples of how children get themselves into trouble via the Internet. Ellen Miller, Early's community outreach director, and Cornelius Spellman, WPI's network security analyst and a former WPI police officer and senior investigator for the state Bureau of Special Investigations, will be the presenters, with introductions and remarks by Early and Thomas Lynch, WPI's CIO and vice president of information technology. Cyber Awareness Month is a national program sponsored by Microsoft and the National Cyber Security Alliance. The presentation will be held in Higgins Labs Room 218.
• Oct. 14, 10 to 11 a.m. - Maintaining Your Computer: Information will be provided about how to keep your office and personal PC/laptop safe and secure. We'll talk about the standard software that is available to all WPI employees such as antivirus, antispyware, updated Operating Systems, and the small and significant updates that everyone can do for themselves with little effort or knowledge. By linking the home PC to this session we will also be encouraging employees to keep their work stations more secure by giving them additional training in the area of maintenance. The meeting will be held in the Campus Center Hagglund Room.
• Oct. 21, 10 to 11 a.m. - Identity Theft: Using the formulated agenda and materials from the FTC we will present and encourage the audience to participate in conversations regarding the latest threats including a more particularized section on internet safety. By focusing on some issues recently seen on campus, such as phishing attacks purportedly from the Helpdesk, we will make the participants more aware at both their workplace and their home. This session will be held in Morgan Hall, Access Grid.

To register, go to Information Technology Division web site and click on the "calendar." For more information contact Neil Spellman, Information Security, ext. 6656 or cws@wpi.edu.

People

Berkey to Serve as 'Leader for Education'

President Dennis Berkey will serve on the steering commission of a newly formed coalition that aims to provide broad support for changes in public education - and to put education reform back in a primary position at the Statehouse and among the state's public officials. The coalition, known as Leaders for Education, is composed of business, civic and higher education leaders based in the state. The steering committee consists of 20 CEOs with the majority coming from the Boston-area; Berkey is the only Worcester-based CEO serving at this time.

"President Berkey has been both an educator and an educational leader for more than 30 years," said Paul S. Grogan, president and CEO of the Boston Foundation and founding member of Leaders for Education. "He is nationally recognized for being a visionary and an innovator, and I know that he will be a dynamic member of this coalition as we work towards reforming our state's educational system. Leaders For Education is fortunate to have his vision and experience as we navigate toward education reform."

"It is an honor and a pleasure to serve with the Leaders for Education," said Berkey. "Returning public education to the top of our statewide priorities is essential, for both funding and stronger support for innovation and high performance by our teachers and students. The ideas and commitment to action on the part of this commission are truly impressive." 

Natalie Mello Elected Forum Chair

Natalie Mello, director of global operations, Interdisciplinary and Global Studies, was elected in May to be chair of the Forum on Education Abroad Council.

Located on the campus of Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pa., the Forum on Education Abroad is the only organization whose exclusive purpose is to serve the field of education abroad. Recognized by the U.S. Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission as the Standards Development Organization for education abroad, the Forum's Standards of Good Practice are recognized as the definitive means by which the quality of education abroad programs may be judged. The Forum's Quality Improvement Program for Education Abroad uses the standards as part of a rigorous self-study and peer review quality assurance program that is available to all Forum institutional members.

Forum members include U.S. colleges and universities, overseas institutions, consortia, agencies, and provider organizations. The Forum focuses on developing and implementing standards of good practice, encouraging and supporting research initiatives, and offering educational programs and resources to its members. Its mission is to help to improve education abroad programs to benefit the students that participate in them.

Publications & Presentations

Humanities and Arts

• Dempsey, James, "The Aesthete and the Radical: Scofield Thayer, Randolph Bourne and The Dial," paper at the Programme du Colloque International "Revues Modernistes et Politique dans les Années 1900 à 1939" (International Modernist Magazines Conference), Le Mans, France, June 6, 2008. (Paper will be published by the Modernist Magazine Group.)

Recent Grants

Bioengineering Institute

• McGimpsey, Grant, for "The WPI Bioengineering Institute as a Healthcare Technologies Research & Commercialization Center: Establishing a National Center for Neuroprosthetics," from the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative, $150,000

Biology and Biotechnology

• DiIorio, Alex, for "DINDDR Fermentation," from Dyax Corporation, $12,289
• Weathers, Pamela, for "Saffron (Crocus sativus): Production of Secondary Metabolites in Cultured Roots," from the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, Egypt, $8,980

Biomedical Engineering

• Gaudette, Glenn, with George Pins and Marsha Rolle as co-principal investigators, for "Fibrin Microthreads for Localized Stem Cell Delivery for Regenerative Therapy," from the American Heart Association, $2,000

Computer Science

• Agu, Emmanuel, with David Olinger as co-principal investigator, for "Airdrop Research Projects," from the U.S. Army, $15,000
• Fisler, Kathi, with Daniel Dougherty as co-principal investigator, for "CT-ISG: Power to the People: Empowering Users to Understand Access-Control Consequences," from the National Science Foundation, $200,000
• Ward, Matt, with Elke Rundensteiner as co-principal investigator, for "CPA-G&V: Interactive Stream Views: Visual Analysis of Streaming," from the National Science Foundation, $151,911
• Ward, Matt, with Elke Rundensteiner as co-principal investigator, for "III-COR-Small: Managing Discoveries in Visual Analysis," from the National Science Foundation / $147,770

Electrical and Computer Engineering

• Lou, Wenjing, for "NeTS-NECO: COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH: New Approaches for Secure and Dependable Distributed Data Storage and Access Control in Mission-critical Wireless Sensor Networks," from the National Science Foundation, $171,762
• Makarov, Sergei, for "Small Assay Design," from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, $22,255
• Sunar, Berk, with William Martin as co-principal investigator, for "CT-ER: Exploring Physical Functions for Lightweight and Robust Cryptography," from the National Science Foundation, $149,797

Fire Protection Engineering

• Dembsey, Nicholas, for "Development of Guidelines for Obtaining Material Parameters for Input into Fire Models," from the National Institute of Standards & Technology, $199,722
• Meacham, Brian, with Guylene Proulx as co-principal investigator, for "SGER: Collection of Data on Fire at Faculty of Architecture Building, Technical University at Delft, the Netherlands," from the National Science Foundation, $11,377

Interdisciplinary & Global Studies

• DiBiasio, David, for "Cooperative Agreement with Consumer Product Safety Commission - IQP Project Center," from the Consumer Product Safety Commission, $6,500
• Vaz, Rick, for "WPI Project Center at MIT Lincoln Lab," from MIT, $35,975

Mechanical Engineering

• Backman, Daniel, for "Support of NWSC's Program to Develop an Accelerated Insertion of Material (AIM) System," from the Naval Surface Warfare Center, $22,364

Calendar

Note: Information for the calendar comes from the Web-based WPI Events Calendar, which is powered by the Social Web. To have your events listed in @WPI, please enter them in Social Web and request that they be added to the appropriate WPI calendar. Visit Social Web to learn how.

Ongoing

• Exhibit: "A Life's Journey," photographs by Professor Diran Apelian - Gordon Library, 3rd Floor Gallery, August 28 to Oct. 12
• Exhibit: Ink on Paper exhibit by alumna Erica Mason - Gordon Library, Gladwin Gallery, August 28 to Oct. 12
• Exhibit: "Old Tech: Robert Goddard & Worcester Polytechnic Institute" - Gordon Library

Friday, September 26

• Colloquium: "A Preliminary Report on the Project Darkstar Anthropological Expedition into the World of Massively Scaled On-Line Games and Virtual World," by Jim Waldo of Sun Microsystems Labs, sponsored by the Computer Science Department - Fuller Labs, Room 320

Wednesday, October 1

• Lecture: "Medical Robots and Computer Integrated Surgery," by Professor Gregory Fischer, WPI Mechanical Engineering Department - Higgins Labs 218, 11am
• Author Talk: "God-or Gorilla: Images of Evolution in the Jazz Age," by Constance Clark - Gordon Library, 3rd floor, 4pm

Thursday, October 2

• Lecture: IMGD Speaker Series, Eitan Glinert, founder and creative director of Fire Hose Games - Kaven Hall, Room 116, 11am

Wednesday, October 8

• Symposium: 2nd Annual Symposium on Regenerative Biosciences and Engineering - Campus Center Odeum, 12:3-6pm

Thursday, October 9

• Info: CPE hosts Workforce Training Fund Info session - Higgins House, 4pm

Computer Tip

PowerPoint's Presenter View

Have you tried Presenter View in PowerPoint? It allows you, as the presenter, to see a different view of the presentation on your monitor than your audience sees on screen. In Presenter View along with the slides you can see numerous other features, such as large speaker notes, the presentation elapsed time, and a preview of the next item to appear. To enable Presenter View on the Slide Show tab, in the Monitors group, click Use Presenter View. (Note: this can only be selected if a second monitor is connected.) For more details, press F1 to search PowerPoint Help and type Presenter View.

For assistance with this or any other PowerPoint feature, you can contact the Helpdesk at x5888 or helpdesk@wpi.edu.

Maintained by webmaster@wpi.edu
Last modified: July 21, 2010 13:59:37