If you could back to me quick that be great,

This is an actual email a friend mine got form her advisor.

From: ************
Date: July 24, 2009 8:43:03 AM EDT
To: ***********
Subject: Need Cartoons and Illustrative Photo's

Hi

I am doing a presentation in a few days and need simple
pictures/cartoons to help me make my points.

Can you get, from the internet, cartoons or pictures that transmit the
following throughts and visual impacts?

1) A Rube Goldberg apparatus, which is a machine that looks very
complicated and a lot of work to put together, but accomplishes
nothing useful to the layperson?

2) Something illustrative of a massive disney-esqe fairy tale with a
prince, princess and a castle in the picture.

3) Something that shows a guy in a car, or something, trying to go
somewhere impossible like driving the car to the peak of a mountain or
to the moon, and somebody telling them something in the caption like
"You can't get there from here" where it looks like the person saying
it is obviously correct.

4) Same as number 3, but where the guy saying "You can't get there
from here" is obviously incorrect, and just can't see an alternative
rout or an easy pass.

5) Same as number 3 and 4, but where the guy is saying "You can't get
there from here," and somehow, the picture can be construed to
indicate that you have already been there.

6) Some kind of cartoon or picture that says "be unique," or "I am
unique" which first shows maybe a colony of animals that we humans
cannot tell the different between. Maybe something like a huge colony
of ants, or a bunch of bats on a ceiling....the key point is to show a
crowd of animals that all look the same like that zebra herd in the
recent animated movie where Chris Rock was the zebra, and he could not
even find his best friend in the crowd of zebras.

7) Same as #5, but something showing an animal that is obviously and
completely different in a crowd of animals that are the same. Maybe
something like 1 kangaroo in a crowd of zebras. Something that says I
am different. Or be different.

8) Some kind of slide illustrating human persistence and dedication.

9) A picture or cartoon showing someone reading an enormous stack of
books in a quiet place like a library.

10) Some kind of picture like from "water for people," that
illustrates how children in developing countries, or better yet in
poor rural areas in the U.S., do not have access to clean water.

11) Some kind of picture that illustrated how new products transform
peoples lives in a good way. Maybe something illustrating the
drudgery of housework before electrical applicances in the 1940s,
compared to the relative ease of doing housework after washing
machines, toasters, etc....and with something focussed on emphasizing
how happy and easy life is with a new appliance.

Can you give e-mail me whatever you find by about 4 pm today, and also
include web-links to the photo's or cartoons so I can give credit for
the source in the presentation? Maybe spend up to 3 hours trying to
find representative things. Appreciate it!

****

NSF Funding

The president spoke to the National Academy of Sciences today to annouce a shift in funding back into science and engineering research.  Increasing he funds availible to NSF and creating the ARPA-E project will increase pure research spending in this country to the levels it was during the Space Race. 

Because a majority of research in this country is done at a university level hopefully this will further the economic assistance to Higher learning Institutions. It is exciting to be part of the reinterest in science and enginering.  The news today comes on the heels of the refocus of government spending on infrastructure.  As an academic in civil engineering I am posistioned at the intersection of the stimulus spending, education spending and now the increase in striaght research spending.

In an effort to cover all bases the program announced today also include making the research and innovation tax credit permanent in order to foster private investment in research.  I imagine many firms looking to take advantage of the credit don't have inhouse R&D outfits.  This may lead to an increase in private companies partnering with research universities to complete projects with an aim at marketability.  Again the prospect of any more funding at universities will benefit the student populations as well as the direct receipants of the funding.

Looks like I wont get to Lecture

PROVO — Last fall, David Wiley stood in front of a room full of professors and university administrators and delivered a prediction that made them squirm: "Your institutions will be irrelevant by 2020."

Teaching is one of the things I look forward to as an academic. It seems that straight lecture will become a smaller and smaller component of that as we progress. I am not of the opinion that a drastic shift will occur in higher ed because of institutional inertia.

However in order to better serve and educate students it will be come neccessary to create dynamic and flexible teaching methodologies. I expect these in my classrooms to include case studies, projects and cooperative work instead of lecture and regurgitation.

AAgh Qualifiers

I have a qualifying exam in less than a month and am starting to freak out a little bit. Its an 8 hour exam over the whole of civil engineering curriculum. I feel like I was pressured a bit to take it earlier than normal because my advisor is leaving for a sabbatical abroad. Either it will be over and done with in May or Ill have to take it again in august.

The semester is starting to pile it on too. I have a few papers to write and little to no direction on what to write them on.

Did we do that?

The library here was subject to the same budget cuts facing the entire university. As I understand it most of the library budget is tied u in licenses and subscriptions and to reach the $700,000 dollar target they were going to drop some journal subscriptions.

This got many of the graduate student upset to the point or organizing and formal protest. Meetings were held, letters written representatives pressured. In the course of a week it was announced that federal stimulus money would allow for the salvation of the library. In fact an increase in the budget was announced amounting to $300,000.

The question is was this million dollar swing a consequence of the graduate students lodging their complaints. The federal money came at a convenient time, any earlier and it may have rolled into the budget before cuts were announced. A late arrival would not guarantee a recovery of the library's budget. Its arrival coincident with the protest made the decision for the board very obvious. This was my first experience as a graduate student with the politics of school funding, I'm sure there will be more.

Fall 2010

If I get my act together I'll get to teach in 2010. Its like a carrot on a stick. Between now and then I need to kick the research into high gear.

Presidential Address

Taking On the Lending Industry: Obama's Grand Plans for Education

Here is a post about Pres. Obama's call to have the highest proportion of college graduates again by 2020. I think we need to identify what kind of graduates we are going to have. Introduction of Math, Science and engineering into elementary and secondary schools will give students the background they need to make decisions about what they want to do with their life. Maybe those kids will decide to be those workers we need to be competitive and innovative.