2007–2008 highlights
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- Message from the dean
- Research funding and invention disclosures
- Research advances
- Faculty honors
- Student innovation
- Student honors and educational advances
Student honors and
educational advances
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In January, 30 UW-Madison engineering students traveled for three weeks to Cape Town, South Africa, to participate with 22 University of Cape Town students in the first-ever LeaderShape Institute held in Africa. The intense, six-day program not only helped the students form lifelong bonds, but also enabled them to develop their leadership skills and personal vision. Students from both countries also participated in community service projects. While UW-Madison has hosted LeaderShape for more than a decade, the trip to Africa also marked the first time American students have traveled overseas to participate.
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In spring 2008, Electrical and Computer Engineering Professor Susan Hagness and several colleagues debuted the course Introduction to Society's Engineering Grand Challenges, which enables first-year engineering students to investigate the humanitarian applications of engineering. Based on challenges outlined by the National Academy of Engineering, the class aims to inspire students to become engineers to improve the quality of life around the world. With challenges that range from individual-level issues such as privacy, biometrics and assistive technologies to engineering for the megacity or for life in space, the course structure offers students a taste of different engineering disciplines while enabling them to examine broad engineering issues. Hagness conceived of the course as a means to engage first-year students and to help them better understand what engineers do for society.
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In 2008, members of the UW-Madison chapter of Engineers Without Borders (EWB) began projects throughout the world, and in their own back yard. They traveled to El Salvador to begin construction on a wastewater system that will stretch more than four miles and provide sewer access to nearly 2,350 El Salvadorans. In Orongo, Kenya, EWB members met with community members to plan projects in crop irrigation and water transport, small-business development, tree farming, and water purification. A team of four students visited Bayonnais, Haiti, to survey land, take measurements, and talk with community leaders and residents about projects that include an addition to a school, a new clinic and a hydroelectric generation facility to power the clinic. At the Red Cliff reservation, which wraps around 14 miles of the northernmost peninsula of mainland Wisconsin, they laid the groundwork for three projects related to flooding and stormwater infrastructure on the reservation.
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With its through-the-road parallel hybrid-electric Chevrolet Equinox Crossover SUV, the UW-Madison Hybrid Vehicle Team took second place in the final year of the Challenge X competition, while the UW-Madison Formula SAE Team was the top U.S. finisher at its world championship event in May. The team placed fourth out of nearly 120 teams from 20 countries.
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The UW-Madison Clean Snowmobile Team blew the competition out of the snow at the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) Clean Snowmobile Challenge in Houghton, Michigan, March 10-15, 2008. During the six-day zero-emissions competition, the UW-Madison team unveiled its new all-electric snowmobile, Bucky EV, which captured top honors. During the endurance portion of the competition, the Bucky EV held a 20 mph pace for 17.2 miles—nearly 10 miles past the second-place finisher—before the team voluntarily stopped to ensure efficient recharging. The sled also outshone the competition in acceleration and sound (at 50 feet, the sled produces a quiet 55 decibels). For two months in summer 2008, the National Science Foundation tested the Bucky EV at one of its arctic study camps in Greenland.
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For their capstone design class, civil and environmental engineering students Dan Zignego, Jake Varnes, Bill Schmitz and Nick Bobinski worked with state of Wisconsin REACT Center Director Michael Kunesh to create a structure that simulates the wreckage created by an apartment building collapse onto a parking garage. Operated via the Wisconsin Office of Justice Assistance, the center provides specialized disaster- and complex-rescue training to approximately 480 state firefighters. Among its key facilities is Wing 1 of the Rubble Pile, a jumbled mass of steel, concrete, wrecked vehicles and mannequin victims that enables trainees to simulate an eight-hour-long structural-collapse rescue. Designed by the UW-Madison students, Wing 2 opened in June 2008. While it includes elements similar to the original wing, the students’ design makes the structural-collapse rescue more realistic, more intense—and easier to clean up and “reset” after the exercise.
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At Madison East High School, the area’s first National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE) Jr. chapter exists because of a UW-Madison Industrial and Systems Engineering student and her dedication to reaching out to younger students. UW-Madison NSBE members and members of the Wisconsin Black Engineering Student Society have tutored and given presentations at East for the past five years, and in October 2007, UW-Madison’s Mitchelle Lyle contacted East High to jump-start the chapter. She says the junior chapter enables UW-Madison NSBE members to give back in a way that recognizes the people and programs that positively affected their college choices. Likewise, time with positive college role models is what sets NSBE Jr. apart from other math and science clubs at East.
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Enrollment and degrees granted, as of September 16, 2008
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2Undergraduates not yet admitted to degree-granting departments.
3According to university records.
4According to university records; August and December ’07; May ’08.