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On behalf of ASCE, Aaron Gray, of Fulgham MacIndoe & Associates, Inc., presented Dr. James Mason with a $4,500 check from the 2011 tournament.

Fifteenth Annual ASCE Scholarship Golf Tournament

On Friday, July 27, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) – Knoxville Branch hosted its fifteenth annual scholarship golf tournament at Centennial Golf Course in Oak Ridge. Proceeds from the tournament benefit the ASCE Scholarship Endowment within the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) at UT. On behalf of ASCE, Aaron Gray, of Fulgham MacIndoe & Associates, Inc., presented Dr. James Mason with a $4,500 check from the 2011 tournament.

The CEE department sponsored a putting contest and the sixteenth hole, which featured a hole-in-one contest. Participants from the CEE department included Dr. Lee Han, Dr. James Mason, Dr. Jenny Retherford, and Dr. Stephen Richards in addition to Will Schleter of the engage™ Engineering Fundamentals Program. Others representing the department included Dr. Ed Burdette, Nancy Roberts, Dr. John Ma, and Larry Roberts. The College of Engineering thanks the many members of ASCE and the participants at this year's golf tournament.

FACULTY NEWS

Dr. Thomas Zacharia

Zacharia leaves posts at ORNL, UT

Dr. Thomas Zacharia, who helped the University of Tennessee and Oak Ridge National Laboratory partnership achieve world leadership in supercomputing, is leaving his post as deputy director for science and technology at the lab to head research efforts for the Qatar Foundation, lab director Thom Mason announced Wednesday.

Zacharia led a proposal by UT and ORNL for a landmark $65 million award from the National Science Foundation in 2008 to build one of the world's most powerful supercomputers, Kraken. He has been deputy director at ORNL since 2009.

Read more >>

STUDENT NEWS

Amber Woodburn

Woodburn receives Aviation Research Award

Amber Woodburn, a Civil Engineering Ph.D. student under the direction of Dr. Megan Ryerson, has been a selected as a recipient of the Graduate Research Award Program on Public-Sector Aviation Issues for the academic year 2012-2013. This highly competitive and prestigious award is sponsored by the Federal Aviation Administration of the U.S. Department of Transportation and administered by the Airport Cooperative Research Program (ACRP) of the Transportation Research Board/National Academies. The research program includes a stipend to support graduate student research on a topic selected by the student and of interest to the ACRP. Woodburn's research project is "Impact of Predictability Improvements on Airline Scheduling Practices."

Michelle Everett

Everett wins ORNL competition

Oak Ridge National Laboratory's Committee for Women held their third annual poster session on Thursday, July 19, 2012, at the Joint Institute for Computational Sciences on the ORNL campus. Michelle Everett, a fourth-year graduate student in the STAIR IGERT working with Dr. Claudia Rawn in the Materials Science and Engineering Department, won Best Student Poster for her presentation "Neutron Diffraction Studies of Mixed CO2 – CH4 Gas Hydrates." Everett is studying the solid solution of CO2 and CH4 in gas hydrates for the purpose of sequestering CO2 in naturally formed gas hydrates, while simultaneously recovering methane. Her work on this subject has previously been shown at the Natural Gas Hydrates Gordon Conference in Ventura, Calif., in March 2012 and been accepted for a talk at the American Crystallographic Association's (ACA) Annual meeting in Boston, Mass.

Catherine Schuman

Schuman awarded research fellowship

Catherine Schuman received a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship to support her Ph.D. research in Computer Science. Schuman works with Dr. J. Douglas Birdwell in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

EVENTS

EcoCar 2 presentation

The EcoCAR 2 team will show off its new 2013 Chevrolet Malibu 10:00-11:00 a.m. Monday, Aug. 6, on the top floor of the 11th Street parking garage, 11th Street at Cumberland Avenue. The graduate and undergraduate students on the team are competing in a three-year collegiate engineering competition established by the U.S. Department of Energy and General Motors. They've spent the past year planning their design with the goal of making the GM-donated car a better, more efficient hybrid than what is currently on the roadways.

For more information on the program, participating schools, or competition sponsors, please visit www.ecocarchallenge.org or www.greengarageblog.org.

Read more about the UT EcoCar 2 team's work >>

INSTEP site visit

Thirty-one high school sophomores from the UT-COE Engineering Diversity Program's Introduction of Sophomores to Engineering Principles (INSTEP) camp visited the Tennessee Valley Authority's Chattanooga Office Complex on July 13, 2012, to learn more about TVA's engineering program. The group toured the facilities System Operations Center, as well as the Power Trading and Gas Floor.

Created in 2000, INSTEP is a one-week, residential, summer program for rising ninth and tenth graders interested in engineering.

OUTREACH NEWS

Ethan Cansler in Berlin

Ethan Cansler, a junior in Aerospace Engineering, studied German language and culture in Berlin this summer. He closes his travel blogging with some final thoughts on his summer in Germany. Read Ethan's blog >>

Alysse Ness in the UK and Belgium

Alysse Ness, a junior in Biosystems Engineering, studied abroad in Belgium this summer. She kicks off her travel and study blog with a report on an excursion to Scotland.
Read Alysse's blog >>

STUDENT OPPORTUNITY

Facility-security class offered for the fall

The Nuclear Engineering department will offer the class "NE 597: Physical Security for High-Consequence Facilities" during this year's fall semester. This course aims to help students gain perspective on the role of physical security in our world and understand how it works. The class is open to any engineering major interested in security principles and will be especially interesting for "out-of-the-box" and analytical thinkers. For more information, e-mail Dyrk Greenhalgh ([log in to unmask]).

Educational Advancement Program has seats available for Math 125

The UT Educational Advancement Program has space available for eligible students for a Fall 2012 Math 125 class that will meet 2:30 p.m.-3:20 p.m. Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Tutorial assistance is available, plus weekly course monitoring and program study-skills support. For information on the course, contact Celeste Brooks at [log in to unmask] or via phone at 865-850-1960. To see eligibility requirements, visit http://web.utk.edu/~eap.

Scholarships available for Reliability and Maintainability studies

The Society for Maintenance and Reliability Professionals (SMRP) offers scholarships for the 2012-2013 school year. Deadline for application is Aug. 15, 2012, for both the Dorothy and Jack Nicholas Scholarship and the SMRP Higher Standards Scholarship. For information on the scholarships, visit the SMRP website. For information on the UT Reliability and Maintainability Center, visit www.rmc.utk.edu.

What else can you do with your major? You can now receive your degree and a secondary education teaching license with VolsTeach. The VolsTeach program is available to Math and Science majors who wish to expand their career options by earning a secondary education teaching license. Given the current economy VolsTeach offers one degree with two career paths which will make you more competitive in the future job market.

VolsTeach provides:

• early and frequent field experiences
• personal guidance by Master Teachers and program advisors
• the opportunity to have paid exclusive internships during regular and summer terms
• a comfortable learning environment that will further enhance your professional skill set

This is your opportunity to be a part of the program. VolsTeach is open to freshmen, sophomores and juniors who are ready to start a journey that will give them a chance to connect with the community. Become a part of this exciting venture by signing up for the Fall Step 1 course now.
Click on the flyer at right for registration information. For more information contact VolsTeach Coach, Jada Johnson at [log in to unmask] or visit the program's Facebook page, VolsTeach, for current events, and the program's website, http://volsteach.utk.edu.

Stay up-to-date with Engineering Professional Practice information and events by clicking the “Like” button on the program’s Facebook page, following the program on Twitter, visiting its website at www.coop.utk.edu or calling 865-974-5323.

Students, please note: If you receive a co-op or internship offer, please contact Engineering Professional Practice for help with paperwork and any preparations you may need – [log in to unmask], 865-974-5323 or 310 Perkins Hall.

Featured co-op student: Dennis Ruff

Our student this week is Dennis Ruff, an electrical engineering major, who accepted a coop at Kimberly-Clark, Neenah, Wisconsin.

"I worked on the Product Technology and Development team in the Research and Engineering Department, " said Ruff. "The main responsibility for my team involved product registration and inspection on the high-speed manufacturing lines. In short, the technology combines programs written in-house with vision systems and powerful computers capable of processing extremely large amounts of data in order to inspect every product and ensure each one meets quality requirements.

"My main project involved writing a program using Microsoft Access and Visual Basic for Applications that could be used to compare two databases. Each product code has a database with thousands of variables pertaining to machine set points and other characteristics of the product being made. The program will be helpful in both troubleshooting and building new machines. When troubleshooting, you are able to compare the values stored in the database for a particular code and can compare it to the database that contains the current values of a running machine. One other small project included creating drawings of the different components used in the product registration and inspection system and where each component is located on the line. Components for this ranged from vision cameras, prox sensors, photo eyes, and luminescence detectors."

One of the challenges that Dennis had to overcome was learning Visual Basic Programming for his main project. "I spent time talking with my manager and discussing different methods of training and I ultimately took online classes through Microsoft," said Ruff. "The main thing I learned through this experience is that companies are often willing to pay for training in a certain area that you may not be familiar with or if it is something that can help you advance in your career."

Ruff said, "The most valuable benefit I received by accepting his coop was real-world work experience, along with the very high probability of receiving a full-time offer."

Students may read more about their peers' co-op experiences by logging into their Engineering Professional Practice profile via www.coop.utk.edu, clicking “Resource Library” (on the left margin) and selecting “Students at Work – In Their Own Words.”
For information on engineering co-op and internships, contact [log in to unmask]
or 865-974-5323.

Career Services News

EF 301: Engineering Career Planning and Placement
Engineering Career Planning and Placement is offered 1:25–2:15 p.m. Mondays every Fall and Spring semester in Career Services at 100 Dunford Hall. The course is designed for Juniors and Seniors and teaches effective job search skills and guides the student through the many career opportunities available to them at Career Services. (1 Hour Credit, S/NC)

For more information, contact April Gonzalez , Career Services Consultant, College of Engineering at [log in to unmask] or 865-974-5435.

Check out www.career.utk.edu for a list of all upcoming events.