As part of the Society of Women Engineers High School Stayover, students check out some of the majors and extracurricular activities Penn State offers during an involvement and majors fair in Kunkle Lounge. (Photo credit: Society of Women Engineers)

By Erin Miller

A scavenger hunt of the Penn State campus for the high school students isn’t complete without a photo with the Nittany Lion Shrine. (Photo credit: Society of Women Engineers)

Thursday, March 20, kicked off the 2014 High School Stayover organized by the Penn State Society of Women Engineers (SWE).

The two day event hosted 68 accepted female students to experience college life from the perspective of a current female engineering student.

Going to class, eating in the commons and many other events were scheduled for the participants to attend.

On Friday evening, SWE jointly hosted a send-off dinner with the Women in Engineering Program for both participants and parents.  At the dinner participants and parents learned about programs like the Women in Engineering Program Orientation (WEPO), on-campus special living options and how to get the most out of college classes and clubs.

Networking with current students and peers provided participants with the opportunity to make connections throughout and after the program ended.

Penn State SWE organizes the stayover program each year to encourage high school women to pursue an engineering field and to attend Penn State.

At a dinner, students and their parents learned about the opportunities at Penn State, including orientation, special living options and how to get the most out of college classes and clubs. (Photo credit: Society of Women Engineers)

The program highlights areas such as class schedules, different engineering majors and involvement opportunities at Penn State and within the College of Engineering.

The stayover would not be possible without the generosity of SWE’s corporate sponsors and the hard work and enthusiasm of all of SWE’s volunteers, and faculty advisers.

Erin Miller is a fifth-year architectural engineering student from Collegeville, Pa., and an active member of SWE, WEPO, the Engineering Orientation Network and the Tau Beta Pi engineering honor society.

The Engineering Ambassadors is an organization dedicated to promoting science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

By Adrienne Crivaro

You too can be a Penn State Engineering Ambassador! Applications are due Monday, March 24.

The Engineering Ambassadors is a professional development program with an outreach mission.  Ambassadors represent the college through tours, presentations, and outreach activities to middle and high schools.

Much of the Engineering Ambassadors’ work involved visiting middle and high schools to demonstrate the possibilities of the engineering field.

It is the goal of the Engineering Ambassadors to communicate the awesome possibilities in the engineering field to everyone that we meet.   Ambassadors receive advanced communications and leadership training and an exceptional variety of experiences that are both fun and rewarding.

Importantly, being an Engineering Ambassador is a fabulous professional development opportunity that will have a positive impact on your future at Penn State.  Learn more about us on our website: www.engr.psu.edu/ambassadors.

The Engineering Ambassador program has several excellent industry partners including United Technologies Corporation, Rockwell Automation, Phillips 66, John Deere, Volvo and Chevrolet. These companies are looking to recruit students just like you from the Engineering Ambassadors program, so you can receive great networking and career opportunities through involvement in the Engineering Ambassadors.

Applying to be an Engineering Ambassador is a competitive application process. Application details can be found here: http://www.engr.psu.edu/ambassadors/apply.html. To apply, you must complete CAS100 (any version) by the start of the fall 2014 semester and have a cumulative GPA of 3.0 or above.

Any questions can be directed to Melissa Marshall, director of the Penn State Engineering Ambassadors at mmarshall@psu.edu.

Adrienne Crivaro (’12 ME) is a member of the Engineering Ambassadors and a mechanical engineering graduate student.

Rachel Brennan, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering, back, shows Ozgul Calicioglu, a new doctoral student in her research group, how to clear out the duckweed in one of the Eco-Machine’s ponds.

On a campus where everything’s draped in white, there are precious few spots where greenery can be found.

One of those places is the Eco-Machine , an artificial wetland laboratory sheltered in a greenhouse south of Medlar Field just off Porter Road.

Run by Rachel Brennan, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering, the Eco-Machine is designed to clean wastewater through the use of natural ecological processes.

Only a handful of plants occupy the 540-square-foot facility during the winter. Once spring arrives, the Eco-Machine will be teeming with more life.

Employing various plants and organisms, Brennan’s Eco-Machine replicates the biofiltration process that removes pollutants in wetlands.

Brennan explained that during the winter, many of the plants in the Eco-Machine go into a ‘resting phase’ where they don’t grow much, but the microorganisms in the system still keep the water quality high. Since the system contains so many living organisms, the machine can’t just switch off.

Inside the greenhouse, it’s a balmy 65 degrees and the vibrant colors of the resident Black Magic Taros and Water Callas are a stark contrast to the blanket of snow outside.

“I reduced the temperature over winter break to help conserve energy, but the plants really didn’t like it,” Brennan stated.

Water callas are among the few plants that live at the Eco-Machine facility year-round. Brennan’s team stops by the greenhouse every few days to check on the plants.

She said the plants that are currently in the greenhouse are just a small part of the Eco-Machine. Once the weather gets warmer, the roughly 540-square-foot facility will spring to life with more than a dozen tropical plants to enhance the filtration work.

Until then, Brennan and her team will continue visiting the machine every few days to check on things.

“Every week, this place needs some minor maintenance like trimming the plants.”

And because the relatively warm environment can be a haven for bugs, her team keeps vigilant for unwanted pests.

“Earlier in the winter, we had a bit of an aphid problem because we can’t open the windows, so they tend to multiply,” Brennan said. To solve the problem, she purchases ladybugs to keep the aphids in check without the use of pesticides.

On this particular day, she’s introducing Özgül Çalicioglu, a Fulbright Scholar from Middle East Technical University in Turkey who just started her doctorate in Brennan’s group this semester, to the facility.

Brennan shows Çalicioglu how to scoop out duckweed from the artificial ponds. She explains that the emerald plant does a fantastic job of trapping nutrients in water.

The environmental engineer thinks that duckweed’s nutrient-trapping ability could be used to prevent runoff into waterways and potentially serve as a substitute for chemical fertilizers.

“Using duckweed in this capacity hasn’t been studied very much,” Brennan said. She said she hopes to test duckweed as a fertilizer substitute in the nearby community gardens this summer.

After Çalicioglu finishes cleaning the duckweed out of the ponds, the two head back to campus, but will check back again in a few days.

“It really just takes care of itself,” Brennan said. “It’s great.”

By Kwesi Vincent and Dameon Proctor

What do you get when you take members of Penn State’s Multicultural Engineering Program (MEP) Affiliate Program Group (APG), the African American Alumni Organization DC Chapter, the Latino Alumni Interest Group, dedicated Penn State staff, a little Peachy Paterno ice cream, and put them together in one of the Beltway’s hippest happy hour locations?

The answer is the Penn State Alumni Networking event that was held at 201 Bar on Wednesday, Nov 6. Initially created as an opportunity for Washington, D.C., area Penn State College of Engineering graduates to connect and/or reconnect with one another, the event grew to become an evening of fellowship amongst Penn State alumni from all backgrounds that was used to raised funds and awareness for Penn State’s MEP Endowment.

The MEP has a long and storied history of helping support Penn State engineering students with their academic, social, professional and even financial needs. The endowment helps provide the MEP with the monetary resources to continue providing these services to more and more Penn State students.

The MEP APG is the official alumni organization for the MEP whose mission is to support the MEP’s efforts to increase the involvement and retention of under-represented groups in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields by leveraging the collective knowledge, experiences, and resources of Penn State alumni in order to provide programmatic and fundraising support for the MEP’s initiatives.

The Nov. 6 get-together is the first of what will eventually become an annual event in each of the major metro areas across the country.

“We had a lot of fun tonight while helping to raise money for a program that does so many important things for students. The entire evening was a huge success and the very definition of a win-win event. I am definitely looking forward to doing something similar in the New York City area,” commented Dameon Proctor (’01 EE), a Northrop Grumman engineering manager and event co-organizer.

Assistant Dean of Engineering Diversity Amy Freeman, who oversees the MEP, also expressed her appreciation for the event, “It’s so wonderful that our alumni still feel so impassioned by the work our office does that they continue to give of their time and effort to support us and the current students in this way. I’m just incredibly grateful for them putting this event together.”

Paul Jovanis, professor of civil and environmental engineering, testified before a congressional subcommittee on Thursday in Washington, D.C.

Jovanis, who serves as director of the Thomas D. Larson Pennsylvania Transportation Institute’s Transportation Operations Program, discussed how proposed changes in truck driver hours of service safety rules will affect road safety before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Small Business Subcommittee on Contracting and Workforce.

An expert on transportation system safety, Jovanis has developed statistical models of crash occurrence using data supplied by trucking companies. He has conducted research in this area for over 25 years for a series of government and private sector sponsors.

His other areas of research include collection and analysis of naturalistic driving study data and modeling the relationship between roadway and roadside geometric design and safety.

Girls from two area middle schools teamed with Penn State engineering students to program robotic dance routines as part of their field trip to campus. One project had a Blue Band theme with a robotic drum major. (Photo credit: Curtis Chan)

Two dozen girls from two area middle schools got some first-hand exposure to engineering at the “Engineer Your Future” field trip event today (Nov. 21) on campus.

The girls, from Philipsburg-Osceola Junior High School and Park Forest Middle School, spent the day at the College of Engineering.

The event, hosted by the Women in Engineering Program (WEP), provides the girls with hands-on engineering activities and the opportunity to work with current Penn State engineering students.

The field trip included collaborating with first-year students from ME 102 LEGO Robotics to program robots with a choreographed dance routine, a tour of the Department of Architectural Engineering’s Immersive Construction Laboratory, a pizza lunch with engineering students, a presentation by the Engineering Ambassadors and an amusement park design project.

Cheryl Knobloch, WEP director and coordinator of the program, said the field trips is meant to encourage 7th and 8th grade girls to consider pursuing careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

David Wormley, left, will retire as dean of the Penn State College of Engineering after a 21-year tenure. He will be succeeded by Amr Elnashai, right, currently head of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Illinois. (Photo credit: Curtis Chan)

Though he doesn’t officially start as dean of the Penn State College of Engineering until Jan. 13, Amr Elnashai made a quick trip to campus today to attend a few meetings and chat with alumni leaders and college officials.

Elnashai met with the board of the Leonhard Center for the Advancement of Engineering Education and the College of Engineering Advancement Committee.

During a meeting break, incoming Dean Amr Elnashai, right, confers with retiring Dean David Wormley. (Photo credit: Curtis Chan)

Elnashai is currently head of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He holds the Bill and Elaine Hall Endowed Professorship and serves as director of hybrid simulation at the National Science Foundation’s Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulations laboratory, which investigates infrastructure design and construction to minimize damage from earthquakes.

Wormley leaves Penn State after a distinguished 21-year tenure as a researcher, professor and Harold and Inge Marcus Dean of the College of Engineering.

More on Elnashai’s appointment to Penn State can be found at: http://news.psu.edu/story/292383/2013/10/23/academics/elnashai-named-new-dean-college-engineering.

More on Wormley’s retirement can be found at: http://news.psu.edu/story/142471/2013/02/01/engineering-dean-wormley-retire.