 |
|
| President Anthony J. Catanese wields the giant, ribbon-snipping scissors to officially open the Panthereum at the first “Jazz at the Panthereum” concert. From left are fellow cool cats in shades, Thomas G. Fox, senior vice president for advancement; and Ken Revay ’82. Far right, Clifford Bragdon, associate provost and dean, University College. Curtis Moore of the TD Daniel Trio is on bass guitar. |
| |
 |
| “Uncommon Threads,” the university’s annual on-campus textile lecture series, explored the textiles of Southeast Asia. Mattiebelle Gittinger, left, research associate for Southeast Asian Textiles at the Textile Museum of Washington, D.C., shared her knowledge at an evening lecture and luncheon symposium. Ruth Funk, second from left, helped start “Uncommon Threads” in 2004. Also shown at the luncheon are: President Anthony J. Catanese; Thai dancer Intuorn Brown; Sara Catanese; Indiafest Director Nina Gadodia; and Phyllis Long, widow of Trustee Robert L. Long. |
| |
 |
|
| Charles W. Jackson Sr., right, receives the 2007 Julius Montgomery Pioneer Award for community leadership. Montgomery, at left, one of Florida Tech’s first African-American students, received the Pioneer Award during the 2006 commemoration of Martin Luther King Jr.’s life and achievements. The award was since named for Montgomery. President Anthony J. Catanese is at center. |
| |
 |
| Ken Droscher, assistant vice president for advancement and executive director of the alumni association, shows off a banner from the early days of Florida Tech, when it was Brevard Engineering College. Droscher is in the newly opened aviation museum at the Melbourne International Airport, where the university displays a large collection of memorabilia. |
 |
| Ken Droscher and Karen Rhine, assistant director of university communications, provide perspective standing under a huge sign that greets visitors to Melbourne International Airport. |
Sarkis Acopian, a Florida Tech benefactor whose legacy will live beyond him, died at age 80 on Jan. 18, 2007. A prominent businessman and philanthropist, Acopian was the first individual to donate $1 million to the university, and he did it with one gift in 1990.
For the past 30-plus years, Acopian maintained a small branch of his Acopian Industries, a maker of power supply products, near the Melbourne International Airport. On one of his monthly fly-in visits from his home in Pennsylvania, he made it known to the university that he wanted to make a financial impact.
Then-President Lynn E. Weaver and Robert Fronk, currently interim dean of the College of Business, approached Acopian with several ideas. He accepted Fronk’s proposal to fund environmental education, one of his interests, with an endowed chair.
Acopian’s $1 million donation later that year made the Sarkis Acopian Endowed Chair in Graduate Environmental Education a reality. In 1992, Thomas Marcinkowski accepted the position in the department of science and mathematics education, where he remains today.
Acopian continued to give to the university, for other causes, as well as to many other institutions and organizations over the years. “Mr. Acopian was a very generous man throughout his life. His passing will be a loss to all the people and communities he cared about,” said Thomas G. Fox, senior vice president for advancement.
Florida Tech, a member institution of the Center for Integrated Space Weather Modeling (CISM), has earned an $820,000 subcontract over five years to participate on a CISM project. The CISM is a National Science Foundation (NSF) Science and Technology Center chartered to understand the dynamic sun-Earth system and how it affects life and society.
One of 11 member institutions, Florida Tech will direct the diversity in space sciences efforts of the center as well as take a lead role in science education programs and curriculum development. Florida Tech also will use simulation models to gain a better understanding of the magnetosphere and ionosphere and will test and validate these models through comparison with observations. The university will also provide opportunities for undergraduate research and support for the CISM-wide graduate education program.
Ramon Lopez, Florida Tech professor of physics and space sciences, is the principal investigator on the project and will work with graduate students and other Florida Tech faculty.
Among other member institutions are Stanford University, University of California at Berkeley, Rice University, Dartmouth College and University of Colorado, Boulder.
The CISM Science and Technology Center is headquartered at Boston University.
Harry Brandon has been named a member of the Florida Tech board of trustees. He was welcomed to the board at the fall trustees meeting on campus.
A Melbourne-area real estate investor, Brandon is a past vice president of marketing for Harris Corporation and has 26 years of computer marketing and marketing management experience. He led worldwide marketing for the Controls Division and Composition Systems Division at Harris, following careers at Control Data, UNIVAC and University Computing. He left Harris in 1982 to start his own commercial real estate investing business in Brevard County.
Brandon earned a bachelor’s degree in communications from the University of Washington. He was named Entrepreneur of the Year by the Founders Forum in 2005.
Kenneth P. Stackpoole was named dean of the College of Aeronautics in February. He most recently was vice president for university relations at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.
At Embry-Riddle for 25 years, Stackpoole was responsible for marketing, communications, and corporate and government relations for the university system, which enrolls 30,000 students annually. During his career there, he also was chairman, flight technology department, and director, business development, of a NASA-led Small Aircraft Transportation System Program.
Stackpoole holds the FAA Airline Transport Pilot Certificate and has 4,600 hours of flight time. He earned his doctoral degree in public affairs from the University of Central Florida. A certified flight instructor for single and multi-engine training, and instrument airplanes, he also is a pilot examiner. He was 2005–2006 chair, National Research Council, Transportation Research Board, committee on intergovernmental relations in aviation, and 2005–2006 chair, Daytona Beach Chamber Congressional Action Committee.
A $423,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Education, Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education, will support a curriculum in remote sensing systems and moving robotic platforms. Charles Bostater, associate professor of physical oceanography and environmental sciences, won the grant. This continues support of a cooperative international effort with Budapest University of Technology and Economics (BME) and the Royal Military Academy (RMA) in Brussels, Belgium.
In this new effort, faculty and students are developing an interdisciplinary curriculum that directly focuses on remote sensing systems, moving robotic platforms and the system risks associated with the detection of unexploded ordnance and with humanitarian de-mining. The technology to detect these materials may also be used in marine and coastal environments.
Balint Kiss of BME and Yvon Baudoin of the RMA are co-investigators with Bostater, the principal U.S. investigator. “The project will help to develop the necessary international and interdisciplinary talent vital today and in the future to meet the needs of securing sustainable safe environments,” said Bostater.
Although 250 years have passed since Ben Franklin’s kite experiment, lightning still holds great mystery. Out to discover lightning’s secrets is Joseph Dwyer, professor of physics and space sciences. He earned a $420,000 National Science Foundation grant to continue and expand his research.
“Scientists still struggle to understand the most basic facts about how it works,” said Dwyer, who has brought the study of lightning research into the laboratory. He and his team in 2005 made the discovery that laboratory-generated sparks make X-rays, too.
Dwyer’s co-investigators are Florida Tech professor Hamid Rassoul of the same department and professor Martin Uman of the University of Florida. The researchers will conduct their studies at both universities and at the International Center for Lightning Research and Testing at Camp Blanding, Fla.
Dwyer’s previous breakthrough findings have earned extensive media exposure, including a PBS “NOVA ScienceNow” program and features on Discovery and National Geographic Channel TV programs.
Cem Kaner, professor of computer science, is taking a multimedia approach to teaching ethics and values in engineering and technology with the support of a $268,000 National Science Foundation grant. The grant will fund the development of three to six learning units by Kaner and his collaborators—Florida Tech computer science faculty members Richard Ford and Scott Tilley, and University of Illinois computer science faculty member Keith Miller.
“There is ongoing, rapid change in the laws that these units will address,” said Kaner. “Each topic can be studied in terms of ethics issues that the student might face while conducting research as a student, or later, as a faculty member.”
His project will cover the topical subjects of whistle-blowing, reverse engineering, security vulnerabilities in computing and intellectual property rights. These are those associated with university labs and faculty-owned businesses that commercialize university-developed research.
Kaner is an attorney whose principal legal focus is computer-related law. He is also a widely known author on software quality control.
The university has earned a National Science Foundation (NSF) continuation grant of nearly $1.7 million over three years. The grant, from the NSF’s Graduate Teaching Fellowship (K-12) program, enables the university to continue the work with Brevard County high school integrated science teachers, which was begun in fall 2005. The new funding will focus on using the mobile laboratory, SEAS: Science Exploration at Sea, and supporting teachers in taking full advantage of the project activities and modules developed under the previous grant. Additionally, the funding will continue to support free science seminars, led by university faculty and other internationally renowned researchers at public schools throughout the county.
“We hope that the program will serve as a model for K-12 outreach programs throughout the county,” said Richard Tankersley, program director. John Windsor, professor of oceanography, is co-investigator on the grant. The project, Integrated Science Teaching Enhancement Partnership (InSTEP), is designed to improve science instruction and increase student enthusiasm for scientific inquiry and discovery. Partnering with integrated science teachers in grades 9-11 are interdisciplinary Florida Tech graduate students, or Fellows.
|
