May 13, 2013

THE WEEKLY BLAB

Volume 7, Issue 32 – May 13, 2013

 

Graduation!

Graduation is always the best time of the year.  Seeing all the proud students and their even prouder parents and families is great and this year was no exception.  The fun began on Friday evening at 5:00 PM, when Dean Han Reichgelt (Computing and Software Engineering) hosted the CSE graduation party.  The beer and food were both good, and everyone was having a good time.

Saturday brought SPSU’s two graduation ceremonies, the biggest ever in the history of the University.  I think we’ve been able to say that every year since 2006, a winning streak I hope never gets broken.  The graduation also featured our first Political Science graduate, as well as the first time students graduated in all seven engineering disciplines.  This year was the last official graduation for Steve Hamrick, our registrar (who will be retiring soon), and the first for Jill Brady (our new registrar) who did a fine job onstage.  I’m not sure if it was the humidity or what, but it was very difficult to separate the medallions from each other, and Koger and I had a little trouble juggling them but we managed.  The afternoon graduation was a little rowdier than the morning one, with an inflatable beach ball being bounced over the students’ heads for a minute or two, and lots of loud cheering for individual grads.

 

Open Forum on Establishing an Online Campus

On Thursday, May 9, an open forum was held to discuss and answer questions about a draft prospectus on possibly establishing an online campus that was sent out on May 3.   About 60 people were present, and the forum lasted for about 90 minutes.  Given the lateness in the semester that the draft prospectus was completed and went out, another open forum on this subject will be held in early summer (probably the week of May 27^th), and a third will be held in the fall if there’s any additional interest.

The questions were all reasonable and interesting, and Sam Conn and I did our best to address them.  Given that SPSU has had a long history of offering online programs, one question was “Why establish an online campus?  Why not just continue with what we’ve been doing?”  The main reasons have to do with focus, consistency, and market.  It’s very important for students taking online courses with SPSU to have the same experience (and use the same platform and tools) for each course, and to be able to access a wide range of support services.  An online campus will provide a greater consistency in our offerings.  The online campus will also focus on a different demographic than our traditional campus—it will focus more on adult, military, and non-traditional students.  Their needs, which are somewhat different than traditional students’ needs, can best be accommodated through an online campus.

Another question was “When will the online campus be launched?”  Our next steps will be to meet with all the support areas on campus (Admission, Business, Financial Aid, Marketing, ATTIC, Faculty Support and Development, Library, etc.) to determine how these areas would support our online efforts in the short term, in the transition period as the online campus grows, and at full implementation.  Presumably, each area will respond somewhat differently.  We’ll also meet with the departments that already offer online degree programs to hear any concerns and suggestions they have, and how best to migrate their programs to the online campus.  These responses will be incorporated into an operations document. Assuming that things progress nicely, that document could be completed mid-Fall semester.  If there’s a consensus to move forward, the online campus could go “live” soon after that.  There’s a certain fuzziness to this answer since we already offer lots of online courses and our online students will need the support services described above no matter what happens.

Other questions and comments included:

• “Will the departments still maintain control over the curriculum in their online courses?”   Yes—there’s no reason to change this.
• “Which will be more lucrative for faculty members—the current model or the online campus?”  We believe that the online campus model will provide more opportunities for all faculty members.  As the campus grows, there will be more opportunities for online course development and for summer teaching.  Even programs that are successful now still have the capability to grow considerably.  This growth will generate revenue that will support the campus as a whole, critically important in this time of declining state support.
• “Moving in this direction and supplying these services has been suggested in previous years and those reports have just gathered dust.” This is true—until now, we didn’t have the IT infrastructure and support in place that would have made the move to an online campus feasible.  The online campus will allow us to implement the good ideas in these reports, and to pursue these other markets.
• “What happens if a department wants to migrate its program to the online campus, but one faculty member doesn’t want to join in the migration?” That’s a good question that will need to be worked out.  The prospectus states that faculty will only teach in the online campus if they choose to affiliate—if they don’t, they can go on teaching as they currently do.  If an entire program were to migrate over, presumably they would be assigned to teach some other course, or a section that isn’t being taught in the online campus.
• “Will we be creating online versions of every degree program at SPSU?  What programs will be offered?”  There are some programs that don’t lend themselves to online instruction, and these will probably not be offered online.  The main programs to be offered will be degree completion programs and graduate programs, although any department that wants to offer a complete undergraduate program can be accommodated.
• “What does the sentence ‘SPSU plans to generate and/or purchase course content that fits the unique needs of the online campus’ in the draft prospectus mean?”  It means that some of the course content will be developed by those faculty who have chosen to affiliate with the online campus.  Also, when a current online academic program migrates over to the online campus, its course materials would migrate with it.  Finally, there is quite a bit of high-quality online content that is currently available for very little cost or for free that we might use.
•  “How will revenues and expenses be allocated to the departments and to the online campus?”  There are some successful financial structures that have been implemented on other campuses (VPI, U. Maryland, etc.) that can serve as models for SPSU.  We will be working with VP of Business and Finance Bill Prigge to develop a specific model to address these issues.  We’ll share that model when it’s completed.

Overall, the reaction to the prospectus at the open forum was quite positive.  If you have any suggestions or concerns, you can share them with Sam Conn or me via email, or you can attend one of the future open forums.

 

Center for Teaching Excellence Luncheon

The Center for Teaching Excellence had its annual luncheon last Monday, where the various members of the CTE Advisory Committee and CTE Fellows presented a report to the Deans and me on what they had accomplished over the past year.   Dawn Ramsey spearheads this effort and does a magnificent job.  I’m very proud to support the CTE from the Academic Affairs budget—it plays a critical role in faculty support and development.

The report itself was quite impressive—the number of different activities was over 200 (that’s almost one per full-time faculty member!) with the total attendance indicating that on average, SPSU faculty members attended four activities.  This level of activity is remarkable, and I’m unaware of any university that offers as broad a range of opportunities for its faculty in proportion to its size.   Pretty much every activity carried out by the CTE was singled out for praise from one or more of the Deans or from me.  Suggestions for the future included continuing all (!) current activities, sponsoring an ongoing workshop where SPSU’s best teachers can highlight their best practices, and to expand the Research Learning Community’s work (perhaps in concert with the Honors Program) to develop opportunities for interdisciplinary teaching and research.

I’d like to take this opportunity to thank every member of the CTE Advisory Committee and all the CTE Fellows for their fine work in strengthening our academic community.

 

 

One More on Annette

“Nancy” by Guy Gilchrist, May 1, 2013

 

Last Week’s Trivia Challenge

Last week’s trivia challenge focused on words related to “May”.   The winner was Jennifer Louten (Biology), who got all five correct.  Here are the correct answers:

1. You dance around it.  A May Pole.
2. Spider-man’s aunt’s name. May Parker.
3. She plays Sheldon’s girlfriend on the Big Bang Theory.  Mayim Bialik.
4. Famous clinic located in Rochester, Minnesota.  The Mayo Clinic.
5. It was supposed to happen on December 21, 2012, but didn’t.  The Mayan Apocolypse.

 

This Week’s Trivia Challenge

Today’s trivia challenge focuses on “Lilies”.  Why?  Why not?  No looking up the answers now!  SEND ALL ENTRIES BY EMAIL TO zszafran@spsu.edu, since if you put them as a response on the BLOG, everyone will be able to see them!

1. Holiday that the lily is the traditional flower for.
2. Married to Herman, mother to Eddie, Yvonne De Carlo played her in the TV show.
3. Stylized lily that is the royal symbol of France, it also appears on the flags of Quebec, Detroit, Louisville, and New Orleans.
4. They toil not, neither do they spin.
5. First woman elected to the National Academy of Engineering and first honorary member of the Society of Women Engineers.  Two books and a movie are based on her life (“Cheaper by the Dozen” and “Belles on Their Toes”)

May 6, 2013

THE WEEKLY BLAB

Volume 7, Issue 31 – May 6, 2013

 

 

Craziest Yet

Last week was the craziest yet, with meetings basically back-to-back the whole time.  It’s always like that the week that finals begin—everyone is getting in their last meeting, all the paperwork at the University converges on my office, and most of the remaining faculty searches come to completion.

To recuperate, I did very little this weekend, and the crappy weather was helpful in demotivating me.  We did the usual shopping, but didn’t find anything really interesting.  I did have a chance to listen to some of the CD’s that showed up this past week.  I ran into some stunning bargains with Bear Family (a high-end, high quality German label that specializes in country, rockabilly, and early rock) box sets and was able to pick up three sets at $20 each instead of the usual $130-$250 they cost.  The best find was an eight disc Wanda Jackson set that is just great.  Also obtained were sets by Skeets McDonald and by Jim Reeves.  Lovely wife Jill was saying “Since when do you like country music?” until she heard them, and found she really liked the Wanda Jackson set.

Sunday was the big match between Chelsea and the evil empire Manchester United and Chelsea triumphed 1-0.  The game was hard fought, with the one goal winding up being ruled an own goal on ManU, since it deflected off of one of their players into the goal and arguably wouldn’t have if it hadn’t hit him.  This pretty much guarantees Chelsea will finish in the top four, which puts them automatically into the Champions League next year.  They play for the Europa League championship on May 15 against Benfica, a team from Lisbon, Portugal.  Two more games and the Premiere League season will be finished as well.

 

Alpha and Omega

There were a number of interesting events last week.  On Monday afternoon, President Rossbacher and I met with two consultants that the Business Administration Department has engaged to help us in preparing to apply for AACSB accreditation.  AACSB is the highest level of business accreditation available (we currently are accredited by ACBSP, and my previous campus business program was accredited by IACBE), and getting it is a long and difficult process—if all goes well, we will achieve it by 2020.  The consultants were quite helpful, telling us about some challenges we face and some pitfalls we need to avoid.  The good news is that our business faculty are solidly behind this effort and our polytechnic identity will serve us well here.

Monday night at 11:00 PM brought the end of semester Midnight Breakfast.  About 25 volunteers went to the X and served about 350 students who came by to eat.  It was a lot of fun and the best line of the night came from Rich Cole, who after putting on his apron, asked: “Does this make my butt look big?”  The breakfast ended at a little past 1:00 AM.  Thanks go to Sarah Holliday (Math) and many others for pulling this together.

Morning came quickly with a Senior Staff meeting at 9:00 on Tuesday, where we debriefed about the Town Hall meeting the previous week, and talked about future plans regarding parking on campus (the good news:  no plans to charge faculty and staff).  I had to leave early to un-suit up to play with the band at the annual Faculty-Staff Picnic.  The highlight of the event was the electric slide dance, with at least some pronouncing Bill Prigge to be the coolest VP because of his dance-floor moves.  Hmm…I want a recount!  Later in the afternoon was the Honors Graduation Celebration.  The event was wonderful as always, and gave me the opportunity to thank Nancy Reichert for the many years of fine work she has done as Honors Program Director.  The Honors Program has grown from some 25 students to over 200 and this year marks its 10^th anniversary.  Nancy is stepping down as director at the end of the year.  Iraj Omidvar has been selected as the new director, and I know he’ll do a great job.

Wednesday’s ALC meeting dealt with a number of routine matters, but the conversation took an interesting turn during the Workload Policy discussion.  Steve Hamrick had prepared a document summarizing our current practices (no new policies were in it), and various chairs took the opportunity to raise questions about why we only count labs and studios at half-time (i.e., a three-hour lab counts as 1.5 hours against workload), and why we don’t award any extra workload credit for extra-large courses.  Both of these policies predate my coming to SPSU in 2005, and have come up from time to time at Deans Council meetings over the past seven years.  Part of the problem is that the old funding formula underfunded lab and studio courses (since a standard lab course gets four credits worth of tuition payments and formula funding but generates 4.5 hours of workload; and an architectural studio gets four credits worth of tuition and formula funding but generates 6.0 hours of workload), and these days, the fraction of the formula that gets funded is smaller each year.  Thus, doing something about this would cost a significant amount of money, and there’s no obvious source to get that money unless formula funding were to rise (unlikely).

The larger course issue is one that’s complicated to deal with since a large course in one subject is often a normal course in another—just look at the variety of different course caps we have.  We’ll probably take the large course issue up again and see if we can find some reasonable and equitable way of dealing with it.  If anyone has any suggestions, I’d be interested in hearing about them.

Thursday morning at 7:00 AM brought the annual Cobb Prayer Breakfast at the Cobb Galleria, part of the national day of prayer.  This is a huge event—maybe 1000 or more people there.  The event is billed as being for the entire faith community, but it really wasn’t very broad-based.  Still, the company, food, music, and intentions were all good, and I was glad I went.

Friday afternoon brought the University Institutional Effectiveness Council meeting, where we adopted the current draft of the Strategic Plan as a working document, while remanding it to a subcommittee to work toward aligning it with the Complete College Georgia plan and the students’ lifecycle at SPSU.

 

 

Misunderstandings about Equity

It has come to my attention that there are some serious misunderstandings about the old salary equity plan that was used in 2007, 2008, and 2009, if my memory is correct.  These misunderstandings may have played a part in the Faculty Senate’s recent motion to change the way that equity is applied, if we ever are allowed to make equity adjustments again.

Apparently, at least some people think that the salary equity plan means that if the USG provides for a 3% raise (for example), the 1.4 multiplier that some departments get means that those departments would get 1.4 times the 3% as a raise, in other words, would get a 4.2% raise.  That was never true, was never part of the salary equity plan, and in fact, would make no sense whatsoever.  In fact, there is no relationship between the salary equity plan and any raise that might occur.  Apparently, some other people believed that the last time we did an equity adjustment, we multiplied the adjustments by 1.4 factor for those in some departments.  That was never true either.

Here’s how the salary equity plan actually worked.  As we are all aware, different academic fields draw different faculty salaries.  On average across the nation, faculty in business, computer science, and engineering are paid more (by a factor of 1.4 last time we looked at it) than faculty in English.  This difference starts at the point when the faculty member is hired and in most places, continues proportionately as they progress through the ranks and over the years.  Professor Smith, a faculty member in one field might have a starting salary of $50,000 a year, while professor Jones, a faculty member in another field might have a starting salary of $70,000 a year, 1.4 times as much.  In normal times, after a number of years, Smith will have been promoted to associate professor and gotten some raises along the way, and so will Jones.  If Smith’s salary has gone up to $75,000 over time for example (a 50% increase), all things being equal one would expect Jones’ salary to have gone up by the same percentage, to $105,000.  Assuming that the starting salaries were accurate and that the accumulated raises match the national average, both faculty would still have equitable salaries.

The problem arises if the starting salary was below average for the field, or if accumulated raises were below the national average.  In that case, the salary for Smith and Jones will be below what they should be.  The “should be” number is called parity.  The salary equity model calculates what the salary for every faculty member “should be”, based on average salaries in their field in the Southeast for universities like us.  Since, on average, the SREB data tells us that faculty in business, computer science, and engineering get a salary 1.4 times that of faculty in English at any point in their careers, we say in shorthand that those three fields have a multiplier of 1.4 relative to English.  The only place the multiplier is used is in calculating this parity salary.

The salary equity model then calculates the difference between the parity salary the faculty member should be getting and what they’re actually getting.  This is the so-called “delta”.  The delta is calculated as a percentage, since if professor Smith’s actual salary is $63,000 instead of $70,000, Smith has a 10% delta and is 10% below parity.  To be in a similar situation, Jones would also have to be 10% under the target of $105,000, i.e., making $94,500.  Both Smith and Jones would therefore be at 90% of parity—one is exactly as far behind as the other—and they are therefore being treated equivalently.

The actual result was, when we calculated the deltas for all faculty members, that some had larger deltas (as a percentage) than others.  This is because some were hired at lower relative salaries than others, and some had other things happen to screw things up.  What the salary equity plan did, therefore, was to give some extra equity money to the faculty with the largest percentage deltas—the faculty who were being treated the least fairly.  This equity adjustment helped move those faculty who were the highest percentage away from parity a bit closer to where everyone else already was.

In the years that we had equity adjustments, as best I remember, one year we took the 20 faculty with the largest deltas and gave them a $2,000 adjustment, and the 30 with the next largest and gave them a $1,000 adjustment.  Another year, we gave the top 40 or 50 a $1,000 adjustment.  Notice that these equity adjustments WERE NOT multiplied by the multiplier.  As I said above, the multiplier is only used to calculate the parity salary, and never used anywhere else.

These equity adjustments made the deltas for all faculty closer to being the same percentage—which is the definition of equity.  Note that completing an equity program doesn’t get the salaries to where they should be (that’s parity, and it would require larger than national average raises to accomplish)—it just means all faculty are being treated equivalently—they’re all off from parity by the same percentage.

I’d be happy to meet with the committee to explain this in greater detail, or to hear the committee say what they mean by their motion (“that any future equity adjustments awarded to faculty be divided equally into two pools, one pool using the discipline-specific multiplier under the previous procedures and the second pool using no multiplier”).  As it stands, their recommendation can’t be implemented since the multiplier isn’t actually used in calculating the equity adjustment.

 

 

Last Week’s Trivia Challenge

Last week’s trivia challenge focused on words related to “April”.   The winner was Kelli Tracy, who got all five in just a few minutes.  Here are the correct answers:

1. A good day for playing practical jokes.  April Fool’s Day
2. Answer to the old children’s joke, “If April showers bring May flowers, what do May flowers bring?”  Pilgrims.
3. Canadian singer whose #1 albums include “Let Go” and “Under My Skin”.  Avril Lavigne.
4. Doris Day movie from 1952—she plays a chorus girl named Ethel ‘Dynamite’ Jackson.  There’s also a popular song by that name, recorded by Count Basie among many others.  April in Paris.
5. Female friend to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, she has been played by Renae Jacobs and Megan Fox.  April O’Neill.

 

 

This Week’s Trivia Challenge

In honor of the new month, this week’s trivia challenge focuses on words related to “May”.  No looking up the answers now!  SEND ALL ENTRIES BY EMAIL TO zszafran@spsu.edu, since if you put them as a response on the BLOG, everyone will be able to see them!

1. You dance around it.
2. Spider-man’s aunt’s name.
3. She plays Sheldon’s girlfriend on the Big Bang Theory.
4. Famous clinic located in Rochester, Minnesota.
5. It was supposed to happen on December 21, 2012, but didn’t.

 

April 29, 2013

THE WEEKLY BLAB

Volume 7, Issue 30 – April 29, 2013

 

Almost

I can’t believe that the term is almost over.  Monday is the last day of classes and then we’re into finals.  Graduation is almost here too, though that kinda goes along with the end of finals.  After graduation?  A trip to link up with polytechnics in New Zealand and then off to some conferences.

Earth Day

On Monday, April 22, SPSU began its Earth Day celebration with an Earth Colloquium.  Speakers included President Rossbacher giving the welcome, me speaking on “Sustainability in Chemistry”, and after waking up the audience, talks by Jim Cooper, Julie Newell, Tom Nelson, Han Reichgelt, Scott Tippens, Julia Forbes (High Museum), and Pegah Zamani, who had organized the event.  This was followed by a group discussion on sustainability at SPSU, and what we might do to bring the subject more into the curriculum.  After, we walked down to the Architecture Gallery for a reception and an exhibit on some sustainability projects on campus.  Though the turnout was a little on the light side (about 30), the overall program was a fine first effort of what will be an annual colloquium on sustainability at SPSU.  Big thanks to Pegah Zamani (Architecture) for her fine work in pulling this together.

Awards Ceremony

Wednesday, April 24 marked SPSU’s annual Faculty and Staff Awards Ceremony.  The event was great and quite packed, not least of which was because we had a lot of folks receiving awards!   First came the service awards and there were lots of faculty and staff getting 5-, 10-, 15-, 20-, 25-, and even 30-year awards.  One highlight was that President Rossbacher was surprised when the Chancellor surprised her by personally handing her a 15-year award for her service.  The HR staff managed to keep his invitation to the ceremony a secret.

The Outstanding Staff Member awards went to Sharon Hodges (ACM), Theresa Street, and much to her surprise, Quint Hill (HR).  Then it was time for me to name the four winners of the Outstanding Faculty Awards, which went to Don Ariail (Accounting), Wasim Barham (Civil Engineering), Charles Duvall (ECET), and Wei Zhou (Chemistry).  This was followed by the announcement of SPSU’s three new Emeritus Professors, Carol Barnum (ETCMA), Barbara Bernal (CSSWE), and Betty Oliver (ETCMA).

Congratulations to all our award winners!

Installation and Dahlonega Road Trip

Last Friday, Jill, Mark, and I took a little road trip up to Dahlonega for the installation of the University of North Georgia’s new president, Bonita Jacobs.  Actually, president Jacobs isn’t new—she became president of North Georgia College and State University in 2011, but her “welcoming gift” was that NGCSU was merged with Gainesville State College to form the University of North Georgia.  The installation was thus delayed for a year and Dr. Jacobs became NGCSU’s 17^th and last president and UNG’s first.

I’d never been to Dahlonega before, despite living in Georgia since 2005.  For some reason, I had it in my head that it was much farther from Marietta than it is—it turns out that it’s only a little more than an hour from my house if I hit the lights right and don’t run into much traffic on Roswell Road.  It was a beautiful day and we got to Dahlonega at about 10:30 AM.  It’s a lovely little town, with a lot of cool local shops in a downtown “square” (which is more like a circle), along with the former court house which is now a Gold Museum.  For those who don’t know, gold used to be mined in Dahlonega and for a short period, there was even a U.S. mint there.  Coins from the Dahlonega mint are exceedingly rare.

I dropped Jill and Mark off to explore the downtown area and off I went to the presidential brunch, where I ran into a bunch of friends from around the USG, including Margaret Venable, Linda Noble, Al Panu, and several others less known to folks on our campus.  At the brunch, Dr. Jacobs introduced her family and talked about how UNG would be moving forward in the future as an union of four campuses (Dahlonega, Gainesville, Oconee, and Cumming), each with their own cultures and identities, but having a single mission.

We wandered off to find the building in which we were supposed to robe up.  At first, there were only a few people there, but as 11:45 drew nearer, the place filled (and heated) up—it was UNG faculty to the left, arranged by rank and longevity, and visiting delegates (that’s me!) to the right, arranged by their university’s year of founding.  SPSU’s 1948 date put me at #25 in line.  After a few sweaty minutes, we all marched onto the parade field (UNG has a military mission, after all) to our seats, which were unfortunately of the hard metal variety with no padding.

The weather was sunny and breezy, with the latter overcoming some of the effects of the former.  I did touch my SPSU medallion at one point—a mistake, since bronze has a good heat capacity and the medallion was as hot as you know what.   Speakers included Dr. Jacobs’ sister, who told a funny story about how Benita was always the perfect student, which ticked her off no end—so she dedicated here young life to torturing Benita.  This torture, she declared, made Benita the woman that she is, so she ended by saying “you’re welcome”.  Other speakers included Governor Nathan Deal (who had to leave shortly thereafter), Chancellor Huckaby, representatives from the faculty, alumni, and students on the four campuses, and of course Dr. Jacobs herself, on the theme of “Building on a Tradition of Excellence: Scholarship, Leadership, Service”.

The ceremony was over at about 2:30, and when I got back to the car to meet Jill and Mark, the first thing they said was “Wow—you must have been out in the sun!” because I had a really nice sunburn on my face and forehead.  We took a drive north of the town for a few hours, stopping at the lovely Wolf Mountain Winery.  Jill made me promise to bring her back there in the future.  After a little antiquing in town, we met Tom Nelson and his lovely wife Dianne, who is UNG’s interim department head of Nursing for dinner.  When Mark discovered that they own three dogs, he insisted we go to their house afterwards so he could meet them.  He’s been talking about one of them, Lobo, ever since.  Then it was back to the Quality Inn for some sleep.

Saturday was a bit drizzly, so we left town about 11:00 AM and stopped at the North Georgia Outlet Stores for a while, and then down to Roswell for our usual stop at CD Warehouse.

 

 

Metablab

For those who don’t know, THE WEEKLY BLAB is a more-or-less weekly blog intended to give me a way to communicate in a casual way with the faculty and staff at SPSU and interested folks beyond.  Subject matter can be anything—news at SPSU, issues in higher education, all kinds of music, something in the national news, or whatever strikes me as interesting at the time.

Now in its seventh year, the BLAB started as an email newsletter and more recently became a blog.  No, it’s not written on “company time”—I write it at home, most often on Sunday night.  Since January, it has attracted (if that’s the right word) readers in 25 different countries, including the Russian Federation, Yemen, and Indonesia.  After the U.S., the most readers have come from Colombia, Venezuela, Israel, and Canada.

I hope you enjoy reading it and I appreciate the many nice comments I’ve gotten.  If you don’t like it, well—that’s what the delete key is for.

 

Last Time’s Trivia Contest

Questions last time focused on Boston.  This one didn’t draw too many entries.  The on-campus winner was Richard Ruhala (Systems and Mechanical Engineering), though he was beaten by my old friend, Paul Howley, who had the advantage of living near Boston for many years. Here are the answers:

1. The oldest major league baseball park still in use.  Fenway Park in Boston.
2. The oldest fully-commissioned ship in the Navy, located in Charlestown Navy Yard, Boston.   Old Ironsides (officially, the U.S.S. Constitution).
3. The official dessert of Massachusetts.  Boston Cream Pie, of course.
4. Deepest tunnel in North America, named after “the Splendid Splinter”.  The Ted Williams Tunnel.
5. The first to have this happen was the book “The Meritous Price of Our Redemption”, by William Pynchon, in 1652.  First work to have been ‘banned in Boston’.

This Week’s Trivia Challenge

Today’s trivia challenge focuses on words related to “April”. No looking up the answers now!  SEND ALL ENTRIES BY EMAIL TO zszafran@spsu.edu, since if you put them as a response on the BLOG, everyone will be able to see them!

1. A good day for playing practical jokes.
2. Answer to the old children’s joke, “If April showers bring may flowers, what do may flowers bring?”
3. Canadian singer whose #1 albums include “Let Go” and “Under My Skin”.
4. Doris Day movie from 1952—she plays a chorus girl named Ethel ‘Dynamite’ Jackson.  There’s also a popular song by that name, recorded by Count Basie among many others.
5. Female friend to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, she has been played by Renae Jacobs and Megan Fox.

April 22, 2013

THE WEEKLY BLAB

Volume 7, Issue 29 – April 22, 2013

 

 

Meet and Greet

This is the time of year that there are a gazillion meetings and events that I’m running back and forth between.  Just to keep everyone up with what’s going on, here’s a recap of some from the past 10 days or so.  I’ll start with Thursday evening.  The list doesn’t include one-on-one meetings of various types, or 11 different new faculty interviews.

On Thursday, April 11, I had the pleasure of having dinner with Trude Jacobsen, Assistant Director of the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at Northern Illinois University, and Julia Lamb, their outreach director.  The two were delightful individuals, both having traveled extensively (and lived) around the world.  They were here for a mini-conference that SPSU was hosting the next day on Contextualizing Southeast Asia and incorporating it into the curriculum.  The mini-conference drew about 50 participants, and the evaluations were excellent.  We had a similar mini-conference last October on Global Economy and Governance (with faculty from the University of Pittsburgh), and plan on having one every term.  The next one will be on Latin America.  Details will be forthcoming at the beginning of fall semester.  Thanks to Raj Shashti for organizing these important events.

Friday night, April 12, was the Student Awards Banquet.  It’s always great to see so many students dressed up and receiving awards.  Among all the students, Russ Patrick (Physics) was selected as honors professor of the year, and Rich Cole (Interim Dean, ACM) was selected as student government professor of the year.  Congratulations to both!

One thing surprised me though—some departments weren’t represented at all, and gave out no award.  When I raised the question as to why, I got an email from one department saying that their award is an “outstanding student” award, and there were no students who rose to that level this year.  I have no particular problem if a department wants to have such an “outstanding student” award and only give it out when someone is truly spectacular.  However, my view is that each department should, at a minimum, also have a “top student of the year award” (determined by highest GPA, strongest service to the department, or some combination of such things) and give it out each and every year.  If your department doesn’t have enough funds to endow such an award, contact my office and I’ll provide the funding.

After hurrying to do my taxes over the weekend (yes—I’m a procrastinator), Monday April 15 brought a visit from several colleagues from Georgia Military College, including their outgoing president, Major General Peter J. Boylan.  The folks from GMC were here to sign an articulation agreement with us, initially in Biology and Information Technology, with other areas to be quickly added.  GMC has some 8,000 students in their 2-year associates programs, and focuses on both intellectual and character development.  Our hope is that healthy numbers of them will complete their educations at SPSU.  With more and more jobs requiring a four-year degree, such articulations are critically important.

Later on Monday was SPSU’s Teacher of the Year Presentation.  As everyone should know, our Teacher of the Year is Deidra Hodges (Electrical Engineering), who gave an interesting presentation that was well packed with engineering, chemistry, and a multitude of other subjects, since Deidra is a firm believer in interdisciplinarity.  Deidra is also up for the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education Professors of the Year Award, and I wish her the best of luck in getting it.

Tuesday brought a road trip down to Georgia Military College, so that we could sign the articulation on their campus as well.  They’re located in the old state capitol area of Milledgeville, and have a campus that is beautiful and historic.  Rich Cole did the driving on the trip for Tom Nelson and me, and all was well until we got into Milledgeville, when his GPS sent us to a back street off of a back street, and told us we had reached our destination.  I pulled out the ol’ iPhone and the maps app showed us the right way—we were about 2 miles off.  Joining up with President Rossbacher, Sam Conn, Ron Koger, and Jim Cooper, we went in to sign the articulation a second time in the same room as where Georgia signed the articles of secession from the union.  The room is quite impressive, with portraits of Washington and Jefferson hanging in the front, and one of Governor James Oglethorpe hanging at the side.  Oglethorpe was a great man, well ahead of his time on a number of progressive issues.

We got back to campus a little after 5:00 PM, so I headed down to Building J for the ETCMA Portfolio Open House.  I enjoy going to this event every year, because the portfolios prepared by our senior ETCMA students are both impressive and artistic, and the students speak with great eloquence about their learning experiences.  This year, in addition to the usual excellent portfolio presentations, students had also prepared examples of artwork, video work, and graphics.  Congratulations to the whole ETCMA faculty for their fine work.

Wednesday morning brought a meeting with Sam Conn, Bill Prigge, and Steve Kitchen, to make sure that we were all on the same page with the various space renovation and IT upgrade projects.  We’re currently involved in quite a few—upgrading space in multiple buildings on campus, and making some major improvements in campus IT infrastructure.  The projects are complicated by the fact that they often draw input and funding from multiple sources, so that a lot of coordination is required.  We agreed that the four of us should meet on a regular basis—perhaps monthly—to keep things on track.

Later on Wednesday was the weekly Deans Council meeting.  Among the topics discussed was how the Deans will deal with vetting future new degree proposals, the abovementioned student awards (and lack thereof by some departments), and a draft policy on summer camps.  Updates included that the BoR has passed a 2.5% tuition increase, that formula funds were supplied to SPSU for six additional faculty and for two advisors, that two new SPSU degree programs will hopefully be on the May BoR agenda for approval, and that the BoR is reviewing our past new degree proposals as to their enrollments.

Thursday evening brought a reception and a talk by the Brazilian Consul General, Hermano Ribeiro.  Brazil has made tremendous economic progress in the past decade or two, and now has one of the top 10 economies in the world, soon to be in the top 5.  Brazil will host both the World Cup and the Olympics in the next two years, and is making major investments in infrastructure and human capital.  The government and private companies are funding international study for 100,000 Brazilians, and we will be working with the consulate to explore partnerships with Brazilian universities and to make sure that some of these students come to SPSU.  I had the pleasure of having dinner with Ambassador Ribeiro afterwards, and he is an extremely well-informed, helpful, and down-to-earth individual.  This talk is part of SPSU’s Cross-Cultural Conversations Series, with plans to host two or three such receptions and talks on our campus every semester.  Earlier talks this semester were given by the consulates of South Korea and France.  Thanks again to Raj Shashti for organizing these events.

Friday afternoon included a subcommittee meeting from our University Institutional Effectiveness Group, with Sam Conn, Rich Cole, Han Reichgelt, and Dave Cline.  The subcommittee’s goal was to align our Strategic Plan with our Complete College Georgia effort and Mission Statement.  We had a really good discussion on how we might align these documents to clearly illustrate what our overall goals are for SPSU students.

Finally, Saturday morning was Open House, and the place was packed.  The weather started out a bit cold but quickly turned very nice, and the “SPSU Morning Show” was fun as usual.  Lots of parents prospective students had good things to say about the University and our programs, and a few even commented about how cool the band was.

Whew! I’m exhausted just typing about it.  Now it’s off to a new week, starting off with teaching bioinorganic chemistry in the morning, five more faculty candidate interviews, and giving a talk at the Earth Day Colloquium at 4:00 on “Sustainability in Chemistry”.

 

 

B Strong

Last week’s news events hit a little close to home for me.  As most people know, I lived in New England for most of my professional life, and the Boston Marathon was a huge annual event.  I know lots of people who ran in the Marathon—students, faculty, and friends.

Immediately, the news media speculated as to who the perpetrators might be and what their motivation might have been for carrying out this heinous act.  One newspaper even published a picture of the supposed perpetrator on its front page—only he wasn’t the one who did it.

As of now, the guilty parties seem to have been two brothers who immigrated from Chechnya (a region of Russia) some ten years ago, and their motives for this act are yet unknown.  One is dead, and after shutting down much of Boston for a day, the other was captured in Watertown.  I’ve been in Watertown many times, since my cousin Ifat lived there for many years until just recently.

Editorial cartoon by Jeff Darcy, the Cleveland Plain Dealer

 

Assuming they have the right parties, we’ll now be subjected to a bunch of self-serving explanations for why they did it.  Sadly, the world has all too many people who are so caught up in their own hatreds and outrage, that they don’t care how much suffering they cause to people who have never even heard of them.  Since they’re outraged, they believe, then everyone has to suffer.

Editorial cartoon by Nate Beeler, the Columbus Dispatch

 

Thomas Friedman wrote an editorial talking about what the right response is to such outrages, and I think he got it about right.  He wrote:

We still do not know who set off the Boston Marathon bombs or why. But we do know now, after 9/11, after all the terrorism the world has seen in the last decade, what the right reaction is: Wash the sidewalk, wipe away the blood and let whoever did it know that while they have sickeningly maimed and killed some of our brothers and sisters, they have left no trace on our society or way of life.

Terrorists are not strong enough to do that — only we can do that to ourselves — and we must never accommodate them.

So let’s repair the sidewalk immediately, fix the windows, fill the holes and leave no trace — no shrines, no flowers, no statues, no plaques — and return life to normal there as fast as possible.

Let’s defy the terrorists, by not allowing them to leave even the smallest scar on our streets, and honor the dead by sanctifying our values, by affirming life and all those things that make us stronger and bring us closer together as a country.

Let’s name a playground or a school after that 8-year-old boy, Martin Richard, who was standing with his father, Bill, mother and sister when the bomb tore through them all.

Let’s donate to the favorite life-giving charities of the other victims. Let’s pitch in to help the injured recover. But on lovely Boylston Street in Boston, a place normally so full of life, let there be no reminder whatsoever of what President Obama called this “heinous and cowardly act” of terror.

And while we are at it, let’s schedule another Boston Marathon as soon as possible.

 

 

Last Time’s Trivia Contest

Questions last time focused on people who were chemists or chemical engineers, but are better known in other fields.  The winner was Lance Crimm (Electrical and Mechatronics Engineering) with an unbelievable seven correct. Here are the answers:

1. Star of “Two and a Half Men” and “That Seventies Show”.  Studied biochemistry at University of Iowa, but didn’t graduate (slacker!).  Aston Kutcher
2. Director for “It’s a Wonderful Life”.  Chemistry degree from California Institute of Technology, 1918.  Frank Capra
3. Author of “Cat’s Cradle” and “Slaughterhouse Five”.  Majored in Chemistry at Cornell.  Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
4. Science-fiction writer, best known for his “Foundation” and “Empire” novels, and responsible for the three laws of robotics.  Chemistry Ph.D. from Columbia in 1948.  Isaac Asimov
5. First female Attorney General of the United States (1993-2001).  B.S. in Chemistry from Cornell in 1960.  Janet Reno
6. President of Israel (1949-1952).  Ph.D. from the University of Freiburg in 1899.  Chaim Weitzmann
7. Russian composer of the opera “Prince Igor”, and the “Polovtsian Dances”, as well as three symphonies and “In the Steppes of Central Asia”.   He was the chemistry chair of the Medical-Surgical Academy of St. Petersburg, and co-discoverer of the aldol condensation.  Alexander Borodin

 

 

This Week’s Trivia Challenge

Today’s trivia challenge focuses on Boston. No looking up the answers now!  SEND ALL ENTRIES BY EMAIL TO zszafran@spsu.edu, since if you put them as a response on the BLOG, everyone will be able to see them!

1. The oldest major league baseball park still in use.
2. The oldest fully-commissioned ship in the Navy, located in Charlestown Navy Yard, Boston.
3. The official dessert of Massachusetts.
4. Deepest tunnel in North America, named after “the Splendid Splinter”.
5. The first to have this happen was the book “The Meritous Price of Our Redemption”, by William Pynchon, in 1652.

April 15, 2013

THE WEEKLY BLAB

Volume 7, Issue 28 – April 15, 2013

 

No Need to Thank Me

I don’t know if everyone has heard this already, but Atlanta was just named the nerdiest city in America.  It seems that Randy Nelson, blogger on Movoto.com (the lighter side of real estate), has created a top 10 of nerdiness, based on such things as number of comic book, video game, anime, and science fiction/fantasy conventions, people per comic book store, people per computer store, and people per science museum.  Using these criteria, Atlanta came out #1 with Portland, OR #2, Seattle #3, and so on, down to Denver at #10.  You can see the analysis and the various comments on it by clicking here.

Thanks to Nancy Reichert (Director of the Honors Program), who sent the email to the campus letting us know about this.  In it, she wrote “I’m sure that Dr. Szafran would love his definition since it includes people per comic book store ”

Now, it would probably be arrogant to say that Atlanta has moved up the rankings now that I’m here (along with the vast Szafran comic book repository), but can it be a coincidence that the former nerd nirvana of Boston is now down to #6 now that I’ve left New England?  I think not.

 

First Love Lost

Everyone remembers their first love, and I shared mine with millions of guys who are now in their fifties and sixties.  Sadly, she passed away this past week.  Of course, I’m talking about Annette Funicello.

Most people don’t know that Annette was actually not a California girl—she was born in Utica, NY, only an hour away from Syracuse where I grew up.  I first saw Annette on the Mickey Mouse Club, where she was one of the older mouseketeers.   She could sing, she could dance, and her personality made her stand out from all the others.  Walt Disney saw this too, and in the Club’s third season, pulled her out to star in her own 19-part serial within the show, imaginatively titled “Annette”.   In the serial, she played an orphaned country girl who moves into town with her upper-class relatives.  It’s basically a variation on the city mouse-country mouse story, with Annette trying to fit into the city high school scene.

During the serial, she sang a song called “How Will I Know My Love” which drew so many letters that Disney signed her to a singing contract and released it as a single.  Annette was always a reluctant singer, since her voice was rather thin.  She did have a series of minor hits as a singer, the best known of which was “Tall Paul” which reached #7 on the 1959 charts.

After the Mickey Mouse Club went off the air, Annette appeared in several Disney TV Shows (Zorro, Elfego Baca, the Horsemasters) and went on to star in a number of Disney movies (Babes in Toyland, The Shaggy Dog, The Misadventures of Merlin Jones, and The Monkey’s Uncle).

Annette perhaps is best known for the string of beach movies that she costarred in with Frankie Avalon for American International Pictures between 1963 and 1965.  The movies all had more-or-less the same plot:  Frankie and Annette arrive at the beach with a bunch of friends, Frankie wants to go farther than Annette romance-wise, they get into a big fight where one of them seems to go off with someone else, there’s a sequence involving race car driving or sky diving or the like, and Frankie and Annette get back together.  The movies had a lot of their cast in common, beyond Frankie and Annette, including son Mark’s favorite—Harvey Lembeck as Eric von Zipper, a pretty unintimidating motorcycle hoodlum.  Music was supplied by a variety of groups, which almost always included Dick Dale and the Del-Tones.  One of my proudest possessions is a poster of the movie Beach Party, signed by both Frankie and Annette.  You can see it in my office.

There’s an urban legend that Annette never showed her belly-button and always wore a one piece bathing suite in all of the beach movies.  Since I own ‘em all, I can assure you that it isn’t true—she wore a two-piece bathing suit in Beach Party (the first of the beach movies, 1963) and Muscle Beach Party (the second, 1964), and she wore a bikini in Bikini Beach (the third, 1964).  This legend probably comes from the true story that Walt Disney asked Annette to always wear modest bathing suits, and the suits she wore were generally among the more modest in those movies.  One funny thing is that in the cover photo of the record album Bikini Beach (released on Disney’s Buena Vista label), she’s wearing a one-piece.

 

Annette, complete with bikini and belly-button, in “Bikini Beach” (1964)

Non-beach movies of this genre also showed up in this time period, including Pajama Party and Ski Party, the latter not featuring Annette (but including both Leslie Gore and Yvonne Craig, who later went on to become Batgirl.  They’re both pretty good.)  The beach movie craze ended in 1965.  Annette’s almost last hurrah came in two racing movies, Fireball 500 and Thunder Alley, in 1966 and 1967 respectively.  Both are pretty blah, unless you’re a NASCAR fan—there’s some pretty cool early NASCAR footage in them.  The odd thing about Fireball 500 is that while Frankie Avalon is in it, Annette winds up with his rival, Fabian.

After the movies were done, in 1965, Annette got married to Jack Gilardi.  I was heartbroken.  She had three children, Gina, Jack, and Jason, and spent most of her time caring for her family with only a few TV appearances.  The marriage lasted until 1981, and she married her second husband, Glen Holt, in 1986.  Her final movie, Back to the Beach, was in 1987—again co-starring with Frankie Avalon.  The movie was a loving parody (“Appearing for the 20^th straight year—Dick Dale”) of her earlier movies (and Skippy TV commercials), with Frankie and Annette now parents of two teenagers.  In the movie, she does a great version of the song “Jamaica Ska”, a song she had recorded more than 20 years earlier, with Fishbone.  You can see the youtube video here.  At 2:20 into the clip, you can hear someone in the crowd shout “We love you Annette”.

It was around this time that Annette began to suffer from the effects of multiple sclerosis.  She publically announced she had the disease in 1992.  A TV movie was made of her life story—A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes: The Annette Funicello Story—in 1995.  Eva LaRue plays Annette in the movie, but in the last scene, turns away from the audience while seated in a wheelchair, and when she turns back, it’s the real Annette.  Annette lost the ability to walk in 2004, and to speak in 2009.  On April 8, 2013, she passed away, at the age of 70.  My closest friend and college roommate, Joseph Lucchesi, was also a victim of this terrible disease.

Annette Funicello was one of those rare individuals who was popular with everyone—I never met anyone who didn’t like her.  On screen and off, she radiated charm, modesty and sweetness.  You could instantly tell she was the real thing, and she really was.  We’ll miss you, Annette—more than you ever knew.

 

Three on a Match

Also passing away on April 8 was Margaret Thatcher, the prime minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990.  Conservatives loved her and liberals hated her, but I’m not going to get into that.  To me, the most fascinating thing about her was that little feature that she had in common with the Pope and with me—she was a chemist.  Margaret Roberts (that was her maiden name) earned her B.Sc. with 2^nd Class Honours at Oxford in 1947, and went on to work at BX Plastics as a research chemist.  She was reportedly rejected for a job at Imperial Chemical Industries because the HR department found her to be “headstrong, obstinate and dangerously self-opinionated”.  How little they knew of what was to come—she turned to politics, and the rest is history.

 

 

Last Time’s Trivia Contest

Questions last time focused on computers.  The   winner was Alan Gabrielli (SPSU-Teach) with all five correct. Here are the answers:

1. To err is human, to really foul things up requires                                 .  A computer.
2. Someone who tries to exploit a weakness in computer security.  Hacker.
3. :>)  A computer emoticon.
4. “Pong” was the first successful commercial one.  Computer Arcade Game.
5. The only Disney movie with the word “computer” in its title, it came out in 1969.  The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes.

 

 

This Week’s Trivia Challenge

Today’s trivia challenge focuses on people who were chemists or chemical engineers, but are better known in other fields.  Special Rules for this one:  First person to get five right wins (and Alan Gabrielli is disqualified from this one)!  No looking up the answers now!  SEND ALL ENTRIES BY EMAIL TO zszafran@spsu.edu, since if you put them as a response on the BLOG, everyone will be able to see them!

1. Star of “Two and a Half Men” and “That Seventies Show”.  Studied biochemistry at University of Iowa, but didn’t graduate (slacker!).
2. Director for “It’s a Wonderful Life”.  Chemistry degree from California Institute of Technology, 1918.
3. Author of “Cat’s Cradle” and “Slaughterhouse Five”.  Majored in Chemistry at Cornell.
4. Science-fiction writer, best known for his “Foundation” and “Empire” novels, and responsible for the three laws of robotics.  Chemistry Ph.D. from Columbia in 1948.
5. First female Attorney General of the United States (1993-2001).  B.S. in Chemistry from Cornell in 1960.
6. President of Israel (1949-1952).  Ph.D. from the University of Freiburg in 1899.
7. Russian composer of the opera “Prince Igor”, and the “Polovtsian Dances”, as well as three symphonies and “In the Steppes of Central Asia”.   He was the chemistry chair of the Medical-Surgical Academy of St. Petersburg, and co-discoverer of the aldol condensation.

April 8, 2013

THE WEEKLY BLAB

Volume 7, Issue 27 – April 8, 2013

I Coulda Been Bill Gates!

On Thursday evening, I had the pleasure of attending the inaugural installation of members of SPSU’s chapter of Upsilon Pi Epsilon (UPE), the International Honor Society for the Computing and Information Disciplines.  Jonathan Lartigue (CS) had led the effort to organize a chapter at SPSU and it all came to fruition on Thursday, with some 40 students being inducted into UPE.  Jonathan made the mistake of asking me to say a few words, so I joined President Lisa Rossbacher and Dean Han Reichgelt on the dais.

Lisa congratulated the students, and then spoke about Grace Hopper (nickname: Amazing Grace), who was a pioneer in the field of Computer Science.  Hopper received her Masters Degree from Yale University in 1928, and a Ph.D. in Mathematics in 1934.  She taught math at Vassar beginning in 1931, and got a leave of absence from Vassar in 1943 to join the Naval Reserve.  She graduated 1^st in her class at Naval Reserve Midshipman’s School at Smith College, and was assigned to the Bureau of Ships Computation Project at Harvard, where she was one of the first programmers on the Mark I computer, and developed the first compiler for a computer language.  Among her many major accomplishments in the field of computing, she is responsible for the term “debugging” relative to a computer program.  One day in 1947 while working on the Mark II computer, her associates found a moth had gotten into one of the relays and was responsible for the computer not working.  When they removed the moth, she told them they had debugged the system, and taped the moth into the logbook (which is now in the Smithsonian Institution).

Hopper retired several times, but was always called back to duty.  Her final retirement came in 1986, as a rear admiral and the oldest commissioned officer in the Navy.  The destroyer USS Hopper (DDG-70) is named for her, as is the Cray XE6 “Hopper” supercomputer, at the Naval Energy Research Scientific Computing Center.

My remarks weren’t quite so erudite.  I had learned that the UPE Honor Society is now 46 years old, which meant it was founded at Texas A&M in 1967, so I decided to talk about what computing was like back then.

In 1967, I was the ripe old age of 12, and the only computer I was aware of was in the Bat Cave on the TV show Batman.  I went to grad school in South Carolina in 1976, and a few years later, my research professor thought I needed to take a break from the lab and gave me a computer project to work on.  I’d never taken any computer courses, but decided I’d give it a shot.  I found that I liked programming and picked it up pretty quickly, becoming the lab group’s go-to computer guy, and doing about half my thesis on a project involving computer simulation of NMR spectra (don’t ask!).

Computing was very different in those days.  Programs were punched onto computer cards, and when you wanted to run the program, the stack of cards had to be fed through an air-blown card reader.  The air would ruffle the cards up, and they’d go fut-fut-fut-fut through the reader in a process that would screw up about ¼ of the time.  In that case, you’d have to feed them over again.

The University of South Carolina used the state government’s mainframe computer, which was the most powerful computer in the state.  If your computer program required lots of memory, it was automatically queued with a low priority and had to run overnight.  Lots of memory in this case meant anything more than 8K!

The research I was doing required me to use a computer program that could do a Fourier Transform.  While there was a commercial program that claimed it could do a Fourier Transform, I found that it didn’t work—it produced garbage as the result.   In checking what was going wrong, I found that the eigenvectors it calculated weren’t orthonormal (again, don’t ask).  I called the company, who connected me to their programmer.  When I told him that when I multiplied one eigenvector by another I didn’t get “0” as the result (or if I multiplied it by itself, I didn’t get “1”), he told me “that’s not what we mean by orthonormal”.  When I asked what they meant by orthonormal, he said he’d call me back.  As of today, I’m still waiting for that call.

Ultimately, I had to write my own program to do the Fourier Transform, and more importantly, an inverse Fourier Transform, to simulate the spectra.  I first tried to use a programming language called PL-1 that looked promising, but had to abandon it because we could never get numbers to converge in its logic statements.  I’m still waiting for that phone call from the programmers too.  I settled on Fortran IV and even using the fast-Fourier Transform algorithm that had recently been published, it was a big program—about 16K.  So, I was doing a lot of this work overnight.

It was a big day in my life when I met the guy who was in charge of the state mainframe at a local bar.  I bought him a beer and he told me the password for the computer’s initiators.  That was great, because if your program had the password on it, it would jump the queue and run immediately, even in the daytime.  As the time I wanted to finish my research drew nearer, I’d put through several versions of the program at once.  On one ambitious day, I put through ten at one time, and got a call from state mainframe telling me to stop—I’d just blocked the state from running its payroll by tying up all available initiators.

When it was time to write up my thesis, the first commercial plotter had just come on the market and I still remember working for several hours with the computer guys to hook it up, since I wanted to use it.  No plug and play in those days.  There were no printers capable of doing superscripts and subscripts either—you had to add them yourself by feeding the pages into an IBM typewriter.

As it turns out, I was the first graduate student to write his thesis using a word processing language—an ancient language called “Script”.  When I took the thesis to the Thesis Lady who had to approve that it was on the right kind of paper (at least 40% rag content, ruled with a red square) and had the right signatures on it, she noticed that it was both left- and right-justified.  She looked me in the eye, raised an eyebrow, and asked me how I had managed to do that.  I knew then and there with perfect certainty that if I told her that it had been printed on a computer, she would have rejected it.  So instead, I looked her right back in the eye and said, “I had to pay the typist extra for that.”

 

Sports Roundup

As most readers of the BLAB are aware, I have little interest in football or basketball.  Still, it’s hard not to get caught up in the March Madness fever, especially with hometown team Syracuse in the final four.  My father was telling me that he thought Louisville was going to win the other semifinal, and that Syracuse had beaten Louisville earlier in the season, thereby giving Syracuse every chance to take it all.  Naturally, that put the curse on Syracuse, and down they went.  So who will take it all—Michigan or Louisville?  I’m sure someone cares…

Meanwhile in the beautiful game, while Chelsea has been pretty sucky in the Premier League this year, currently bouncing between third and fourth in the league, they’ve been doing pretty well in the other competitions.  They beat Manchester United to get to the quarterfinals of the F.A. Cup championship, and are closing in on the Europa League semifinals by beating Rubin Kazan (a Russian team) 3-1.  Fernando Torres, who Chelsea paid more than $50M for, has done pretty much nothing in the Premier League, but weirdly enough, scores consistently when playing in the European championships.  This game was no exception—he scored twice.  Chelsea did win this weekend, beating bottom-of-the-table Sutherland 2-1 in a game marked by own goals from both sides, before Ivanovic put it in the win column.

Meanwhile, ex-Chelsea player and my personal favorite, Didier Drogba (originally from Ivory Coast) is now playing for Galatasaray, a Turkish team in Istanbul, after playing for some time in China.  He’s only been there a few weeks, but he’s tearing up the league and has scored some spectacular goals.  This week’s score was a wild one that came in a 3-1 victory at the expense of Mersin Idman Yurdu—it was a sky-high shot that somehow went in, and can be seen by clicking here.  Best comment in the British press about the goal?  “There’s life in the old Drog yet.”

Good News Roundup

It’s been a good week for goals being scored at SPSU this week as well.

Our first ace was from Yusun Chang (Electrical Engineering), who scored $411,634 in a research grant on “Improving Transportation Safety for Sustainable Environments using Vehicular Networking Technology” from the Georgia Department of Transportation.  Yusun is the PI and SPSU is the primary contractor, and John Copeland at Georgia Tech is the co-PI.  The major objectives of the research are to design, implement, and test an emergency message dissemination system using multi-hop vehicular communications for vehicle, pedestrian, and bicyclist safety.  Great job Yusun!

Another winning effort came from Mark Nunes (ETCMA), who scored a major award.  Mark is the Communication and Digital Culture track chair at the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association national conference.  It’s a very big organization, with some 125 different area chairs.  This year’s keynote speaker was director Oliver Stone, and last year’s was George Takei (Lt. Sulu of the Starship Enterprise).

At the annual Area Chairs meeting, Mark learned out he been chosen for the 2013 Felicia F. Campbell Area Chair Award, one of two given each year by the organization.  The award is given to area chairs “who have distinguished themselves by their contribution to PCA/ACA. Long-service, building participation in their areas, and professionalism are the hallmarks of the winner of these awards.  Recipients are selected by a committee composed of the Chairperson of the PCA/ACA, the Executive Director of the PCA/ACA, and the Program Coordinator of the PCA/ACA.”  Great job, Mark!

Completing a hat-trick are two successes for SPSU students.  First, the student Surveying and Mapping team took second place in the national Society of Professional Surveyors 12^th Annual Student Surveying Competition, held in Sandy, Utah.  Students Blake Blevins, Calvin Johnson (captain), Antonio Sample, Peter Sanchez, and Stefka Vacheva were ably lead by Daniel Branham (CET).  The competition consisted of a quiz-bowl type challenge, as well as submission of a promotional video about the university’s surveying and mapping program.  SPSU’s submission can be seen by clicking here.  Great job, Dan and team!

Second, SPSU-Teach student Jamie Garrett (Physics Education) has been selected as a summer intern for Physics-Quest, a project sponsored by the American Physical Society.  Physics-Quest’s goal is to teach middle school students physics concepts using specially designed tool kits.  Research shows that students as young as 10-11 years old are already starting to make career decisions, so outreach to this age category is critical if the STEM pipeline is to be expanded.

Last Time’s Trivia Contest

Questions last time focused on March Madness, and lots of entries were received.  The   winner was Tom Nelson (Dean, Arts and Sciences) with all five correct.  Tom had gotten them all on a number of earlier occasions, but had always been edged out time-wise by someone else.  Here are the answers:

1. March comes in like a  but goes out like a                  .  Lion/lamb
2. Name of the rabbit at the tea party in Alice in Wonderland.  March Hare
3. Charitable organization whose motto is “Working together for stronger, healthier babies”.  March of Dimes
4. Mendelssohn wrote the music for this in 1842.  The Wedding March
5. Margaret, Josephine, Elizabeth, and Amy.  The March Sisters in the book “Little Women”.

This Week’s Trivia Challenge

In honor of our new computing honor society, today’s trivia challenge focuses on computers.  Usual rules apply.  No looking up the answers now!  SEND ALL ENTRIES BY EMAIL TO zszafran@spsu.edu, since if you put them as a response on the BLOG, everyone will be able to see them!

1. To err is human, to really foul things up requires                                 .
2. Someone who tries to exploit a weakness in computer security.
3. :>)
4. “Pong” was the first successful commercial one.
5. The only Disney movie with the word “computer” in its title, it came out in 1969.

April 1, 2013

THE WEEKLY BLAB

Volume 7, Issue 26 – April 1, 2013

 

Happy Easter, But Where’s the Matzah?

Happy Easter to everyone!  This is one of those years where Easter and Passover overlap.  Since it’s Passover, I was off to the grocery store looking for some unleavened bread known as matzah, which one eats on this holiday.  Passover is the holiday commemorating the liberation of the Hebrew slaves in Egypt, and on this holiday, leavened bread is forbidden for eight days, as are cake, bagels, rolls, and all related items. I walked into the local Kroger and sure enough, at the end of aisle 3, were boxes of matzah.  The problem?  As I was walking to the cash register, I noticed that neatly inscribed on each box was “Not Kosher for Passover”.  You see, the idea of kosher (which normally means no pork, no shellfish, no mixing of milk with meat, that sort of thing) is different from the idea of kosher for Passover, which in addition to the normal kosher restrictions, means no leavening or yeast, and several other more technical things.

I have to admit this was a new one on me.  I’m not aware of anyone who eats matzah because they actually like it—it’s a pretty bland cracker-like thing, not really bad tasting but not good either.  I suppose people must be buying it because it exists, but I’ve never met any.  I have no interest whatever in matzah except when I have to eat it, so if it isn’t kosher for Passover, I have no use for it at all.  Ultimately, Jill turned some up at Publix so problem solved.  Since the holiday was already half over by the time we got it, we’ll probably have some left over at the end of Passover.  Not to worry—Youtube has a funny and useful video on “20 Things To Do With Leftover Matzah”, which you can see by clicking here.

I was reminded of my grad school days in Columbia, South Carolina, when if you wanted some kosher food, the best local place to get it was the Piggly Wiggly grocery store in St. Andrews.  The humor wasn’t lost on me—buying kosher food in a neighborhood named for a Saint, in a store that everyone called “The Pig”.  If you’ve never seen one of their commercials, be sure to click here—it’s a riot.

 

The Relationship Between Nebuchadnezzar and the Independence of Italy

Speaking of the liberation of Hebrew slaves (and bear with me—I’ll connect to this theme further below), the other night, I was cataloging a box set of Toscanini CDs I picked up a few weeks ago.  For those who don’t know, Arturo Toscanini was one of the great symphony conductors from the 1930’s to the 1950’s.  From what I’ve read, he was a musical perfectionist who treated his musicians abominably, but the tremendous quality of the music he got the orchestras to produce made the musicians want to stay despite the rotten treatment.

Anyway, among the things Toscanini is noted for was conducting operas, predominantly those by the greatest of Italian composers, Giuseppe Verdi.  There were a number of Verdi operas in the set (the third version of Aida I have, the third version of La Traviata, etc.), which got me thinking—do I have all of Verdi’s operas in my collection?  I checked on Wikipedia, and the answer was no—I still don’t have a bunch of them, including the first two that Verdi wrote which are relatively obscure.  The earliest one in my collection is actually Verdi’s third opera, the one that established his reputation as a composer—Nabucco.  My copy of Nabucco is part of a different box set of CDs of operas headlined by the soprano Maria Callas, arguably the greatest female opera singer of all time.  I’ve heard most of the operas in the box set, but I’d skipped over this one.  So, I figured I listen to it now.

Performance of Nabucco at the Greek Theatre in Taormina, Sicily.
Figure from sicilyguide. com.

Before doing that, I went back to Wikipedia to find out about the plot of the opera since I don’t speak Italian, don’tcha know.  Nabucco is actually short for the original name of the opera, Nabucodonosor, which is Italian for Nebuchadnezzar II—the famous king of the Babylonian Empire.  The Bible (mainly in the Book of Daniel) tells us that Nebuchadnezzar was the king who conquered Judah and Jerusalem, destroyed the first Temple, and sent the Jews into exile in Bablyonia.  On the positive side, he is credited with construction of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.

Nabucco is not exactly based on history as we know it—it’s more like a TV movie version of history, with several major characters added to the story and the ending changed.  The set-up to the plot is that Nebuchadnezzar is about to conquer Jerusalem.  He has two daughters: one legitimate (Fenena) and one illegitimate (Abigaille).  Fenena is held hostage by the Israelites in hope of stopping Nebuchadnezzar—not a good plan, because the Israelites’ military leader, Ismaele, loves her back from the days he was the King of Jerusalem’s envoy to Babylonia.  In fact, both daughters are in love with Ismaele, which causes a big ol’ problem when Abigaille shows up with Babylonian soldiers in disguise, and sees Ismaele singing a love duet with Fenena.  Abigaille tells Isamele that if he pledges his love to her, she’ll petition Nebuchadnezzar to spare the Israelites and to set up a kingdom for him.  While you might think this is a pretty good deal, true love in an opera being what it is, he refuses and the opera is off to the races.

I’m not going to go through the whole complicated story here, but in the second act, the scene shifts back to Babylon, where the Israelites are now slaves in exile.  Nebuchadnezzar declares himself to not only be King of Jerusalem but also G-d, whereupon the proverbial lightning bolt from above strikes his crown and he’s rendered mad.  Evil Abigaille grabs the crown and becomes the Queen.

In the third act, Abigaille gets the crazy Nebuchadnezzar to condemn all the Israelites to death.  What he doesn’t know is that this also condemns his daughter Fenena, who has converted to Judaism and joined the Israelites.  In the most famous aria in the opera (“Va pensiero, sull’ali dorate!”—“Thought, fly on golden wings”—also known as the Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves), the Israelite slaves long for their homeland.

In the final act, Nebuchadnezzar sees his daughter Fenena being led to her death, repents for his vanity, prays for forgiveness, and promises he will rebuild the Temple and convert to Judaism if forgiven.  His sanity is instantly restored, and he rallies his troops and saves Fenena.  The idols are destroyed and when he tells the Israelites they are free, they sing the aria Immenso Jehova (Great is G-d).  The opera ends with Abigaille taking poison but managing to sing a final aria (it’s an opera, after all) where she asks for forgiveness.

Wow—what a story!  And if you remember from Sunday School or history class that the real king who let the Israelites return from exile and who restored the Temple was actually Cyrus the Great, not Nebuchadnezzar, you’re just being picky.

The opera Nabucco is known for two unusual things.  The first is that it is the most difficult of all operas for a soprano to sing—lots of high notes and difficult arias.  Joan Sutherland and Leontyne Price refused to sing it, several others ruined their voices by singing it, and even the great Maria Callas only sang it three times (the CD set I have is her only recording of it).

The other thing that the opera is known for is far weirder.  Nabucco was first performed in Milan in 1842, when Italy was a series of little states under the occupation of France or Austria-Hungary.  As the story goes, when the audience heard the aria Va pensiero with its line Oh, my country, so beautiful and lost!, they empathized with the Israelites, longing for an Italian homeland, and demanded an encore, which was forbidden by law.  This act of rebellion was the spark, and the aria became the anthem of the Italian revolutionary movement known as the Risogimento, with Verdi becoming one of its spiritual leaders.  After three wars, the Risogimento resulted in the unification and independence of Italy in 1870.  Thus, from the first performance of Nabucco to Italian independence only took 28 years, but the anthem was based on an event 2500 years earlier.  At Verdi’s funeral in 1901, the largest crowd ever to assemble in Italian history spontaneously broke into the aria Va pensiero.  More recently, in 2009, Italian Senator and political bigwig Umberto Bossi proposed changing the Italy’s national anthem to—you guessed it—Va pensiero.

Some revisionist historians have challenged this story, saying it was actually Immenso Jehova that was the demanded encore, and have downplayed Verdi’s role in the Risogimento.  What a bunch of killjoys.  So what is actually true here?  Who knows, but the Italians know a great aria when they hear one.

Last Time’s Trivia Contest

Questions last time focused on Men, and lots of entries were received.  The fastest finger goes to Alan Gabrielli (Co-Director for SPSU-Teach), with all five correct.  Here are the answers:

1. Will Smith is a member of this secret organization that keeps the world safe from hidden aliens.  Men in Black.
2. A room or garage especially outfitted with stuff men like.  Man cave.
3. Expression for an unusual newspaper story.  Man bites dog.
4. Sancho Panza.  Manservant to Man of La Mancha.
5. Portuguese jellyfish.  Man o’ War.

This Week’s Trivia Challenge

Today’s trivia challenge focuses on March Madness.  Usual rules apply.  No looking up the answers now!  SEND ALL ENTRIES BY EMAIL TO zszafran@spsu.edu, since if you put them as a response on the BLOG, everyone will be able to see them!

1. March comes in like a                 but goes out like a                  .
2. Name of the rabbit at the tea party in Alice in Wonderland.
3. Charitable organization whose motto is “Working together for stronger, healthier babies”.
4. Mendelssohn wrote the music for this in 1842.
5. Margaret, Josephine, Elizabeth, and Amy.