|
Dear Olin Community,
What a wonderful adventure its been to help start this amazing institution. The things I have learned, the opportunities I've been given, the pride I have felt. But most of all, the people I have met and come to know. I have learned and grown from my association with each of you: fellow staff members, students (oh, you students!), faculty, and Olin Families. I am deeply grateful and consider myself blessed to have been a part of it all. Thank you.
I wish you each personally, and Olin College as an entity, great success and new thrills that will eclipse what has already gone before.
Thank you, too, for the support you've expressed for this next adventurous phase of my life. Like all cool Olin alumni I have gotten myself a gmail account: lalarocca@gmail.com. Please feel free to keep me up-to-date with what's happening in your life. I will always be interested and will always feel a part of this community. All the best.
Leslie
On September 4 and 7, Boston Cares will be on campus to recruit Olin students for its first Campus Day of Service, an event designed to
engage local college and university students in volunteer service projects at agencies across Boston. The event will take place on
Saturday, September 15 from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., with a post-service celebration from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. Click here for more information.
We know Olin students and alumni are doing all kinds of cool things from arctic explorations, to entering contests, to launching businesses, to running conferences, to traveling, to attending graduate research programs, to working for cool companies, so we'd like to encourage each and every one of you to share your stories with us. Send an email to communication@olin.edu and if possible include a photo with a brief description of what it is you're up to and what the picture depicts. We can always follow up with questions. Thanks for helping us tell the Olin story!
The Olin library recently arranged for full-text online access to "The Chronicle of Higher Education" and "The Chronicle of Philanthropy" for the entire Olin community. Simply click on the publication titles above to gain access and click here for more information or contact David Ware with questions.
Are you planning to hold an event on campus? Please let the Facilities Use Committee know so your event can be coordinated with other happenings on campus. Please e-mail Joe Hunter with the details of your event.
Ever want a cool way to thank someone at Olin? Join us in Celebrating Olin's Mentors, Engineers, Teachers and Staff! Say "Thank You!" with C.O.M.E.T.S.! Contact development@olin.edu for additional cards or Joanne Kossuth with any questions.
A reminder that all open positions are posted on the Olin website. Please take a minute to review them and keep in mind that Human Resources is always looking for referrals from employees for open positions.
The Parent Caller Program has achieved great success for its third consecutive summer. This year 45 current parents volunteered to call 85 incoming parent households to welcome them to the Olin family and offer congratulations that their son or daughter will be attending Olin as members of the class of 2011. This program also gives parents the opportunity to share their experiences, let incoming families know what they can expect in the coming year, and answer any questions they may have from a fellow parent perspective. Liz Firstenberg, P'08 and P'11, shared one of her caller experiences, "The Elg's were awesome! The whole family got on speaker phone and bombarded me with enthusiastic questions. I gave them my e-mail and phone number and hope to speak with them again."
Sixty-seven out of the 85 calls were completed successfully. Emails were sent or voicemails were left for those who were unavailable after a few attempts. PAB Communication Committee chair and P'10, Dan Kiser, reported that the calls "showed again that Olin is not just some tech school that grinds out engineers, but a college with a caring environment that we can all be happy we are part of." Many thanks to Dan and his committee (Thomas Hayden, P'08, Connie Newell, P'10 and Joe Scholl, P08) for helping coordinate this program, and all the parent volunteers who gave such a warm welcome and shared helpful information with our incoming families!Parent Orientation: 8-9 p.m. on August 25
Family Weekend: October 12-14; Details to follow Click here to view an electronic copy of the 2007-2008 Parent Handbook. Class of 2011 parents will receive hard copies at Parent Orientation on August 25, others will be delivered to mailboxes in early September.
Having completed the first International Development Design Summit, Olin alumnae, Laura Stupin '07 and Mel Chua '07 along with Assistant Professor Ben Linder and rising junior Jeffrey Gluckstein '09, as well as conference lead, Amy Smith are getting the attention they deserve! The event - a month-long collaboration between students, faculty, community partners, social workers and professional development workers from 18 countries ranging from Guatemala to Tibet - was a huge success! Participants succeeded in developing appropriate technology in the agriculture, health, water and energy sectors. Specifically the following ten projects resulted:
Off-grid refrigeration
Microbial Fuel Cells power from dirt
Biogas slurry separation
Recycled materials greenhouse
Low-cost water testing
Pedal-powered grain grinding
Water transport and purification
Low-cost, modular water filtration unit
Health tracking system
Improved cook stove
Congratulations all. Thanks for making a difference!
As part of its Summer of Content program, the One Laptop Per Child organization is seeking mentors, interns and volunteers. The Summer of Content is a program that matches interns with volunteer mentors from local free culture and open content organizations to complete a paid, full-time project in creating, promoting, or otherwise supporting open content and free culture. There is a special emphasis on recruiting interns and mentors from the developing world, as well as the creation and support of free culture and open-content projects in local
(non-English) languages and in formats not traditionally considered to be "content" (translations, addressing accessibility issues, running classes, etc.). One particular subset of projects deals with documentation and outreach for technological projects and products - getting teams working on open source engineering projects to collaborate with each other online, making it easy for them to document and share their work. Olin alumna, Mel Chua is working with the OLPC and knows that Olin students and faculty would make awesome mentors, interns and/or volunteers both for the Summer of Content program and for the OLPC project in general. If you are interested in learning more about either, please email Mel at mallory.chua@alumni.olin.edu or mel@laptop.org.
On Thursday, August 30, Dr. Matthew Jadud will join Olin as a Visiting Professor of Computer Science.
It's official! As of Wednesday, August 8th, the autonomous race vehicle Olin students "built out" for MIT was named a semifinalist in the DARPA Urban Challenge. The vehicle
will compete on October
26-31 in Victorville, California at the site of the former George Air Force Base against 35 other robotic vehicles from across the country.
If the vehicle then makes it to the finals (scheduled to take place on November 3rd),
it will have to execute simulated military supply missions in a mock urban area while obeying California traffic laws - without any human intervention.
Click here to learn more. Great job team! Good luck.
Casey Canfield has been named a recipient of the Society of Women Engineer's Individual Collegiate Member Freshmen-Sophomore Award. SWE will honor its Collegiate Member & Advisor Award recipients during this year's National Conference held in Nashville, TN at the Celebrate SWE! banquet on Saturday, October 27, 2007. Casey will receive complimentary conference registration, a $250 travel stipend, and one ticket to Celebrate SWE!
"Alzheimer's Device Shows Promise; Funding Uncertain," The Boston Globe, August 16, 2007
"South-South Design Flourishes at MIT Summit," WorldChanging.com, August 14, 2007
"Fast, Cheap, and In Control," The Boston Globe, August 9, 2007
"DARPA Names MIT 'Robocar' a Seminfinalist," MIT News, August 9, 2007
"Beefing up the BigBelly Business," The Needham Times, August 3, 2007
In the last issue we asked "Which staff member was pictured in the photo?" Christine Kelly was the first to respond correctly guessing Allison Bahme.
Trivia buffs, do you know.....
Q: Do you know which two SCOPE teams have recently received coverage in The Boston Globe?
A: First person to respond to Alyson Goodrow with the correct answer receives a prize.
|
