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Professorships

Dr. Larry Roesner worked for 31 years as a consultant for Camp Dresser & McKee, Inc. At CDM, he started and managed a corporate university to develop and serve employees. Despite this experience, Larry says, “I didn’t think I’d qualify for an academic position, but the Harold H. Short Civil Infrastructure Chair, unlike typical appointments, targeted candidates with industrial experience, allowing me to enter academia.

Now at Colorado State for seven years, Dr. Roesner has been running the civil and environmental senior design program, teaching graduate level courses, managing an active research program in the Harold H. Short Laboratory, and working with as many as nine graduate students at one time. Dr. Roesner is continually working with about 80-100 engineering students, giving them the benefit of his real world experience.

Along with the chair came the Harold H. Short Laboratory. This lab is dedicated to the study of water use management in urban areas, and research into management and utilization of alternatives that will lead to better water use and reduced infrastructure costs. The lab is a teaching lab, and is home base for graduate students. Dr. Roesner’s home is also a laboratory of sorts. In cooperation with the city, he and several students have designed and installed an extensive graywater system in his home that serves as a research station for students working to reduce urban water supply demands through the reuse of sink, shower, dish, and laundry water for residential landscape irrigation.

With his chair, extensive engineering experience, and ties to industry, Dr. Roesner has built a launching pad for talented graduate students, providing ample funding for their research.

Dr. Roesner’s activities illustrate the impact that a chair or professorship can have. Contact the Development Office to learn more about how you can help make an impact.

"I don't think I would have continued on to my Ph.D. if Larry had not encouraged me. I co-wrote a proposal with Larry, and when we won it, that work became the basis for my research on how urban storm water runoff affects the ecology of streams."
-Christine Pomeroy, Ph.D. 2007, assistant professor, University of Utah

Facilities

World-class facilities drive interaction and draw great students and faculty.

The Engineering Academic Village is helping to build a strong community of engineers. The living-learning community facilitates  team design and teamwork. The $42 million project opened in Fall 2007 was funded through student fees, university funds, and private gifts.

Not only do students live in an environment created to foster interaction, but state-of-the-art computing equipment and multimedia classrooms in the Academic Village enhance the academic experience.

Computing facilities include Sun Microsystems “thin clients,” which provide portable computing sessions via the Web, so students can go from the Academic Village to anywhere on campus and access all of their files, a session they just ended, or computations they completed elsewhere. Sun Microsystems gifted the College of Engineering with approximately $165,000 in equipment to make this possible.

The Academic Village has seminar and project rooms where students can work on classroom presentations and design projects with other team members. It also includes an advising office and tutoring rooms. 25 upperclassmen, 225 undergraduate students, three graduate teaching assistants, seven resident assistants, and a staff member reside in the Academic Village, providing a great support system for our first-year students.

Any gift, large or small, can make a difference in the facilities our students and faculty use every day. Contact the Development Office for more information about how you can help.

Scholarships

Well-deserved scholarship helps determined student meet goals

Robert Utrup grew up in Alaska, 3,311 road miles from Fort Collins and Colorado State. In Soldotna, Alaska he worked for six summers to save money for college with jobs in the fishing industry. Robert, determined to be the first in his family to attend a four-year college and determined to pay his own way, worked processing salmon roe, supervising a fillet operation, managing inventory, driving a forklift, and helping with shipments.

Knowing a bit about the great weather and friendliness of Coloradoans through relatives in the Denver area, Robert looked for a Colorado school that fit his needs. Colorado State was a match. He was admitted to the computer science program, but in his senior year of high school, he worked on a project to build a headphone amplifier, and quickly changed his major to electrical engineering before arriving at Colorado State.

Robert qualified for the WUE (Western Undergraduate Exchange) Program. This program allows first-time freshman undergraduate students from participating states to receive a reduced tuition rate if they demonstrate high academic achievement. He was also the recipient of a Walter Scott, Jr. Scholarship, awarded to engineering students with outstanding scholastic achievement. Robert’s scholarship was renewed all four years he was at Colorado State. Thanks to this scholarship, Robert was able to concentrate on his challenging engineering course load during the academic year.

Robert’s graduated in 2007 and is currently working at United Launch Alliance in Denver. The Scott Scholarship has meant a great deal to Robert in reaching his immediate goals and allowing him to envision and set goals for the future.

Your scholarship gift can enable talented students like Robert to succeed in engineering. Contact the Development Office to learn more about funding scholarships.

Fellowships

Supporting and recognizing timely and important research helps to spur innovation and excellence.

A pressing challenge today is the attempt to restore ecosystems to their “natural” state. This is difficult due to continued human activity, but also because we are not sure what the original, natural state of an environment was. Gavin McMeeking, an atmospheric science Ph.D. student at Colorado State University is confronting such a problem in his research.

Gavin was a recent recipient of the Herbert Riehl Memorial Award, which is granted to a current atmospheric science graduate student who submits the best technical manuscript for publication in refereed literature. Gavin’s paper investigated the optical properties of smoke particles in the air, in order to determine how much of the smoke and pollution that inhibits visibility in our national parks is caused by humans, and how much is natural.

Receiving the Riehl Award has a two-fold benefit to the recipients. The financial aspect of the award is always appreciated, but the recognition also inspires people to continue to excel and be innovative.

"It is nice that the Riehl Award focuses on masters level work and shows that at the masters level, students can make significant contributio9ns through research."
-Gavin McMeeking, recipient of Herbert Riehl Memorial Award, atmospheric science

Now, pursuing his Ph.D., Gavin is working with Dr. Sonia Kreidenweis and the atmospheric chemistry research group. He has been focused on field work in Rocky Mountain National Park with a mobile laboratory, and conducting research at the United State Forest Service Fire Sciences Laboratory in Montana.

Aside from his studies, Gavin has also held a mass media fellowship at KUNC, the local public radio station, covering science and environmental issues. “It is refreshing to work on something different, but related to your field of study,” Gavin says. Working for the radio station has allowed Gavin, an Illinois native transplanted to California and then to Colorado, to become more aware of the environmental issues in the region.

Endowments such as the Herbert Riehl Memorial Award not only benefit those who receive them, but ultimately can impact us all. To learn more about the impact your gift can make, contact the Development Office.

Gifts In Kind

In the time it takes to read this story, 10 people will die from air pollution caused by cooking in their homes. One donation of equipment is helping us to change this.

In spite of our technologically advanced world, almost half the population, or approximately 3 billion people, burn biomass with inefficient stoves. In the developing world, indoor air pollution from fuels such as wood and dung is the leading cause of death for children under five and the fourth leading cause of premature death for women.

Mechanical engineering student Elisa Guzman saw the circumstances first-hand. Staying at a hostel in Peru, she met the hostel’s cook and her three-year-old baby. Their stove was little more than an open fire, their walls were covered with soot, and the air was heavy with smoke. Elisa had sworn that she would leave behind “stove stuff” from her job at CSU’s Global Innovation Center while on this mission trip, but she found herself building two stoves – one for the cook and her son and one for another family with small children.

"We use the waterjet to fabricate parts on ALL of our project research - from stoves to big engines to biodiesel. It's a very important tool at the Engines and Energy Conversion Laboratory."

-Mac McGoodrick, program manager at CSU's Engines and Energy Conversion Laboratory.

Elisa and her senior design team then worked on an efficient, low-cost, clean wood-burning cookstove to be manufactured at 10,000-20,000 units per month in Guatemala. The team’s goal is to produce stoves that meet the needs of the Guatemalans and are affordable for families whose average income is about $3 per day.

The senior design team used a high-tech waterjet cutter as a key piece of equipment for their project. Flow International donated this cutter, housed at the Engines and Energy Conversion Lab. The cutter utilizes an ultra high pressure stream of water mixed with an abrasive material to cut through materials. A CAD program is used to layout the shapes to be cut. The process produces very little waste other than water and abrasive (usually garnet), and results in an accurately cut edge. The cutter not only lowers cutting time, but reduces or eliminates the need to clean and polish edges, and significantly lowers material waste and cost.

Since Elisa’s team completed their project and graduated, the cutter’s use for stove research has expanded. Envirofit International, a non-profit corporation disseminating technologies originated at CSU’s Engines and Energy Conversion Laboratory, received a $25 million investment in their stoves effort last year and was charged with selling 10 million stoves in 5 years. Envirofit contracted with the EECL to lead all R&D on stoves. So, now the program supports 5 graduate students and 10 undergraduates, and the team features a number of professional engineers. Envirofit is currently selling the stoves in India.

The Travels of Bijah Gibson

Bijah Gibson, a technical journalism major, who traveled to Bangalore, India, to film, photograph, and write about installing newly engineered Envirofit cookstoves. Read More.

Interested in donating equipment and/or supplies to support the important work going on every day in the College? Contact Ashley Waddell, Corporate and Foundation Relations.

Volunteerism

A dedicated group of female undergraduate and graduate students is working with faculty members to show young women that science, engineering, and math can be fun!

National academies and higher education leaders place a high priority on recruiting, retaining, and graduating more women in the science, technology, engineering and math professions.

Research shows that girls tend to lose interest in math and science programs during their middle school years. Having female mentors is considered important during all stages of development, and a single-sex environment helps develop a girl’s confidence.

A dedicated group of female undergraduate and graduate students at Colorado State is working with faculty members to show young women that science, engineering, and math can be fun! The Saturday Morning Engineering Club provides opportunities for 4th, 5th and 6th grade girls to expand their knowledge and express their creativity while doing experiments in high-tech laboratories.

“I think that is the great thing about this program,” says Dr. Erica Suchman, instructor of the “Body Microbes” session and associate professor of microbiology. “It provides role models for young girls, and shows them that science is something women can and do participate in. They were having so much fun, and having done these types of activities before, I was surprised how much more interactive they were without boys.”

Sponsored by CSU’s Women & Minorities in Engineering Program (WMEP), the activity runs for eight Saturdays during the fall semester. Funding from Xcel Energy Foundation enables the University to offer the program for free to students in 70 elementary schools in Fort Collins and surrounding communities.  For the past six years, the middle-school students have explored science and engineering principles through hands-on activities such as cleaning up oil spills, building bridges, developing cosmetics, or learning about lasers, robotics, astronautics, and polymers – experiences that open their eyes to the possibilities ahead.

Would you like to learn more about how your time, energy and expertise can support programs like the Saturday Morning Engineering Club? We welcome your involvement. Contact Ashley Waddell for details.