CSU Presidential Address

COE Team Studies Water

Recycling Old Tires

Personal Plan on Giving

CSU Developing Vaccine

Alumni Award Winners

More Stories of Interest

State-of-the-Art Residence Hall Opens in Fall 2007

This August many engineering students will take residency in the new Academic Village, a CSU facility that will combine living and learning into a single community.

The $42 million facility, which includes new residence halls for the College of Engineering and the Honors Program, is intended to offer an environment where living and learning come together and help students achieve academically. It is located on the site of the former Ellis Hall on the south end of campus close to academic classrooms and the intramural fields.

In 2004 architects met with the Residence Hall Association and other focus groups to determine how to design a living community that would be most beneficial to students. Students in construction management and sustainable building courses were also asked to come up with plans to make the new facility more environmentally friendly.

The Academic Village (above, rendering of engineering courtyard) will have multipurpose rooms, study lounges, electronic classrooms, and design studios. In addition, the community will feature a new computer network created and donated by Sun Microsystems and a design studio modeled after design rooms at Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company.

The Academic Village is reserved for Engineering Living Learning Community students and Honors Living Learning Community students and will house about 420 students - 240 students from engineering and 180 students from the Honors program. The Allison Community of Engineers in Allison Hall will be relocating to the Academic Village in fall 2007. However, several engineering floors will remain in Allison Hall with a limited number of single rooms.

For more information about the new residence hall, visit the Academic Village website. A live web cam of the construction site is available here.

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President Addresses CSU's Current and Future Impact

On May 30 Colorado State University President Penley presented his annual state-of-the-university address. In his speech, Penley communicated that CSU has set records in research funding and giving, improved facilities, added faculty, and successfully launched its first Supercluster, a groundbreaking method of translating university innovation for the marketplace, all within a year's time.

"Lots of positive things are happening at Colorado State University today," Penley said. However, he mentioned Colorado's budgetary outlook contains concerning data for the state's institutions of higher education.

Penley called for a voter-approved method that supports higher education through long-term, stable funding by means of holding each institution accountable for its results. The alternatives are either more costly tuition or degradation of the quality of Colorado's higher-education system.

"Colorado's economy will be improved by an educated workforce, but a lack of funding is leading to erosion of Colorado's potential to be a leader in bioscience, high-tech jobs, and new innovations," Penley said.

Penley continued, "Among the highlights of the past year, Colorado State has worked to improve its responsibility to the environment. The University has established a sustainability committee to integrate the best methods of environmental stewardship into all campus operations. Most notably, Colorado State's purchase and creation of a wind farm that will make Colorado State the first fully wind-powered campus in the nation."

Penley pointed out that, even with funding challenges, the University can't adopt an "oh, poor me" attitude. He believes CSU must take responsibility for its own future and success. Examples he gave of moving forward are the new facilities: a new academic village will open to students this fall; construction has begun on the final phase of the University Center for the Arts; a new federally funded biocontainment laboratory is set to open on the Foothills campus in October; and Ammons Hall has been transformed into a welcome center for prospective students and their parents.

"Colorado State University, despite the budget difficulties, is in very good shape," Penley concluded.

Read more highlights from President Penley's annual state-of-the-university speech.

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Old Tires and Soil Bring About a Recycled Idea

College of Engineering (COE) faculty continuously strive to solve engineering problems, integrating mechanisms to use recycled materials. Antonio Carraro, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering, is leading an experiment this month with the city of Loveland, Colorado, to test a mixture of expansive soil and scrap tire rubber (pictured) just below the pavement on a 200-foot, low-volume stretch of road near I-25.

"We are trying to come up with a sustainable way of mitigating the expansive soils problem in Colorado that takes into account the beneficial use of a waste material that has great recycling potential," Carraro said. "Soil-rubber mixtures have been studied and used since the late 1980s, but the transfer of this technology to civil engineering applications that involve expansive soil mitigation is innovative."

Carraro and his students will monitor the effects of the expansive soil-rubber mixture on the road in Loveland over the next year. They will assess cracks, ruts, permanent deformation, potholes, and overall quality of the pavement. Carraro has worked with Front Range Tire Recycle in Sedalia and Jai Tire Industries in Denver for tire samples.

"The Loveland project is using about 25 tons of shredded tires equal to 2,225 passenger vehicle and light truck tires," said Rick Welle, general manager of Front Range Tire Recycle. "What we're hoping with this study is to show that tire shreds are beneficial for road base and that over time it will be a cost-effective product."

To learn more, visit the CSU website.

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Finding Fulfillment: Make a Personal Plan on Giving

Decision making on how to spend your money is part of every day life. If you are like some donors, the decision to give to a charitable organization may seem overwhelming and confusing, taking away the pleasure from helping others. However, if you have a plan, your next decision to give will be made with confidence and fulfillment.

To begin your planning process, visit CSU's Planned Giving Department website. The website provides a simple strategy on developing your personal giving plan, based on your values, interests, and available funds/resources. The COE Development Office is also available to answer questions on giving and the impact it has on the college.

On a side note, CNN recently posted an article titled, "Brain Gets a Thrill from Charity." It highlights how giving money to charity activates brain pleasure centers, especially when donating by choice.

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CSU Team Developing Unique Tuberculosis Vaccine

Although in groundwork stages of testing, researchers from CSU are developing a vaccine that would likely be effective against all strains of tuberculosis, including multi-drug and extensively drug resistant tuberculosis.

Preliminary evidence shows that the vaccine has promise of working after exposure to tuberculosis, which no other tuberculosis vaccine in current development has achieved. The vaccine is designed to be relatively easy to produce, unlike many of the vaccines under development.

"This novel vaccine system provides the template to design a series of new tuberculosis vaccines that could be very inexpensive to make," said Ian Orme, a professor in the Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Pathology at Colorado State and head of the research team that developed the vaccine. "The next stage is to test the vaccine for long-lasting immunity and its ability to boost existing vaccines."

Human trials for the vaccine could occur in two to three years.

Learn more about the vaccine by visiting the CSU website.

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Seeking Distinguished Alumni

It is never to early to nominate someone for the College of Engineering 2008 Distinguished Alumni Award. The college recognizes former students whose accomplishments in their careers, service to industry and the public, and/or volunteer efforts have brought honor to that individual, the College of Engineering, and to Colorado State University.

Awards will be presented at our annual awards dinner on Saturday, April 19, 2008. Contact the COE Development Office with questions.

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Other stories of interest...

Atmospheric Science Research Associate Named an
Environmental Hero

CloudSat Reaches One-Year Milestone

Professor Steve Abt Returns Home from Iraq

More College of Engineering stories are available on-line
at Engineering News.