CU News
News from the University of Colorado in Boulder.
SCHOLARSHIPS AVAILABLE FOR FORMER CU STUDENTS TRYING TO FINISH DEGREES
Dec 13th
In the next few days, over 500 students who were close to completing a bachelor’s degree at the University of Colorado at Boulder but left for one reason or another will receive letters from the Division of Continuing Education and Professional Studies encouraging them to return to classes.
The effort is part of CU Complete — a clearinghouse to help former CU students earn degrees — and a partnership with the Colorado Department of Higher Education, the Western Interstate Commission on Higher Education, or WICHE, and the Lumina Foundation. CU Complete is just one portion of WICHE’s five-state “Non-traditional No More” project.
CU Complete scholarships of either $500 (for students enrolled in one to eight credits) or $1,000 (for students enrolled in nine or more credits) are available from a $50,000 fund. CU Complete also offers free academic, financial aid and career advising for adult students who are interested in returning to college to complete their degrees.
“We are excited to be in a partnership that will help us build on our recent successes,” said Anne Heinz, dean of the CU-Boulder division of continuing education. “In the past 18 months, the CU Complete program has contacted over 375 students, re-enrolled 23, awarded over $20,000 in scholarship money and helped seven students obtain degrees.”
Such assistance is vital, Heinz said, as federal statistics show that the unemployment rate for individuals who have some college but no degree is 8.6 percent, nearly double the 4.6 percent rate of unemployment for individuals who have a bachelor’s degree or better. In turn, state projections show that by the year 2018, 67 percent of all jobs in Colorado will require a postsecondary education, ranking Colorado fifth in the nation in postsecondary educational needs.
To be eligible for the scholarships, students must meet several points of eligibility, including:
–Students may be degree-seeking or non-degree seeking students.
–Scholarships may be applied to CU-Boulder credit courses only.
–Students must be enrolled in a course or courses in order to receive an award.
–Students are eligible for the scholarship only once.
–Scholarships are dedicated to students completing their first bachelor’s degree.
–Students must have a minimum 2.0 GPA.
–Highest consideration will be given to students who meet the “ready adult” criteria established by WICHE: students at least 25 years of age who have completed a least 60 credit hours.
–Recipients must verify they are legally present in the United States (HB 1023).
“We are helping to fulfill an important need, and doing so in a great strategic partnership with WICHE and the Lumina Foundation,” said Heinz. “By coming together in this way, these three key organizations are helping the state’s higher education infrastructure serve both individuals and Colorado’s economy.”
For more information on CU Complete, visit http://conted.colorado.edu/programs/cu-complete/cu-complete-service/. For more information about the Non-traditional No More project visit http://www.wiche.edu/ntnm. For information about the Lumina Foundation for Education, visit http://www.luminafoundation.org.
CU-BOULDER STUDENTS TO DEMONSTRATE INNOVATIONS AND INVENTIONS AT DEC. 4 ENGINEERING DESIGN EXPO
Dec 1st
From a portable device that calculates your ultraviolet exposure to a “recycling jukebox” that plays a song when you recycle a can, the University of Colorado at Boulder’s Engineering Design Expo on Saturday, Dec. 4, will feature a variety of innovations and inventions to delight the community.
More than 80 student projects will be demonstrated at the end-of-semester event. The Expo is free and open to the public from noon to 3:30 p.m. at the Integrated Teaching and Learning Laboratory, located on the corner of Regent Drive and Colorado Avenue.
The semiannual demonstration of engineering projects will showcase the work of about 400 undergraduate students. Most of the students are enrolled in the popular First-Year Engineering Projects course, which allows students to practice real-world engineering design from the start of their college experience.
Working in teams throughout the fall semester to design solutions to an array of challenges, engineering students have developed various interactive video games that promote exercise, interactive 3-D puzzles for children with lights and sounds, water disinfection systems, assistive technology for people with disabilities, and much more.
Volunteers from industry, government and the community will serve as judges, rating each project on its originality, craftsmanship, as well as the students’ understanding of engineering principles, presentation and effectiveness. An awards ceremony will be held at 3 p.m. Members of the community can vote for their favorite project to win the coveted “People’s Choice” award.
Free parking is available across the street from the ITL Laboratory in lot 436. For more information, call 303-492-7222.
SOURCE: CU PRESS RELEASE
CU-BOULDER FACULTY MEMBER TO MAKE STELLAR OBSERVATIONS WITH AIRBORNE OBSERVATORY
Dec 1st
A University of Colorado at Boulder faculty member is one of two scientists who will use data gathered by a world-class telescope flying aboard a modified Boeing 747 to peer at a distant star-forming region during its inaugural science flight this week.
Known as the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, or SOFIA, the jet was significantly modified in order to mount a 2.5-meter reflecting telescope in the rear fuselage, said Senior Research Associate Paul Harvey of CU-Boulder’s Center for Astrophysics and Space Astronomy, one of the scientists involved in the mission.
The jet will fly at 40,000 to 45,000 feet in altitude, putting it above more than 99 percent of the water vapor in the atmosphere — which blocks infrared light from reaching the ground — and will allow scientists to observe stellar targets in wavelengths of light that can’t be observed by ground-based telescopes, said Harvey.
The aircraft and telescope were successfully tested in the summer of 2009. SOFIA’s Faint Object InfraRed Camera, known as FORCAST, is a versatile camera that collects light from the visible, infrared and sub-millimeter portions of the electromagnetic spectrum, Harvey said.
Harvey will be observing and analyzing the distribution of dust and gas in a young, star-forming cluster known as Sharpless 140 that is roughly 3,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cepheus. One light-year is equal to about 6 trillion miles.
“Observing the birth of stars in our own galaxy is critical because planetary systems form at the same time that a central star is formed,” said Harvey. “In addition, some of the most luminous galaxies in the universe appear to be powered by extreme bursts of star formation.”
Harvey flew on several hundred flights of SOFIA’s predecessor, the Kuiper Airborne Observatory, but will not be aboard the first science flight of SOFIA. The second set of observations on this week’s SOFIA science flight will be led by Mark Morris of UCLA, who will be targeting star-forming regions in the Orion nebula.
Harvey said the FORCAST camera on the telescope has large, two-dimensional array detectors that are similar to charge-coupled devices found in digital cameras. The goal is to obtain a sequence of images of the star cluster with the telescope, which will move almost imperceptibly between each image in order to sample “sub-pixels.”
One advantage of the SOFIA observatory is that scientists can make changes and improvements to the craft’s instruments between flights as well as change observing techniques, said Harvey. “These are impossible tasks for orbiting telescopes that have very fixed procedures for the instruments and observations.”
He also is working with the FORCAST team to interpret data gathered during the first science flight in order to carefully characterize SOFIA’s imaging capabilities for future users.
Harvey said he hopes to build a long-term program of specialized observations on SOFIA that eventually will involve data analysis by CU-Boulder students.
NASA hopes SOFIA will continue to fly astronomical science observations for the next two decades, with research flights expected to ramp up to two or three flights a week by 2015. SOFIA’s suite of instruments are expected to gather new information on a wide variety of astronomical targets, including black holes, distant galaxies, the formation of stars and planets, and up close views of comets and asteroids.
SOFIA is a joint project between NASA and the German Aerospace Center. SOFIA’s science and mission operations are managed by NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., in cooperation with the Universities Space Research Association in Columbia, Md., and the Deutsches SOFIA Institut in Stuttgart, Germany.
SOURCE: CU PRESS RELEASE
