Posts tagged students
CU: more computers for more kids
Nov 7th
Computers To Youth program
The University of Colorado Boulder Environmental Center is expanding its Computers To Youth program to include more students and more interactive activities.
Computers To Youth provides high school students from underrepresented communities with upgraded used computers and hands-on training from CU-Boulder student mentors. Its purpose is to benefit underserved youth in Colorado and protect the environment. The computer systems received by the high school students through the program are designed to enable academic achievement that will encourage students to attend college.
“Not only do the high school students but also the college student mentors see this as an inspiring learning experience,” said CU-Boulder engineering student and Computers To Youth mentor Rebecca Miller. “The fact that CU-Boulder put together this program that saves resources, prevents waste and enables future scientists and engineers is completely brilliant.”
The next Computers To Youth event will be held Saturday, Nov. 9. Fourteen high school students from the Family Learning Center in Boulder, guided by CU-Boulder student mentors, will go through surplus computer components, bundle parts, load the latest software and take their newly built computer systems with them. The day also will include a new competition in which teams will race to disassemble and reassemble a demonstration computer.
“As technology increasingly becomes a part of daily life, those without computer access risk falling behind,” said Jack DeBell, the CU Environmental Center’s recycling program development director. “This consequence, known as the digital divide, tends to affect economically disadvantaged populations, especially youth. With such a great amount of computer equipment being discarded by a technologically advanced campus, it only makes sense that some of this equipment be “upcycled” to bridge the digital divide.”
The CU-Boulder student mentors are part of the statewide MESA (Mathematics Engineering Science Achievement) program. CU-Boulder’s MESA Center is headquartered in the Department of Pre-College Outreach Services in the Office of Diversity, Equity and Community Engagement (ODECE).
MESA Colorado also refers high school students to the Computers To Youth program.
With two additional Computers To Youth events slated for the spring semester, about 55 youth will be served by the program this academic year. The Denver Area Telecommunications Educational Telecommunication Consortium (DAETC) has enabled the increase in the number of participants, up from 48 last year, according to DeBell.
The CU Environmental Center has held numerous computer-build events since it began restoring and redistributing computers in 2001. In 2005, it received the Dell Higher Education Leadership Award to fund the collection of unused personal computers from the campus community and divert the equipment from landfills.
Also part of the Computers To Youth program is CU’s Property Services department. Other contributors have included the Community Computer Connection and Microsoft Corp.
“Hopefully this project will create additional collaboration with community groups and corporate sponsors in Colorado,” said St. Vrain School District teacher Karen Hunter, whose high school participated in Computers To Youth last year. “The students’ new-found confidence as a result of the amazing folks at CU-Boulder tells it all.”
For more information about Computers To Youth visit http://www.colorado.edu/ecenter/other-programs/computers-youth.
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CU study: Foreign students should stay
Nov 5th
foreign Ph.D. students to stay, CU-led study finds
Encouraging more talented foreign students to study at U.S. universities and encouraging them to launch entrepreneurial ventures here could help “revitalize innovation and economic growth” in this country, a trio of economists led by University of Colorado Boulder Professor Keith Maskus concludes.
Maskus and co-authors Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak, associate professor at the Yale School of Management, and Eric T. Stuen, assistant professor at the University of Idaho College of Business and Economics, make this case in the Policy Forum of the Nov. 1 edition of the journal Science.
The economists’ perspective draws on their study of 100 research-intensive U.S. universities in 23 science and engineering fields, which found that both U.S. and foreign students are “essential causal inputs into scientific discovery.” The trio has also found evidence that increased student diversity boosts innovative research.
Maskus and his collaborators have found that high-performing foreign-born Ph.D. students improve the “creation of knowledge” in U.S. universities. When knowledge is created, it tends to drive entrepreneurial investment and economic growth.
In fact, the researchers found, “The productivity of the average American university science and engineering laboratory in generating publications is a bit higher if it has students from 10 different countries than if it has 10 students from one country.”
That might not seem intuitive, Maskus acknowledged. “What it comes down to is that people trained in different traditions tend to have different specialties in terms of how they come to a teamwork environment. And teamwork is more productive, more efficient if you have people with divergent ideas, so they can play off of each other.”
Such diversity of intellect, capacities and specializations makes a measurable difference, Maskus added. “It doesn’t matter so much on a factory line, but it matters a lot in an intellectual sense when you’re trying to be innovative and creative.”
The publication comes as Congress weighs whether and how to change the U.S. immigration system. A bipartisan bill that cleared the U.S. Senate in June but has stalled in the House includes provisions that partly mirror those recommended by Maskus and his team.
Based on data showing that highly skilled Ph.D.s in science and engineering tend to generate new jobs where they work, the bill would pave the way for Ph.D.s in science and engineering who are from foreign countries to gain permanent U.S. residency after graduation.
U.S. law requires foreign students to leave the country after earning their Ph.D.s unless they find employers willing to sponsor their visas, which, Maskus and his colleagues note, might not lead to permanent U.S. residency. In recent years, the percentage of foreign Ph.D.s remaining in the United States after graduation has declined.
The Senate bill would grant a green card, or permanent residence, to foreign students who get a Ph.D. in science or engineering at American universities. The bill would also facilitate green-card status to those who have recently earned doctoral degrees in science and engineering at recognized scientific institutions worldwide.
Maskus and his colleagues also recommend an entrepreneurship visa. Such a visa could be granted to those who have secured a patent and met certain milestones for getting that idea commercialized. The idea is similar to an investment visa—granted based on immigrants’ investment in the U.S. economy.
This year, Canada implemented an entrepreneurship visa that includes inventive foreign Ph.D.s. The program aims to attract science and engineering graduates from U.S. universities.
“Ultimately we think this is an important way of reinvigorating economic growth and technological change in the U.S.,” Maskus said.
Additionally, the trio contends that decisions to grant student visas to prospective graduate students from foreign countries should be granted on more factors than just their ability to pay. Historically, the ability-to-pay requirement has been used by immigration officials as an indicator that foreign students will return to their countries of origin.
In the case of foreign Ph.D.s in science and engineering, such a requirement “is short-sighted,” Maskus said. “The country should welcome people who can contribute in developing innovation and new technology and permit them to stay.”
“You have to have access to the best innovative inputs and resources in the world,” Maskus said. “The Europeans recognize that, the Australians, the Canadians.”
Addressing a commonly expressed fear, Maskus and his collaborators do not find evidence that granting green cards to high-performing foreign Ph.D.s would displace American Ph.D.s.
The research of Maskus, Mobarak and Stuen reinforces recommendations of groups ranging from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to the National Academy of Sciences.
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Boulder High, CU grad astronaut Scott Carpenter dies at 88
Oct 11th
Carpenter, a Boulder native, entered CU-Boulder’s astronautical engineering program in 1945, eventually earning a bachelor of science degree. He orbited Earth three times on May 24, 1962, in NASA’s Aurora 7 capsule before splashing down in the Atlantic Ocean.
Carpenter was the first of 18 CU-Boulder astronaut affiliates to have flown in space. As one of the first NASA astronauts, Carpenter and his colleagues were celebrated in the Tom Wolfe book, “The Right Stuff,” which told the story of early military test pilots and the original Mercury 7 astronauts.
Born in Boulder on May 1, 1925, Carpenter and graduated from Boulder High School in 1943. He then entered the Navy’s V12a flight training program at Colorado College in Colorado Springs. He spent the next year training in California and Iowa, returning to Boulder in 1945 to study at CU-Boulder.
“In his two-decades long career as a Naval aviator, astronaut and aquanaut, Scott Carpenter brought honor and distinction to CU-Boulder while embodying the adventurous spirit of our nation,” said CU-Boulder Chancellor Philip P. DiStefano. “Our space program, and all space and ocean researchers everywhere, owe him a debt of gratitude. He will be sorely missed.”
In 1965 Carpenter took a leave of absence from NASA to participate in the Navy’s Man-in-the Sea Project as an aquanaut in the SEALAB II project off the coast of La Jolla, Calif. where he spent 30 days living and working on the ocean floor at a depth of more than 200 feet. Because of his groundbreaking deep-sea diving experiences with the Navy, Carpenter is hailed by many to be the first person to conquer both outer and inner space.
“My colleagues and I are deeply saddened by the passing of Astronaut Scott Carpenter,” said CU-Boulder aerospace engineering sciences Chair Penina Axelrad. “He has long been a member of the CU family and a tremendous inspiration for our aerospace faculty and students.”
In a 2012 interview with CU’s alumni magazine, the Coloradan, Carpenter spoke about his historic space journey. “I still remember what a thrill it was being up there — I liked the feeling of weightlessness, and the view I had of Earth.”
Carpenter and the other Mercury 7 astronauts created the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation in 1984. The foundation now involves more than 80 astronauts, awards 28 $10,000 scholarships annually and has dispersed more than $3 million to promising students in science and engineering since 1986.
As one of the original Mercury 7 astronauts, Carpenter followed Alan Shepard, Gus Grissom and Glenn into space and was followed by Wally Schirra, Gordon Cooper and Deke Slayton.
Carpenter was commissioned in the U.S. Navy in 1949 and flew a variety of missions during the Korean War. He attended Navy Test Pilot School in Maryland in 1954 and was assigned as an Air Intelligence Officer on the USS Hornet aircraft carrier. In April of 1959 he was selected by NASA to be an astronaut.
Although he was one course requirement short of graduating with a bachelor’s degree in aeronautical engineering when he left CU in 1949, the university awarded him his degree in 1962 following the successful Aurora 7 flight. When presenting the degree to Carpenter, then-CU President Quigg Newton noted that “his subsequent training as an astronaut has more than made up for his deficiency in the subject of heat transfer.”
In 1967 he became the Navy’s director of aquanaut operations during the SEALAB III experiment. After retiring from the Navy in 1969, he founded and became CEO of Sea Sciences Inc., a venture capital corporation that developed programs aimed at enhanced use of ocean resources and improved health of the planet. He worked closely with noted diver and scientist Jacques Cousteau and members of his Calypso team, and subsequently dove in most of the world’s oceans, including under Arctic ice.
Carpenter later became a consultant to industry and the private sector and has lectured around the world, narrated TV documentaries and written several books, including the 2002 New York Times best-seller, “For Spacious Skies: The Uncommon Journey of a Mercury Astronaut” co-authored with his daughter, Kris Stoever.
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