Volume 8, Number 2, 1999

MEASURES OF SUCCESS

12 things to brag about the next time someone asks, What's new at UD?"

  1. Parents of UD students put their money where their pride is! The Council in Aid of Education recently released a report that ranks the University of Delaware number one nationally in giving by parents of students and alumni to a public University. This past year, 1,620 parents (excluding alumni or UD employee parents) gave $1.6 million.

  2. A UD professor's system for forecasting killer heat waves will soon be saving lives on both sides of the Atlantic. By the summer of 2000, Rome, Italy, will join Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., in using a system developed by UD's Laurence Kalkstein to warn people about deadly heat waves. The director of UD's Synoptic Climatology Laboratory, Kalkstein created the system to give cities up to 60 hours' advance notice of dangerously hot weather conditions, using weather, air quality and historical data to make his predictions.

  3. A 20-year-old junior from Newark, Del., Sujata Kumari Bhatia, is simultaneously pursuing three different undergraduate degrees-in chemical engineering, biochemistry and biotechnology-as well as a master's degree in chemical engineering. At the same time, she took the top prize in the student paper competition of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers. Another impressive student is Margaret (Peg) Zumsteg of Wilmington, Del., who received her BRN degree in January-the same year she turns 68. The Entomological Society of America last fall presented Kari Peters, AG '99, an entomology/plant pathology major from Newark, Del., one of four national undergraduate scholarships, for her academic excellence and in recognition of her potential for future study and community service. In addition, the University boasts four Space Grant fellows, two Goldwater Scholars and two Sea Grant fellows this year.

  4. The hottest business software will be available to College of Business and Economics students starting in the fall. The German firm SAP has signed an agreement with UD to supply the college with software and training worth $2 million. SAP's enterprise resource planning package contains modules that can handle every aspect of a company, including accounting, payroll, human resource record-keeping, inventory management, production planning, strategic high-level planning and even running the machines in a manufacturing plant. Just about every department in the college will be able to use the SAP program to train its students, giving them a distinct advantage when they begin their job searches.

  5. Over the past four years, 191 nurses have earned their bachelor's degrees at UD using FOCUS, a long-distance learning program established to give working nurses a chance to earn BRN degrees at their worksites. Today, 1,168 people are enrolled in the popular long-distance courses, with 323 nurses matriculating from 129 work sites across the nation. Until last year, all courses were videotaped, but today, four are being offered on the World Wide Web.

  6. The growing reputation of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering is underscored by invitations from some of engineering's most respected journals asking UD faculty to sit on their editorial boards. At this writing, more than half of CEE faculty members serve on at least one. The department's main areas of research include coastal and ocean, environmental, geotechnical, structural, transportation and water resources engineering. The department's graduate program is ranked 37th in the nation by the National Research Council.

  7. The College of Agriculture and Natural Resources is celebrating a series of national awards to its students and faculty. Two senior agriculture education majors, Clifford Lawson of Harbeson, Del., and Brandy Marsich of Bear, Del., received the American FFA Degree from the national organization for their outstanding leadership, scholarship and community involvement. Lesa Griffiths, associate professor of animal science, was honored with one of two Excellence in College and University Teaching awards from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Carl Toensmeyer, AG '63M, professor of food and resource economics, won the National Agri-Marketing Association (NAMA) Award for Advisement, and the Entomological Society of America's eastern branch named Dewey Caron, professor of entomology, as the 1998 recipient of its Distinguished Achievement Award in Teaching

  8. The University and the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) have joined forces to develop a new college credit course, "Internet Literacy." This multimedia course, created by UD's Fred Hofstetter, is the first PBS TeleWEB (TM) course designed to use the Internet for all course activities. Students will learn how to design and create their own multimedia web pages. In addition, the course demonstrates the first use of Serf®, an innovative relational database developed at UD that provides a software platform for the creation, delivery and administration of Internet courses.

  9. UD researchers continue to lead the nation in the creation and application of composite materials. Richard Wool, professor of chemical engineering, was named a semifinalist in the 1999 Discover Magazine awards for innovation, recognizing his development of a soybean-based composite material. Working to combat the country's aging infrastructure, an alliance between the University, the Delaware Department of Transportation and industry resulted in the opening last fall of the first state-owned, all-composites bridge in the nation. Sensors built into the bridge will allow long-term monitoring by UD researchers. Under a separate National Academy of Sciences grant, an aging steel bridge in Delaware will be strengthened by covering it with a fiber-reinforced plastic.

  10. Electronic library services at the University now include The Web of Science, a multidisciplinary database of 8,000 of the world's leading science, social science and arts and humanities journals. The powerful technology of The Web of Science enables library users to search further, faster and more comprehensively than ever before. Only 200 institutions worldwide subscribe to this database, which covers 25 years of journals.

  11. The University's reputation as one of the nation's top training centers for figure skaters continues to grow, with Sara Wheat taking first place in junior ladies competition and 11 other skaters also placing at the National Competition in Salt Lake City. An article in the Feb. 12, 1999, issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education noted that such top figure skaters as Oksana Baiul train here, UD researchers study the biomechanics of the sport and an academic program is available for accomplished skaters who want to become coaches.

  12. The University recently received the Theodore M. Hesburgh Award Certificate of Excellence recognizing faculty development programs that enhance undergraduate teaching. Presented by TIAA-CREF (the Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association-College Retirement Equities Fund), the certificate honored faculty support services designed to bring problem-based learning and other active-learning methods into classrooms across campus. Over the past several years, UD's efforts to promote active learning have earned two major grants from the National Science Foundation, as well as funding from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the Pew Charitable Trusts.