Notes From Lilly
The proposal should indicate the current square footage used by each
program in each proposal and how that would increase and/or change.
(Probably not important in the Science complex; critical for the
Interdisciplinary Social Sciences and Visual Arts Buildings.)
He is very interested in admissions, enrollment and financial aid trends
and data (I suspect also retention, graduation rate trends). He indicated
He asked about the cost estimates and was very, very specific. Lilly will
want to know who generated them and how. Are they based on actual
contractor bids, on architectural quantity take-outs, on gross square
footage? What is the inflation factor? (This will require more precision
and explanation using the current Appendix C as a starting point. I
suspect that the same holds true on the timetable and planning efforts to
date. We should describe precisely at what stage each project is.)
Aside from being aware of audience, he said that, other than the first
page, we should not make the mistake of being too short. We should provide
full explanations and not assume that the reader will be able to read
between the lines or be able to draw the appropriate inferences. (We need
to make it all crystal clear.)
I mentioned the infant industry idea that Charlie and Ray had suggested.
He was very intrigued and indicated that we should look at the Rose-Hulman
Research Park concept or at least show that we know of it.
End Notes From Lilly
Focus is on capital improvements with an eye towards attracting more
Indiana high school students to college in Indiana and retaining more
college graduates within Indiana.
Notes From DickS
Next steps: Dissect the current versions for your specific and
in general. A rewrite is OK, just email it to me as an attachment.
or in e-mail text without margins.
Current deficiencies: Remember the naive reader! We cannot take
anything for granted or assume that the reader will make the appropriate
logic if we do not make the steps explicit. Document, document, be specific.
Specific deficiencies: In Dennis, the Visual Arts and the ISS, we need to
be more specific on numbers and uses (re-uses) of offices, classrooms,
studios, labs, etc. Lilly wants to know current enrollments by department.
Charlie has begin the specific steps for some of his areas. We need to
state our points as "10 graduates (15% of those majoring in math, physics,
computing)."
Happy times being a humanities instructor and deconstructing the current
drafts! Dick
End Notes From DickS
Explain that 90% of the software that we use is free. WinNT for teaching
purposes is an exception.
Descriptions of what each thing will be used for, how will it effect our capabilities
and ability to retain people in Indiana after graduation.
Illustrate places where students and faculty work together.
The two basic questions at hand are:
1) What can the computer science department do to increase the number of
Indiana high school students that go to college in Indiana?
2) What can the computer science department do to increase the number of
graduates that stay in Indiana after graduation from Earlham? Particularly
students that hail from Indiana.
In general I think our program is currently in a better position to address
the latter question rather than the former. At this time we don't do anything
with the local school corporations nor do we offer any Explore A College
classes. These seem to be the most obvious places to start with respect
to increasing the number of Indiana students that go to college in Indiana.
Starting initiatives for either of these would require the CS program to
reallocate significant resources.
Do you think we could (and/or would want to) get into the business of
outfitting local schools with inexpensive used computers running LINUX
for computer science classrooms? Would this fit into the goals of the
Lilly grant. This appeals to me as a community service project for
CS students and faculty (namely me).
I checked-out Rose-Hulman's two programs. Both of them are similar to
the type of thing CS is doing now and mathematics is considering.
Niether of them is really a business incubator as such. I think
both of them will form a good basis for ideas, structure, and some specific
approaches but it will require some thought about how to best implement
programs of this type in a liberal arts (rather than engineering) context.
See http://www.rose-hulman.edu/TASC/ and http://www.rose-hulman.edu/TASC/html/ted.html for more information about
them.
Note that we will continue to monitor graduation rates and retention rates
through surveys, etc.
*** Old Text ***
New Initiatives
Parallel and Distributed Computing - Document PVM setup.
Robotics - is this a good fit?
Experimental Nuclear Structure Research
Opportunities for involvement in new and ongoing research in experimental nuclear
physics exist. This research takes place mainly during the summer and
involves running experiments at facilities such as the Tandem/Superconducting LINAC
Accelerator at Florida State University and the National Superconducting
Cyclotron Laboratory at Michigan State University. Computer analysis of the
data collected could be done at Earlham during the academic year.
There is potential for bringing radiation detector development work to Earlham which
would support the experiments mentioned above.
Projects Involving Computer Science and Physics Majors in Collaboration
There is currently a need to port data analysis software to the LINUX
operating system and perhaps to produce graphical user interfaces for
some of this software. These analysis packages are used to produce,
view and manipulate one and two dimensional histograms of data.
For particularly ambitious students, there are potential projects involving
development of analysis software "from scratch."
There may be opportunities to port theoretical nuclear physics calculations to the
LINUX operating system. It would be useful to run them on the parallel virtual
machine (PVM) currently under construction by the CS Department. We must first
enlist a nuclear theorist interested in collaborating with us.
Project in Physics Pedagogy Involving both Physics and CS Majors
Physics majors interested in teaching, and CS majors interested in web development
using JAVA, could collaborate in the development of online graphical physics
simulations for use in introductory physics courses.
Operations Research
Indiana Software Association
They are working on an internship program. www.indsoft.org
Dan Woodhouse - 962-7393 (w) 965-9123 (h)
1997 grad that did a couple of internships in Richmond and then stayed. (From
Indiana originally.) Currently works for Robert W. Baird. Sending a description
of his experiences as an intern.
Richmond Community Schools
Rodger Smith
CS, on-going, one per semester
West End Bank
John Russie
Management Program maybe?
School for the Arts
Dan Woodhouse (on the board)
CS, on-going, one per semester
Other entities in Richmond
Belden
RP&L
City and County
Credit, money, both? How many hours/week, journal? The first experiences for students
should be credit-based, with potential paid work for those students who demonstrate
the qualities our "clients" desire.
csoft - full time for a semester? Tony
CompuMentor chapter, work with Service Learning?
Our Track Record
In all of these programs we strive to find internship and job opportunities
within Indiana for our students and graduates. Over the past 15 years
many Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science majors have stayed in Indiana
after graduation. We have found that students who participate in internship
programs with Indiana companies often stay here after they graduate. For
this reason we have begun to focus on this as a key aspect of our efforts.
Statistics for Lilly Grant
Computer Science, Math, & Physics Departments
Yazeed Moor
Alumni/Development, Earlham College
1. Graduates in any of the selected majors that are originally from Indiana
and still reside in Indiana? 13 out of 26 (50%)
2. Graduates in any of the selected majors that are originally from other
states but now reside in Indiana? 7 out of 163 (4.3%)
Note: Total number of graduates from 1980 - 1998 in the departments of Computer
Science, Math, & Physics: 189 students
Our anecdotal recollections:
From Indiana and stayed in Indiana (for at least a year or two)
Amy
Buddy Conner
Don Siler
Paul Retherford
Barb Nicholson
Paul Neff
others?
From elsewhere and stayed in Indiana (for at least a year or two)
RayO
CharlieP
NathanT
Larry Fisher
Nick Fankhauser
Eric Eastman
Mark Stosberg
Chuck Kuehn (from Indiana?)
others?
Companies started in Indiana by people in either of these groups:
Cygnus, Inc
Ray Ontko & Company
infocom, inc
Summersault, Inc
Development of the Wayne County MIS Department
others?
Equipment
/* current - Make sure each of these is well connected to the projects that address this
initiative. */
Compute server - used primarily for astrophysics research.
Sun UltraSPARC 10 $7,370
128MB memory
4GB disk
24X CD-ROM
10/100BASE-T Ethernet
19" monitor
This would replace a Sun SPARC 10
Teaching lab - used primarily for teaching classes and as an after-hours lab
Some classes (operations research and computational geometry
for example) would be taught in this facility.
200MHz Pentium II $3,500 x 8 = $28,000
64MB memory
4GB disk
24X CD-ROM
10/100BASE-T Ethernet
17" monitor
Environmental modifications $10,000
Total $38,000
These would replace a cluster of 8 NeXT workstations
Parallel computing cluster - operations research, high energy physics,
computational geometry, parallel processing
200MHz Pentium II $3,000 x 4 = $12,000
128MB memory
4GB disk
Quad Fast Ethernet
Console and switch boxes $1,500
Fast Ethernet switch $2,500
These would replace a cluster of 386s, 486s, and DECstations
File and general purpose server
200MHhz Pentium II $7,000
128MB memory
2 9GB disks
24X CD-ROM
10/100BASE-T Ethernet
RAID controller and 7 bay cabinet
17" montitor
This would replace a pair of DECstations
Machines for faculty/student research rooms
200MHz Pentium II $3,500 x 4 = $14,000
64MB memory
4GB disk
24X CD-ROM
10/100BASE-T Ethernet
17" monitor
These would replace a collection of Macintoshs and DECstations. Former
Closet on 2nd Dennis, 4th floor room, area around Dick's office. Facilitate
long-term projects.
Grand Total $82,370
Facilities
>From the conversations I've had with students this year, especially the
round of conversations with students in the dorms this spring, I believe
that more informal space for students, especially in Runyan, is important
for us to achieve. I certainly don't want Runyan to become a 'pure'
student space, but I want students to feel unusually at home there. I want
them to feel that it's a gathering/studying/talking place for them. We
need a 'college living room,' and there's really no such space now.
Facilities
Before and after site map - sqare footage for each dept (gross totals - office, lab, storage)
some billed twice or three times.
The improvements in Dennis are essential and long-felt. While everyone is
well-aware of the needs for aesthetically improving the Dennis lobby and
Dennis 110, we suggest making aesthetic changes on all three floors. We
propose that the 2nd and 3rd floors also open at the main stairwell end of
the building into a lobby area with the main department office for that
floor, with faculty offices, and open spaces for people to congregate.
Having all these facilities at the main end of the building would enhance
the flow of people from one floor to the next and create a welcoming
atmosphere on each floor.
Power
Clearly we will need more power in Dennis to support this hardware.
Currently we have limitations concerning where we can plug-in machines
and how many machines can be plugged in at a time. We can provide the
information about current requirements so a reasonable solution can be
engineered.
HVAC
The heating and cooling in Dennis never has been particularly good and
the addition of computer hardware has only made the situation worse.
We can provide the information about BTUs generated by the equipment
we have so a reasonable solution can be developed by the engineers.
Lighting, Clean-up, and Paint
The hallways of Dennis are somewhat shabby, they could use a serious
face-lift.
Faculty/Student Research Rooms
As always space in Dennis is very tight. Currently Wilderness uses two
rooms on the fourth floor. Computer Science uses one room on the fourth
floor. Physics uses the remainder of the fourth floor for research
facilities. Computer Science and Physics would like to use the two rooms
which Wilderness is currently using, in addition to the one that CS
is using, and convert the three of them to faculty/student research
labs. Each of them would have a workstation, whiteboard, table, chairs,
and bookcase. These would be designed for research and projects lasting
a semester or longer.
Students are using their rooms as study space because they
own better personal computers than what the college has. We don't want to
encourage isolation for those reasons.
To improve the appearance and functionality of the present science buildings. To make a
central welcoming space in the 1st floor entrance to Dennis; a central Math/Physics/CS
department office, lobby and faculty spaces on second floor; and a central Geology
department office, lobby and faculty spaces on third floor -- all these "welcome" areas are
located at main stairway end of building.
Improved HVAC and electrical power levels for Dennis/Stanley/Noyes
Improved appearance of Dennis lobby and centralized departments areas on 1st, 2nd, and 3rd floors
Improved appearance and usefulness of Dennis 110
/* Note that some of these items appear elsewhere, just listed here to illustrate
the interconnectedness of it all. */
Office Arrangement
Currently Mathematics and Computer Science share an area at the West end
of 2nd Dennis. The Physics department is spread-out along the length of
the 2nd Dennis corridor with the department office for the three departments
1/2 way down the corridor. With some shuffling we could have the faculty
of all three departments and the office area at the West end of 2nd Dennis
with the rest of the floor used for classrooms (existing) and student study
lounges, research rooms, and computer labs (existing.) This would offer a
number of benefits:
Nicer look and feel, more organized and welcoming. 90% of the people
who come to 2nd Dennis do so via the West stairs. When they entered
they would be presented with the department office and a cluster of
faculty offices.
It would be easier for the faculty and students of the three departments
to work together due to co-location. This has proved to be very useful
for Mathematics and Computer Science.
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