Mar 4, 2011 ... Atlanta Falcons cheerleader, the work loads of two entirely different activities are
manageable both on the field and in the research labo- ratory.
Focus
[email protected] Focus Editor: Kamna Bohra
Technique @GTGreenBuzz: @RT @Georgia_Tech: Outracing the wind — Wired Magazine showcases Georgia Tech alum’s wind powered vehicle. http://bit.ly/hfjymx
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Friday, March 4, 2011
Cheerleader balances life off-field By Kamna Bohra Focus Editor
any practice, Brown must have her material and routine memorized, which requires even more time. Along with the athletic side, the Atlanta Falcons cheerleaders are required to participate in 20 charity appearances over the course of the season. These appearances have included visiting brain and spinal cord injury patients and teaching cheer camps for the under-privileged children. As for her time off the field, Brown has been conducting undergraduate research throughout her years at Tech, and Brown’s plans are to receive a Ph.D. in Tissue Engineering and then attend medical school. “My ultimate goal is to be a reconstructive surgeon and work with the military to develop bioSee Wendy, page 11
Photo by Will Folsom / Student Publications
Some students struggle to balance engineering classes alone. Others find distress in taking classes and participating in extracurriculars. But for Wendy Brown, a fifth-year BMED major and an Atlanta Falcons cheerleader, the work loads of two entirely different activities are manageable both on the field and in the research laboratory. “Academics and my career goals are important to me, but my personal goals like dancing and cheering are too. I maintain that if it’s important to you, you’ll find a way to make it work,” Brown said. Brown has been dancing for her whole life, becoming more involved when she began high school. Dur-
ing her college years, she was on Gold Rush, Tech’s official athletic dance team, for her first four years, and she became captain her last year on the team. Brown’s collegiate coach, who is a former cheerleader for both the Atlanta Falcons and the Atlanta Hawks, first introduced her to the idea of cheering for a professional athletic team. “Before then, I had thought of cheering for the NFL as [a] niche— like something only a select group of special people got to be involved with. Once I saw it as a tangible opportunity, I knew I wanted to do it,” Brown said. In addition to six hours of weekly practice and workout sessions, Brown is required to be at the Georgia Dome several hours before each game. Before attending
Images courtesy of Wendy Brown
Archives delve into global, Tech history By Alex Kessler Contributing Writer
Walk up Freshman Hill to the library. Turn right and walk down the steps. On the immediate right, tucked away in a secluded corner, is the Library Archives, the core of Tech’s historical safekeeping. Locked deep within the vaults of Tech’s archives lay the tools of revolution, weapons that overthrew monarchs and dawned a new age of democracy and science. Books and ideas written by authors hundreds of years ago carried the Western World from the dark fog of feudalism into the bright light of intellectual discovery. Sitting in an ordinary grey box underneath the library is a 324-year old book written by Isaac Newton that introduces for the first time in history his famous theory of gravity: The Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica. The first few rows of the archives are the current Tech science fiction book and magazine collection, which holds over 10,000 unique publications, most of which are the last copies remaining on earth. The collection was actually begun by Irving Bud Foote, Tech’s first science-fiction scholar and a former LCC professor. Foote donated his personal library, containing first edition works by H.G. Wells, Isaac Asimov and Jules Verne. The next row contains the entire U.S. official government published records of the Civil War. Dating back to the early 1890s, this anthology of books details every battle, manifest, letter, speech and legislative record of America’s bloodiest war. Far from entertainment and fiction, the archives hold immeasurable resources for research on any topic. See Library, page 12
E-week brings fun to engineering By Mehfouz Jalal Contributing Writer
Being an engineer became much more exciting when Tau Beta Pi, an engineering honor society, hosted its annual Engineer’s Week. This year marks the 60th anniversary of the event, which has strived to give engineers some well needed relaxation. This year, E-Week was held from Feb. 20-26, entertaining students at Tech with multiple programs across campus. “Based on the one event I attended, not many people showed up initially [and that] deterred my experience at first. As the event progressed and attendance grew, it turned out to be an evening wellspent,” said Akhil Modi, a secondyear ME major. “These events are designed to promote teamwork, creativity and fun,” said the E-Week organizers on the E-week website. The week commenced with the Humpty Dumpty Drop, which encouraged participants, both individuals and teams, to design an innovative apparatus that would protect an egg from breaking when dropped down the entrance stairwells of the Bobby Dodd Stadium. Among the four competitors, the winner was Allan Visochek, a firstyear AE major. “[The competition] was won by Visochek on the tie-breaking basis of weight and creativity. The judges unanimously agreed that his device
Image courtesy of Benjamin Plantz
Engineer’s Week participants practiced engineering with real-world applications, such as skyscraper building, outside of the classroom. had the most merit because it did not reach terminal velocity in the test and utilized a protection system unlike anything else seen,” said James Fisher, an E-Week chair and a third-year ISyE major. E-Week also included a Rubik’s Cube Contest. Among 22 contestants, Chris Tran, a first-year BCHM major, solved the cube with the fastest time of 22.38 seconds, five seconds faster than any other contestant. The following event was the
Build-a-Thon in which the teams were required to bring in 15 cans of food to be able to participate in the event. These teams were then provided with a set of cans and were asked to make a creative and unique structure using the cans and other allowed items. “Three teams competed in the event: Tau Beta Pi, Pi Tau Sigma and [the Society of Women EnSee Engineers, page 11
FOCUS
Wendy
from page 9 logical reconstructive and regenerative technologies for use in surgery,” Brown said. Meanwhile, Brown is finishing her last semester of courses and her undergraduate thesis. Additionally, Brown will be hosting a segment of the “Science of the NFL” series that is produced by NBC Sports, NBC Learn, NFL and the National Science Foundation. Her segment will focus on Newton’s third law of motion. In striking a balance, Brown does find some stress, but she thoroughly enjoys her academic and athletic careers. “As far as school work [goes], I have finished a lot of my degree requirements already, so that helped me not completely overload myself. I have definitely had some very late nights in Whitaker this year, though, between studying for the GRE, doing homework and trying to finish my undergraduate thesis. It’s funny, though, because I almost don’t mind the work load,” Brown said. Brown notes that she is not the only member of the Falcons cheerleading team with a diverse career path. “Every Atlanta Falcons cheerleader has a career. It’s actually a requirement to be on the team, and interests vary a lot. We have everything from lawyers, nurses, financial analysts and financial advisors to TV producers, fulltime students and moms on the team,” Brown said. Pursuing two entirely different career paths is feasible to Brown, and she works to dispel the stereotypes associated with cheerleading. “I definitely think there is no reason you can’t have it all, and I would like to work to discredit stereotypes and discourage the tendency for people to automatically assume that women pursuing things like dancing or cheerleading or modeling aren’t smart,” Brown said. “My advice to people encountering this type of discrimination is to just stop listening and work toward accomplishing your goals for yourself,” Brown said.
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Tech CHEFS supports healthy eating By Amira Saleh Contributing Writer
Photo by Tiara Winata / Student Publications
Students competing in the Tech Chef competition were scored based on taste, ingredient choice, presentation and cleanliness.
Engineers
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gineers]. Over 400 pounds of canned goods were donated to the Atlanta Community Food Bank. $100 worth of canned goods [was also] donated by Southern Company,” said Ann Trippe, president of Tau Beta Pi and an ECE grad student. E-Week included a skyscraper contest in which contestants designed and built a skyscraper using marshmallows, skewers, spaghetti noodles and toothpicks, a true test of engineering skills. The participants’ towers ranged from five to seven feet in height. Nearly all of the towers collapsed at the end of the contest. Toward the end of E-Week, a dodgeball tournament provided some much needed physical challenge to participating students. Overcoming the onslaught of dodgeballs was the winning team
of CHBE grad students Brian Kraftschik, Ryan Lively, Michael Abrahamson, Gregory Cmarik, Alexander Jordan, Matthew Mistilis, Brennen Mueller, Khaldoon Abu-Hakmeh and Prabuddha Bansal. Finally, E-Week came to a close with comedy night consisting of comedians Michael Kaiser and Marshall Chiles, regulars at the Laughing Skull Lounge located on Peachtree Street. “It was interesting noticing events all around campus. The mood was pretty festive, which contributed to a happier atmosphere in a week where professors choose to pile on the tests. I feel a lot of them were actually very inclusive. There wasn’t really that much time [though]. After all, it was the week before the week of drop day,” said Akshaya Srivastava, a second-year AE major.
On Saturday, Feb. 26, the second annual Tech Chef competition was hosted in Brittain Dining Hall. Tech Chef is a nutritionallybased cooking competition, and it was the closing event of GT Body Image Week. The event was created through the combined efforts of GT Dining, Auxiliary Services, Health Promotions and Cooks for Heritage, Education, Fellowship and Service (CHEFS), a student-run organization that promotes cooking and healthy eating habits. The different Tech student teams each had an executive chef and two “sous chefs,” who are direct assistants to the executive chief. These teams competed throughout the day in breakfast, entrée and dessert rounds. Each team had 45 minutes to create a dish of their choice that was composed of 45 percent of the key ingredient: low fat ricotta cheese. “We chose low-fat ricotta cheese because it is healthy, can
be sweet or savory and is a versatile enough ingredient to be used in breakfast, entrée and dessert,” said Julia Turner, CHEFS president and founder and a third-year STaC major. Each round was scored by a different panel of three judges including staff members from around campus. Judges evaluated teams based on taste, ingredients, cleanliness and presentation with tie breakers being determined by the lower fat recipes. “I like food, and I like to judge people,” said Brett Hulst, an area manager for the Freshman Experience dorms, of his decision to participate as a judge. Hulst also watched to make sure teams followed proper food safety guidelines. “No one likes food poisoning,” said Dori Martin, the event’s emcee and marketing manager for GT Dining. Tech Chef generated a crowd of students and staff. Some students stayed for the entirety of the six-hour competition just to sample the different student-created See Chef, page 12
Photo by Sho Kitamura / Student Publications
Often considered the beacon of engineering, the Rubix Cube was the center of one of the competitions during Engineer’s Week.
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Chef
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cuisines. The winning dish of the breakfast round was called “Whey Out There” Breakfast Burritos. “It’s a reference to the large amount of whey in ricotta cheese,” said Nathan O’Connor, executive chef of the round’s winning team and a fourth-year ISyE major. “My biggest challenge was definitely creating a recipe that met the 45 percent ricotta cheese requirement,” O’Connor said. O’Connor, however, enjoyed the competition and plans to compete again next year. During the entrée round, a power breaker shorted out, and the Tech chefs faced more challenges than just cooking under a time constraint. However, the entrée team led by executive chef, Aya Ishizu, a fourth-year ISyE major, worked beyond the distractions and won the round with a Vegetarian Friendly Ricotta Noki. The final dessert round was taken by a team led by executive chef Mya Oren, a fourth-year MGT major. Oren’s team created Healthy Ricotta Fruit Cups made of semi-sweet chocolate cups with
a creamy ricotta filling infused with orange clementine flavor. Oren, who one day hopes to open a bakery, also plans to enter the competition again next year. The winners from each round received aprons that said Tech Chef 2011 Breakfast Champion, Entrée Champion or Dessert Champion. Ishizu’s entrée team was the overall winner of Tech Chef 2011 with a score of 87.16 points. In addition to her champion apron, Ishizu received a $140 Heiko knife, and her sous chefs received $25 gift cards courtesy of GT Dining. The Tech Chef 2011 champions’ recipes from each round will be posted in an online cookbook format on the CHEFS organizational website. Martin said that the turnout nearly guarantees Tech Chef will happen again next year. “Tech Chef 2012 will be hosted in the newly built North Ave Dining Hall. Students do not have to have a meal plan to participate or [to] come watch the event,” Martin said. Turner will return again next year as student coordinator for the event.
Photo by Tiara Winata / Student Publications
Students practiced cooking on a set time limit and had to design a breakfast, entree or desert primarily made up of ricotta cheese.
Library
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Locked away in a hermetically sealed room closed to the public is Tech’s rare book collection. The moisture and temperature are strictly controlled to ensure the longevity of prized historical possessions. Among the influential literary works stored there are Rene Descartes’ Philosophica published in 1656, Gottfried Leibniz’s Combinatoria from 1690 and Blaise Pascal’s treatise on his triangle theorem from 1665. So delicate are these books that one fears that opening them all the way will break the bindings. Though they are old, their pages are crisp and clear due to advanced preservation methods. The fullpage colored pictures retain their original shine and detail, and the volumes do not appear as though they were hand-crafted centuries before. Conservation is not the only reason to keep these books behind closed doors. Newton’s Principia is valued at approximately $285,000. The most expensive item in the archives is a small collection of nine atlases from 1664, which is collectively valued at a total of $400,000. These atlases actually only contain pictures of bridges, but their age and condition have increased their value almost 1000 times. In fact, any otherwise common object is worth more due to preservation. Aside from books, the archives hold old RAT caps, footballs, letters, pins and even a ceremonial British sword. At the bottom of one shelf, sitting plainly in a box, is a vase created in Picasso’s studio. Two Oscars won by a Y. Frank Freeman are in another box in the same room. The 1996 Olympic Torch from the Atlanta games is also located here. The library reserves are not
only a bookcase for history, but also an ark for Tech and Atlanta culture. The first T-Book ever published is found in the Library Archives as well. About five inches tall and not much wider than a credit card, this booklet contains, as always, the words to the fight song, a synopsis of Tech’s history and a football schedule for 1909. When Tech was an all-male school, it had regulations for attire proper for a “gentleman” and in-
structions for RAT cap usage. At the time, Tech was a trade school, and experience in the shop was required for all engineering students. Thus, the freshman class was then commonly referred to as the “apprentice class,” according to the first RAT book publication. Although seemingly out of reach to the average student, a tour of the Library Archives only requires an appointment made in person or online. The research collections are open to everyone for academic use.
Photo by Wei Liao / Student Publications
The aisles of the Library Archives include artifacts from the worlds of science and technology, along with the Institute’s beginnings.
