What’s New in Engineering

It’s that time again: the end-of-semester crunch each spring for Department of Engineering students and faculty. The 5th annual MEB Scholarship Day is just around the corner, on May 2nd, 2008. Mark your calendars!

MEB Scholarship Day plays host to many events each spring, the most noteworthy of which (for the Department of Engineering) are the Senior Engineering Design Project Presentations. This year’s senior design teams have been working very hard on a variety of projects, a list of which will be coming out shortly. As in the past, we will be webcasting the project presentations live all day on May 2nd. Details on the webcast will be coming out here as well!

For senior engineering students and their families: also mark your calendars for the Senior Celebration, a time of food and reflection following the conclusion of MEB Scholarship Day. Invitations to this event will be going out via senior engineering students in the coming weeks. Questions about attendance should be directed to Jean McCauslin.
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The Solar Scholars project team, working in conjunction with Dave Lupold and Brian Seip at Gannett Fleming, Inc., has recently submitted a permit application to Upper Allen Township for the installation of the Solar Scholars training facility. As the advisor to the project, I am excited to see months of hard work from our student team culminate in a set of very professional drawings (as required for the permit application).

For those who haven’t heard about Solar Scholars, here is a brief summary: the Solar Scholars project team is designing and installing a solar energy training facility at Messiah College. The facility will be used both to train engineering students in solar electric technologies and to educate our peers at Messiah, as well as the general public, about the possibilities for solar generated electricity. You can find a longer summary and more information on our Collaboratory wiki page.

Solar Scholars is just one project of several here at Messiah which demonstrate our commitment to the responsible use of the earth’s resources and proper stewardship of God’s creation. We want our facility to demonstrate those commitments in an active way, so we are approaching our facility’s small pavilion with the intent to make it earth-friendly. Towards that end we have enlisted the Messiah College Earthkeepers to help us find recycled or sustainable paving material for our walkway. (They have some leads, but nothing concrete yet.)

We also would like to use a green roof on the pavilion. “Green” as in living (yes, plants growing on the roof), not as in the color green. For one thing, it helps to minimize the footprint of the project in terms of loss of green space. Also, the green roof is an opportunity for the college as a whole to observe whether such a technology could be applied on a larger scale to future construction here.

For those (like me) who are intrigued by drawings and diagrams, stay tuned. Updated drawings of the project as well as a 3D rendering of the pavilion will be available in the coming weeks.

Have questions or comments about Solar Scholars? Post a comment or email us!

“Remember, Remember, the 5th of November.” The well-known rhyme in reference to Guy Fawkes day is also the slogan for Messiah’s 2007 Career & Grad School Expo. If you are looking for a job, internship opportunity, or the next stop in your educational journey, stop by Brubaker Auditorium today (November 5, 2007) from 11:30 AM - 3:00 PM. Also, don’t forget to prepare!

Well, you may not be excited, but I am: we have a new Department of Engineering brochure available. The new brochure reflects our recent change to the Integrated Projects Curriculum as well as highlighting our connection to the Collaboratory and our commitment to providing hands-on learning experiences for Messiah Engineering students.

The Fall 2007 edition of our Newsletter, Engineering News, is here. In it you can find updates from Messiah Engineering alumni, a summary of last year’s Senior Design Projects, and a full article about the Light Sport Aircraft project. (more…)

I personally would like to congratulate our 2007 senior class for an outstanding job on the Senior Design Project Presentations this year. I was impressed by the overall quality of the presentations, especially with regard to professionalism. I know I’m speaking for not only myself but many others in the department as well.

A special congratulations goes to the Renewable Energy Sensor Package project team for winning the 2007 ISA Award. The ISA award is given annually to the project team which the Department of Engineering together feels has made the best use of instrumentation and measurement. The award is sponsored by the Central Keystone section of the Instrumentation, Systems, and Automation Society, and includes not only a plaque but also a $500 stipend which is split among the award recipients. Congratulations to Cameron Hess, Justin Kelly, and Jonathan Shambeda for being the 2007 winners!

Official information about the MEB day Engineering Webcast is now available on the Engineering website:

• Webcast Home
• Webcast Schedule
• Webcast Requirements
• Webcast Feedback

With the exception of the schedule, all the information you need to know is right here on the blog. Just look at the links at the top of the page…

Last night we completed our first live test of our webcasting system using ITS’ new media/webcasting server, media.messiah.edu. Tim Van Dyke and I set up one of our Panasonic camcorders to broadcast via a Collaboratory laptop kindly loaned to us by Lindsay Reilly.

It wasn’t all that exciting in terms of content; all we did was have the camcorder broadcast a video feed of a computer monitor with the generic Windows 3D pipes screensaver running. What was exciting, however, is that once we figured out which FireWire port to use, everything ran perfectly! I woke up this morning, groggily pulled up the feed on my home computer, and there was the screensaver video… piping away.

So we’re past the proof of concept stage now, and moving into production. I’ll be posting more information about the presentation schedule and such in the next few days. After all, MEB day is less than 2 weeks away!