Community Connections: Creating Global Engineers; Guy Simplant, Digital Superspy
NSF gives latest boost to UW program that fosters internationally savvy engineers
- UW undergrad Rufino Virata conducts research in China as part of an international program that seeks to foster a global worldview among budding engineers. Click on the image for a poster promoting the effort.
Read a news article about the class that started the program.
Read related news releases: Oct. 1999, May 2000, and Sept. 2001.
Find out more about UW Worldwide.
Five years ago, Gretchen Kalonji was looking for ways to impress upon engineering students the increasingly international nature of the field they were entering and give them more hands-on experiences, early in their academic careers.
The UW Kyocera Professor of Materials Science huddled with a colleague on the other side of the world and obtained approval for a new section of Engineering 100, a core class for freshmen considering an engineering track.
But this section was radically different than the others.
The American students’ professor wasn’t located in Seattle, but in Tohoku, Japan. So were some of their team members. They were assigned real engineering projects. They had to collaborate across the Pacific, via the Internet, to complete their work.
And they loved it.
Next came an exchange program with Sichuan University in China that sent UW students overseas to work on environmental issues and brought Chinese students to Seattle to study engineering at a major U.S. research institution. This undergraduate program has received funding and awards at the national level, both in the U.S. and in China. Now the effort is expanding again to include a federally funded model for graduate education reform.
Last month, Kalonji was awarded a $3.4 million IGERT (Integrated Graduate Education and Research Traineeship) grant from the National Science Foundation for multi-national collaborations on challenges to the environment.
The new program has been grouped with the previous ones under an umbrella organization, UW Worldwide, which Kalonji directs. It will target graduate students and will be done collaboratively with universities in Japan, New Zealand, Namibia, South Africa, Mozambique, Vietnam and China. Program leaders will also work closely with Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, the region’s major governmental research lab, in designing research and education programs for participating students.
Participating students will have advisers both at the UW and at the partner institution with whom they are working, will spend a minimum of six months overseas in a research internship and will do a “pedagogical” internship working on a project related to international educational reform in engineering and science.
“The idea is that each student who emerges from this IGERT will have a Ph.D. that will reflect very strong traditional disciplinary accomplishments, but also an enhanced interdisciplinary awareness as well as an ability to cross national boundaries and apply those experiences in the classroom,” Kalonji said.
It’s a natural addition to the existing undergraduate effort, she added.
“We’re looking at building sustainable multi-national programs, and graduate students are at the core of our research efforts,“ she said. “So even if you’re working with undergraduates, graduate students are at the heart of it, and are key to our success.”
Rufino Virata, a junior double-majoring in materials science and informatics, was a member of that first group of undergraduates that went to Sichuan in 2000. He remembers struggling with Chinese during the classes that led up to his departure and recalls an occasional bout of homesickness during his 10-month stay.
But most of all, he remembers the research he did in water quality and lifecycle assessment, and the value of being exposed to a culture outside his own.
“I definitely want to go back,” Virata said. “The experience changed the way I look at things and helped me decide what exactly I want to study. An international perspective helps you be a better engineer.”
And that’s the point, according to Kalonji.
“That period, from 18 to 22, is a time of incredible growth and change anyway,” she said. “Engaging them in research and other creative endeavors enhances that maturation leap. They learn to deal with other cultures, they do research, they learn professional communication skills.
“They start learning how to become the kind of scientists and engineers were going to need in the future.”
Digital secret agent gives students the goods on battling heart disease
- Secret Agent Guy Simplant pumps his way toward improved health. In "Agent Guy Simplant: Case of the Ailing Heart," students learn about math, science and the heart while helping the digital super spy make good health choices so he can accomplish his mission.
Try your hand at coaching a secret agent.
It takes a lot of heart to fight evil just ask Secret Agent Guy Simplant, who in his latest adventure is teetering on the losing edge of a battle with the ultra-naughty Evil Spy, and with his own poor health-care choices.
But fear not! Simplant, with $1.55 million in backing from the National Institutes of Health, is taking his cause to Puget Sound schoolchildren and asking for their help to defeat the forces of darkness and whip the hero back into shape. In the process, the students stand to help themselves as well.
Thats the hope of a group of bioengineering researchers and educators at the University of Washington Engineered Biomaterials (UWEB) Engineering Research Center and the Hope Heart Institute, who are collaborating with area teachers to launch a health and science education program with Simplant as the focal point. The Washington Mathematics, Engineering, Science Achievement program (MESA) is also involved.
The initiative, called “Youth Take Heart,” has been awarded the NIH grant to carry out a five-year educational plan on cardiovascular health, aimed at students in grades 6-12. The effort has a two-prong emphasis, according to project director Fanaye Turner, director of education and outreach at UWEB.
“We want to introduce students, especially minority students, to careers in health and science,” she said. “And we want to educate them about good health practices. There are a number of studies that indicate that many of the health problems related to cardiovascular disease start in childhood, even though the diseases dont appear until later.”
Dr. Phil Nudelman, chief executive officer of the Hope Heart Institute, agreed.
“If we don’t act on prevention at the K-12 age, we will become more and more a country of overweight, obese, risk-laden people with diabetes and heart disease,” he said. “Education early on can prevent that.”
Learning about the heart naturally brings science fundamentals into the picture, Turner added.
“To know what is going on in the heart, you have to have science and you have to have math,” she said.
But to get the kids to listen, you also have to have visual appeal and an element of entertainment. Guy Simplant, created and developed by a team led by Associate Professor Karen Cheng, chair of the Visual Communication Design Program in the UW’s School of Art, has both. For convenience, Guy is packaged on a CD-ROM and available in an interactive Web-based format.
Here’s the scenario: Guy is hot in pursuit of Evil Spy, who has stolen top-secret plans for a super-secret hand implant (which Guy sports he obtained it in an earlier episode) and Guy has to break off the chase because he’s too out of breath. He visits Dr. Z, who treats all the top secret agents, and she tells him that she suspects heart trouble.
In the process of helping Guy, students learn how the heart works, what can go wrong and why, and how heart disease is treated. They are asked to set up a program for Guy to manage his diet, exercise and stress, and they have an opportunity to see the results.
If Guy and his student helpers aren’t careful about his choices, he could end up having a massive heart attack during his next encounter with Evil Spy. At that point, students learn about tissue engineering and a cutting-edge project by the UW and Hope Heart to grow living, beating patches of tissue to bind up severely damaged hearts and help them pump efficiently again.
The NIH funding is timely in rounding out the program, which will also include a laboratory kit and general curriculum, and will eventually be offered to students across the state and country, Turner said. But she sees it as just the beginning.
“We’re planning many more adventures,” said Turner. “We could do one for every major body part. Who knows we might be as enduring as the James Bond series has been.”
Simplant fans think it’s possible. After all, their hero is cool, suave and has a geek-chic that 007 can only dream of. No martinis for this agent, though he needs to take care of that heart thing. Just carrot juice, please. Shaken, not stirred.