Research Experience for Undergraduates-2001
Communications Workshop
A Communications Workshop was held July 6-7, 2001 at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign campus. Karen Lunsford and Jody Shipka, graduate students with the Center for Writing Studies, English Department, conducted the workshop. The workshop stressed written and oral presentation skills. The students will use this knowledge for preparing their final written reports and delivering a Power Point presentation at the REU Symposium August 10-12, 2001 in Salt Lake City, Utah.
The Undergraduate Research Assistants (URA) students Malcom Foss, Vickie Watson, and Cathleen Kennedy joined the REU students Ryan McDaniel, Stephen Priddy, Matthew Dryden, and Peggy Ho for the workshop. Also attending were Professor Shirley Dyke’s REU students from Washington University, Amy Samuelson, Leslie Woerner, and Josh Tolchinsky.
The genre of the research report was discussed with emphasis on the introduction and the importance of citing what might be taken as “shared knowledge”. Students received a bound packet of four sample reports from previous years and a second packet that outlined a very common rhetorical pattern for abstracts and introductions. A sample of earthquake article abstracts from Nature was also analyzed. A one-on-one consultation was held with each student to talk about his or her research report.
Group discussions about effective Power Point presentations were held with a short presentation being videotaped. Students may elect to receive further support from the communication facilitators by posting their papers/queries on the Interactive Papers website.
Symposium
Seven students from the MAE Center Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) and Undergraduate Research Assistants (URA) programs joined eight students from PEER and seven students from MCEER to give their presentations. Each student provided an abstract of his or her paper. Professor Ed Harris from the Department of Philosophy and Humanities at Texas A&M University offered the ethics component of the REU experience with concurrent breakout sessions to discuss ethical dilemma problems. A. Parry Brown, Vice President of Reaveley Engineers and Associates, Inc., Salt Lake City, Utah was the keynote speaker introducing Buckling Restrained Braces Provide the Key to the Seismic Retrofit of the Wallace F. Bennett Federal Building.
Professor T. Leslie Youd from Brigham Young University presented a pre-field trip overview and escorted the group to the County Building. Students had an opportunity to observe the base isolation system beneath, and the mote around, the County Building. Students walked through the building, noting work that was done to restore the interior to the original 1890 condition and climbed the clock tower to view the bracing and anchoring that was completed to increase earthquake safety. Students were allowed to walk out onto the roof structure to observe bracing of chimneys and statues that was done to prevent toppling of these structures.
The day continued with an engineering tour of the LDS Church Conference Center, completed in April 2000. The Center has a 21,000 seating capacity and has roof trusses that span the 270 ft. radius of the building and bear on a 150 ft. long transfer beam that weighs about 4 tons per foot of length. The roof structure is landscaped, which adds considerable dead load to the structure. The building was designed for Seismic Zone 4, even though Salt Lake City is in UBC Zone 3. Students continued the walking tour across Temple Square, observing and discussing engineering aspects of the historic buildings on the square. At the Salt Palace Convention Center students viewed areas of the building that were underlain by the controversial lateral spreads or faults that lie beneath the foundation of the new addition, most likely beneath the old part of the structure, and possibly beneath other structures in the vicinity.
| Student | Faculty Advisor | Institution | Project |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ryan McDaniel, University of Tennessee at Martin |
Steve Horton | University of Memphis | SG-12 Calibrating Intensity with Ground Motion |
| Stephen Priddy, University of Tennessee at Martin |
Reginald DesRoches | Georgia Institute of Technology | ST-12A Response Modification of Bridges |
| Matt Dryden, University of Illinois |
Roy VanArsdale | University of Memphis | SG-6A Characterization of Seismic Sources in and around the New Madrid Seismic Zone |
| Peggy Ho, University of Illinois |
Joseph Sussman | MIT | SE-12 Vulnerability of Transportation Networks |
