(L to R) Jenny Nguyen, Maria Castagnino, Dr. Sara Hooshangi and Naeem Khan at their STEMopshere® booth

Two seniors from CPS' IIST (Integrated Information, Science and Technology) program participated in the STEMosphere®, the centerpiece of Share Fair, an annual interactive symposium that celebrates innovative teaching and learning tools in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), held at the Smith Center on April 11th.

In their booth, Jenny Nguyen and Naeem Khan demonstrated two hands-on experiments to the visitors to the Fair who included pupils from an elementary school where another IIST student Maria Castagnino is a tutor. In one experiment, they used a simple EKG sensor connected to a computer to read the heart rhythm of visitors through three small disposable electrodes attached to their arms and then printed the EKG trace on a wireless printer so the participants could take their heart rhythm home. In another experiment, visitors were asked to use different parts of their hands, palms, fingers and their grip to press on a Dynamometer sensor. A trace of the calculated force would then be shown on the computer screen and they could compare the strength of different muscles in their hands. According to the IIST Director Professor Sara Hooshangi who supervised Jenny and Naeem, these experiments were easy and fun demonstrations of the importance of bio-instrumentation and the use of sensors in medical technology (see the following story).  

"We can actually teach teachers how to make education more interesting," said Nguyen confidently. Her classmate Khan agreed. "Giving students hands-on experience with information technology helps them see the range that's out there," he said.
 

Click here to read GW Today's story and view photos. 

Award of Excellence in the Student Collaboration category by the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA)

"It's an extensive team, but you can see that the landscape architecture and architecture students collaborated well and had a combined sense of what they were after. Collaboration of architect and landscape architect is so strong."

--Jury Comment

The Gold Award in outdoor design by the Association of 

Professional Landscape Designers (APLD)

"GW's landscape design for Harvest Home broke through the conventional boundaries of the Solar Decathlon competition. Few entries had ever focused on reinforcing the design concept of the house through the landscape" 

-- Adele Ashkar, CPS Associate Dean for Academic Excellence and Sustainable Landscapes Program Director

Award of Distinction in the Special Events (Design/Build) 

category by the Landscape Contractors Association (LCA)

"Although the landscape is not specifically evaluated in any of the current Solar Decathlon efficiency contests, feedback from many of the thousands of visitors to the home, as well as official comments from competition jurors, validated the team's premise that a thoughtful, well-planned landscape can be ecologically sound, livable, and beautiful at the same time."

-- From the students' narrative

Harvest Home was conceived and built as a zero-energy house that would "harvest" solar, water, and wind energy and it was specifically designed as housing for military veterans suffering from physical and/or mental trauma and emphasized healing,accessibility and adaptation. It is Americans with Disabilities Act compliant and was donated to the Wounded Warrior Homes at the conclusion of the competition.

"This is an important step in terms of the careers of students who are going to work as consultants," said Ruby Shamayleh, a CPS alumna and a 2013 awardee of the Climate Change Management and Policy graduate certificate program. Ruby should know as she was a student assistant at the same conference two years ago. Today, she works at a civil engineering firm and is in her second year overseeing the training of the student assistant team as a World Bank consultant!

GW students' participation at the Land and Poverty Conference has grown from four in 2012 to 12 in 2014 to about 17 this year. Dulce Naime, a first-year graduate student studying for her master's in SUP, signed up looking to meet and network with people interested in city and community planning and poverty reduction. She was not disappointed. "We had students interested in exploring inequity and political management....that was amazing because we share a common interest with people of different academic backgrounds." said Dulce.

Read James Irwin's story in GW Today.