Greetings From the Dean
This year, Cedarville experienced some of the BEST fall weather in the 30 years that I’ve been here, but we've recently entered into much cooler weather and have even experienced our first snow of the year.
The Friday of homecoming weekend was a beautiful, warm day that was perfect to pull up a chair or sit on the green grass around the lake and watch our freshmen compete in the annual Cardboard Canoe Race. The 130 freshmen engineering students who competed this year fared about the same as normal, with eight of the boats going under. The ladies of the Society of Women Engineers requested the return of the demolition derby, and, wouldn’t you know it, the crew of one of the all-female led boats became Queens of the Lake.
Many of our faculty are of the age to consider our students as additional sons and daughters who need some parental advice every now and then. When one of these “children” of ours does something truly remarkable, we act like proud parents and show them off to our friends. Don’t skip over the article about the honor awarded to Jason Paulus for a paper he wrote based upon his senior design work.
The Lord has been gracious to lead Cedarville University through more than 18 months of uncertainty brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. In the midst of this trial, generous donors have committed nearly $100 million toward our One Thousand Days Transformed campaign to improve academic facilities and campus life for our current and future students.
We hope you enjoy reading this edition of DataBytes, which highlights a potpourri of activity from among our faculty and students. Blessings to you and your families as you celebrate Thanksgiving and Christmas this year!
In Christ,
Bob Chasnov, Ph.D., PE
Dean
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Paulus Wins Top Prize for Hydrofoil Research
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Engineering Team Shoots for the Stars in NASA Contest
Our engineering students have previously designed automobiles, planes, and boats for competitions. Now, at the 2022 NASA Student Launch in April 2022, they will add rockets to the list. The team, which is made up of students across all classes and different programs, will compete with a rocket they named "Forerunner." The team will be led by Dr. Thomas Ward, Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering, the faculty advisor for senior ME students, and Dr. Tim Tuinstra, Professor of Electrical Engineering, who is faculty advisor for senior computer engineering students.
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Grassroots Wreck Racing Tests Engineering on a Budget
The Cedarville University Jackets Racing Team, led by Jay Kinsinger, Associate Professor of Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering, competed in its inaugural Grassroots $2,000 Challenge, AKA Wreck Racing, in October. The team was challenged to build a car that would compete in a drag race, a road race (auto-cross), and a Concours d’Elegance (beauty pageant), within a budget of $2,000. These criteria are usually mutually exclusive. In other words, drag racing cars typically do not compete on road racing courses, and $2,000 cars are usually not very pretty. The Jackets Racing Team combined an abandoned stage prop from Cedarville High School's production of “Grease” with a $400 1994 Honda Civic to create a mid-engine, triple-digit horsepower race car. The team approached the competition with a combination of pluck and prayer, having driven the car for the first time to load it into the trailer for the trip to Gainesville, Florida. On the second lap of the road racing course, the alternator went out (i.e., it literally fell out of the car and was dragged along behind the car by the electrical wires). Despite this and many other setbacks, the team bounced back, competing in all three events and came in second place in the collegiate category, besting the defending overall champions, Georgia Tech. The Jackets missed the podium by one point, coming in fourth place overall for the beauty pageant.
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Faculty Member Publishes Textbook
Dr. George Qin, Associate Professor of Engineering and Computer Science, published a textbook with the CRC Press: Computational Fluid Dynamics for Mechanical Engineering. The book has eight chapters that cover topics from the basics of finite difference and finite volume methods to advanced applications such as unstructured mesh, multiphase flow, and turbulent flow. It is intended to be a textbook for undergraduate-level Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) courses, but it also can be adapted to a graduate-level course or used as a reference. Students will be using this new textbook for Dr. Qin’s CFD course this coming spring. Dr. Qin would like to thank the gracious help from his colleagues who took more workload in spring 2021 so that he could focus on writing this book.
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Cyber Operations Students Awarded Prestigious Scholarship
This fall, the U.S. Department of Defense awarded scholarships to Cedarville University cyber operations students. Along with two years of full tuition, students receive a $25,000 stipend, a $1,500 laptop, and all of their course fees and textbooks are also covered. All sophomores that are selected participate in a summer internship before their senior year, and each recipient is committed to working for the Department of Defense upon graduation. This is tremendous accomplishment for these students, and we are proud of them!
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Partner With the School of Engineering and Computer Science
Do you want to recruit excellent Cedarville graduates to your organization? Or maybe you would be willing to support students' technical projects for your company or nonprofit? We invite you to join us as a School of Engineering and Computer Science industrial partner. As an industrial partner, you would team up with a faculty member and students who would complete work on a sponsored project that would benefit your organization. The students, during their sophomore or junior year, would collaborate with you, as a sponsor, on a proposal for a project. Then, in their senior year (or maybe even during junior year), they would devote time, research, and effort toward the project as part of their senior design or capstone project. Your organization would provide technical support during the course of the project, and possibly a stipend to the student ($2,500/year or more). If interested in this opportunity, please contact Dr. Fred Harmon, Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering, at fharmon@cedarville.edu or 937-766-7694 to learn more.
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