CAPSTONE CURRENTS

EVENTS FROM AROUND THE COLLEGE

aims to increase the durability of repairs to highways, bridges and other pavement surfaces.

The TRB Annual Meeting attracted more than 13,000 attendees from around the world. Willis submitted an abstract for her research and met other academic and industry professionals.

UA held joint spring and summer commencement exercises July 31 - August 2.

UA Holds Spring and Summer Commencement July 31-Aug. 2

The University of Alabama held joint spring and summer commencement exercises over three days beginning Friday, July 31, at Coleman Coliseum on the UA campus.

To maintain physical distancing guidelines, nine different ceremonies took place throughout the weekend, with a maximum of 530 graduates participating in each. The UA College of Engineering graduated at 9 a.m. Sunday, Aug. 2. Nearly half of the spring and summer graduates registered to participate in the ceremony.

Extensive precautions were taken to meet health and safety standards. Each graduate was able to invite up to four guests to their ceremony. Those guests had to arrive and sit together. Event staff escorted groups to their seats, and they were asked to remain seated until instructed to exit by row.

Masks were required for everyone attending the event. Graduates and guests were encouraged to bring their own masks.

There were sanitizing stations throughout the coliseum, and the venue was cleaned between all ceremonies. A live webcast was provided for all ceremonies for those unable to attend because of underlying medical conditions or other concerns.

UA Helps Bring Computer Science to Alabama High Schools

A collaborative project between The University of Alabama and several statewide partners was awarded a nearly $4 million grant to bring computer science education to Alabama K-12 schools.

The five-year grant from the U.S. Department of Education will help the Pathways for Alabama Computer Science Initiative expand computer science education in Alabama, with a focus on high school students and those in rural and underrepresented communities.

As part of legislation that passed in May 2019, every high school in the state is required to offer a computer science course beginning this fall. The computer science project will train teachers to implement the legislative requirement.

The Pathways for Alabama Computer Science Initiative will host a Computer Science Professional Development Week over the next four summers, training 440 high school teachers, counselors and administrators around the state to introduce computer science to their students in the classroom. Although originally scheduled to be on the UA campus, this summer’s program moved to a virtual training amid COVID-19.

Educators learned strategies to encourage students to participate in computer science-related careers and were trained to teach rigorous computer science classes, such as an algebra course integrated with computer science information and an Advanced Placement computer science course.

UA’s College of Engineering and College of Education work with off-campus partners such as the Alabama State Department of Education, Tuskegee University, A+ College Ready, Dr. Kathy Haynie of Haynie Research and Evaluation, and others, to coordinate the summer training.

A total of five online workshops were held this summer.

UA Offered Three Summer Courses on Coronavirus

Three courses offered this summer at The University of Alabama helped students understand issues stemming from the coronavirus pandemic and explored solutions to a shortage of personal protective equipment.

Two courses focused on understanding and tackling challenges from the COVID-19 pandemic, one was offered during the May interim term on the shortage of PPE and the other during the summer semester on broader societal and organizational challenges. The two design courses employ customer discovery approaches and design thinking to solve issues not only with PPE, but other issues of the pandemic such as changes in supply chains, education, product innovation and domestic abuse.

A third, seminar-style course over the summer term explored the pandemic through guest speakers with diverse expertise. The course provided students online lectures on topics surrounding the pandemic that ranged from health care to the economy to the design of public spaces.

The three courses were offered in the College of Engineering, Culverhouse College of Business and Honors College, College of Human Environmental Sciences, the College of Arts and Sciences and the School of Social Work.

The classes were set up as part of an ongoing effort to address complex, far-reaching problems with innovative solutions formulated by students. By involving students from multiple areas of study from the partner colleges, faculty members hoped students could bring different perspectives to tackle challenges.

UA Satellite Team Offers Virtual Space Lessons

Students at The University of Alabama building a small satellite as part of a NASA program continued their outreach efforts to state schools during the COVID-19 pandemic through online lessons.

The students in the group UASpace created lessons using Alabama math and science standards that teach about space, satellites and space exploration. The lessons are available on an open Google Drive at uaspace.ua.edu/outreach, and are an extension of their efforts this past school year to bring spacecentered lessons into classrooms in rural areas of the state. Piper Daniels, UASpace member from Grapevine, Texas, working on a Master of Business Administration after recently earning an aerospace engineering degree at UA, said reaching students is critical to the team’s mission.

It’s just one way the students adjusted while the University was on limited business operations with remote instruction. They are continuing the process of readying a small satellite to be launched into space as part of a NASA program.

The UA project is one of 18 small research satellites — called CubeSats — from 11 states selected by NASA to fly as auxiliary payloads aboard rockets launching in 2021, 2022 and 2023. Educational institutions, nonprofit organizations and NASA centers proposed the selected missions in response to NASA’s CubeSat Launch Initiative.

UASpace, made up of nearly 50 students, calls their first mission BAMA-1. They aim to demonstrate an emerging technology to bring satellites out of orbit quicker. A launch date is not set, but the team requested a launch in the third quarter of 2021. The UA satellite will be taken to the International Space Station before deploying into orbit.

They are continuing their project through online communication and video conferencing amongst themselves and NASA while conducting initial testing over software programs.

Dr. John Baker, professor of aerospace engineering and mechanics, Dr. Rohan Sood, assistant professor of aerospace engineering and mechanics, and Michael Pope, instructor of marketing in the STEM Path to the MBA Program, are the team’s faculty advisers.

UASpace has received support from UA, Lockheed Martin, Linc Research Inc. and the Alabama Space Grant Consortium.

UASpace member Chet Wiltshire, from Virginia Beach, Virginia, works on components of the BAMA-1 CubeSat on campus in a photo taken before UA transitioned to limited business operations.