Stellar Students to be Honored at Commencement

Three exceptional members of the Class of 2013 will receive the top student awards during the undergraduate Commencement ceremony on Sunday, May 19.

Miles Aaron

Peter Bowers

Dana Eckstein

Dana Eckstein,  who has been pursuing a double major in cinema and English in the College of Arts and Sciences, will receive the Belle K. Ribicoff Prize, which is awarded for academic excellence.

Evidence of Eckstein’s incredible energy lies in the long list of activities, awards, papers, and projects submitted with her nomination for the Ribicoff Prize. Eckstein has been on the Dean’s List and the President’s List every semester of her undergraduate career. Inducted her first year into Sigma Tau Delta, the International English Honor Society, she eventually served as treasurer and president of the Psi Phi chapter. A presenter at the Undergraduate Colloquium all four years, a two-year Humanities Center fellow, and a Junior Regents’ Honor Award recipient, Eckstein was named editor of the English department’s Aerie literary journal her senior year.

Eckstein served in several roles, including general manager, of the student-run STN Channel 2 News. Her original stop-motion animation film appeared in the University’s 2012 Goldfarb Exhibition at the Hartford Art School, and she received the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival Regional 10-Minute Play Award.

"My father used to tell me, 'You can’t dance at two weddings with one tuchus,'" says Eckstein. "It’s been my life goal to dance at all the weddings." Eckstein will be preparing her writing portfolio for application to a Master of Fine Arts program.


Miles Aron, who will graduate with a Bachelor of Science in Engineering from the Acoustical Engineering and Music program, is the winner of the John G. Martin Scholarship. The Martin Scholarship provides an extraordinary opportunity to study for two years at the University of Oxford’s Hertford College in England. Aron will start his master’s in biomedical engineering in the fall at Oxford, researching drug delivery through the blood-brain barrier in the treatment of cancer and other brain diseases.
Jazz guitar lessons with Rich Goldstein, artist teacher at The Hartt School, convinced Aron to enter the rigorous Acoustical Engineering and Music program. In the College of Engineering, Technology, and Architecture (CETA), Aron has impressed his professors. “Miles is one of our top honors students and has consistently performed well in all of his classes, even as he averaged almost 19 credits each semester,” wrote Robert Celmer, professor of mechanical engineering, in nominating Aron for the Martin Scholarship.

While at the University of Hartford, Aron has had challenging internships, including working for the U.S. Department of Energy at the SLAC National Linear Accelerator; PVI Systems; and NASA Ames Research Center through the Connecticut Space Grant Consortium. Aron also has presented and submitted research on nonlinear partial differential equations completed with Aslihan Demirkay, assistant professor of mathematics, and Robert Decker, associate professor of mathematics.


The John G. Lee Medal will go to Peter Bowers, who majored in mechanical engineering with a concentration in acoustics and minored in electrical engineering and mathematics.  The John G. Lee Medal is awarded annually to a graduating senior from Greater Hartford who has excelled academically while demonstrating a deep commitment to community.

Although Bowers’s dream of becoming an acoustical consultant brought him to the University of Hartford, his dream has changed somewhat since he arrived. “From my course work in acoustics, I learned about hearing loss and current treatments. There are limitations to these treatments that need to be addressed.”

With a part-time job, interning at Westinghouse Electric Company, and volunteering in the community, Bowers will graduate with a 3.99 GPA.  Bowers also has collected regents’ honors and numerous scholarships. His volunteer contributions include serving meals to low-income individuals in Hartford through the Hands on Hartford program, participating in the Whole Plant Foundation established by Whole Foods Market to aid the self-employed poor, and volunteering with Don’t Go Deaf to raise awareness about hearing loss.

In the fall, Bowers will enter Harvard University’s Harvard/MIT Program in Speech and Hearing Bioscience and Technology. Ultimately he hopes to advance technology involving hearing aids and cochlear implants.

Students inducted into Eta Kappa Nu, Electrical and Computer Engineering Honor Society

Students inducted into Eta Kappa Nu, Electrical and Computer Engineering Honor Society

On Thursday, May 2, 2013, six senior and junior Electrical and Computer Engineering students we inducted into the Iota Espilon Chapter of Eta Kappa Nu, the honorary society for Electrical and Computer Engineering. The students were chosen in accordance with Eta Kappa Nu requirements based upon their Grade Point Averages and Standing within their classes.

The new Eta Kappa Nu members and their hometowns are:

Mohammed A. Alabbad '13 Dammam, Saudi Arabia

Brenden Demanche '13 Avon, CT

Robert Hilton '14 East Hampton, CT

Shanique Jiles '14 Jamaica, NY

Stephen Sheak '13 Harwinton, CT

Timothy Zimmerman '14 Bristol, CT

The induction ceremony was conducted by Professor Ladimer Nagurney, Chapter Advisor, Professor Patricia Mellodge, and University of Hartford students Ferninand Aliaj '13 and Michael Jennings '13, who had been inducted as juniors.

Eta Kappa Nu was founded at the University of Illinois in 1904 and currently has over 200 Chapters. The University of Hartford Chapter was founded in 1984.

CETA student Ruthanne Doherty In Hartford Courant

Ruthanne Doherty
Doherty, of Richmond, Va., has always wanted to help those in Sierra Leone, her father, Oludele's, homeland, ever since Oludele visited the country and told her stories about the horrific maimings and killings that took place during the civil war that ended in 2002. Ruthanne's uncle, Oludele's younger brother, died in the conflict.
"My ultimate goal is to own and operate a nonprofit organization that develops prosthetics and administers them to developing countries," Doherty said. "Sierra Leone, and other countries as well."
Doherty, who averages 7.5 points and 4.3 rebounds, is a biomedical engineering major who had a 3.91 GPA last semester and whose overall GPA is now 2.94. She also has a minor in math. In one of her classes right now, they are working on developing a prosthetic foot.
Doherty went to an engineering academy at L.C. Bird High School in Richmond, so she was used to rigorous coursework when she arrived at Hartford.
She's had internships with Bristol-Myers Squibb, Hartford Hospital and the Connecticut Forum. Last year, she volunteered to work in the emergency room at St. Francis Hospital and Medical Center. Like Elliott, she plans to work for a while before heading to graduate school.

To read full article: http://www.courant.com/sports/college/hc-hartford-women-senior-day-0301-20130228,0,3651436.story

Architecture Department hosts The Mystery of Clarity

By Shannon DePaul in Entertainment, February 21 2013

Karla Britton, a lecturer at the Yale School of Architecture, spoke to a crowd of young architecture students this Monday, Feb. 18.

Architecture students, who spend many nights in the Architecture lab, were eager to listen and learn from by Britton’s story very seriously. Brian Izzo | The Informerbruary 21 2012

The University of Hartford Department of Architecture invited Britton to speak to their students for the second lecture in their spring semester lecture series. The lecture was held in Wilde Auditorium.
Britton received her doctorate from Harvard University. Her studies focus mostly on the relationship between religion and modern architecture, and contemporary works.
As she began her lecture Britton said, “Put your history caps on and stick with me for a bit.”
The title of Britton’s lecture was called The Mystery of Clarity: Classicism and Modernity. The point of the lecture was to disprove that classicism and modernity are two different systems of work, and that the works are actually quite intertwined.
Britton mentioned how the acropolis was influential for architects in the 20th Century. She said, “Classicism is not a style… but also very much a frame of mind.”
Students seemed very engaged, and some even took notes while she continued the lecture and spoke about Le Corbusier.
The lecture included his idea of how proportional systems were connected with the experience of ancient forms, and that tradition was looked at as extremely important.
She went on to talk about his idea that transmission is tradition’s real meaning, and said Le Corbusier had a fascination with the “past’s recurrent present.”
Britton went on to lecture about the architect, Perret, who she said, “Set out a professional model for working that a lot of young architects turned to.”
His idea of the window was important, and he believed that the French window was a frame for the human body.
Three buildings Britton discussed were very innovative for the time they were built in the early 1900’s. The first Domino House was built with columns and horizontal slabs.
The Champs-Elysees Theater was known to be a philharmonic palace that used the idea of a concrete frame for construction.
Britton shared an interesting fact about the theater; Stravinsky’s Right of Spring premiered in the building in 1913.
The third building, a recital hall in Paris, was known as an acoustical success.
This building also was able to accomplish such great architecture with concrete cantilevers, even though it was built in a steep space.
To get back to the lecture title, what exactly is the mystery of clarity? Britton quoted Paul Valery, who said, “What is there more mysterious than clarity?”
This architect believed that architecture could teach us something true of the world, and was philosophical about his work. Valery thought that architecture should be mathematical and cerebral.

Source: http://hartfordinformer.com/2013/02/entertainment/architecture-department-hosts-the-mystery-of-clarity/

Come to the CETA Job Fair on March 12

Join Career Services for the College of Engineering, Technology, and Architecture Job Fair on Tuesday, March 12, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. in Konover Campus Center.
The job fair is open to undergraduate and graduate students and alumni who are interested in exploring career or internship opportunities within technologically sophisticated environments. Representatives from area engineering firms, state agencies and corporations will be in attendance.

Dress for success and bring copies of your resume.
For more information, contact Sue Landolina in Career Services at 860.768.4168 or landolina@hartford.edu.

Pines and Robinson Both on WNPR Radio

David Pines, associate professor and chair of civil, environmental, and biomedical engineering in the College of Engineering, Technology, and Architecture was one of three guests on WNPR Radio’s “Where We Live” show on Wednesday, Feb. 20. All three were talking about aid projects in Africa, and Pines spoke about the University’s agricultural and microbusiness development projects in Kenya. Click here to listen to the show.

CETA Unveils 'See-Thru Nuclear Power Plant'

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a model that you can put your hands on is worth at least a thousand pictures. At least that’s true for the students who will get to learn about nuclear engineering by using the Sub-Scale See-Thru Nuclear Power Plant, which was unveiled by the College of Engineering, Technology, and Architecture (CETA) on Friday, Feb. 15.
CETA’s newest teaching tool, which was designed and built by undergraduate and graduate students at CETA under the direction of Tom Filburn, professor of mechanical engineering, will provide students with a hands-on feel for the routine and off-normal operation of a Pressurized Water Reactor power plant.

Professor of Mechanical Engineering Tom Filburn discusses the Sub-Scale See-Thru Nuclear Power Plant, which is behind him.

CETA graduate student Jason Smith provided a demonstration of the model power plant.

Also on hand for the unveiling of the See-Thru Plant were Peter Lyons, assistant secretary for nuclear energy with the U.S. Department of Energy; and Tanya Parwani-Jaimes from the nuclear education grant program of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), along with a number of representatives of the nuclear power industry. University President Walter Harrison, CETA Dean Louis Manzione, and College of Education, Nursing and Health Professions Dean Ralph Mueller also attended the event.

Lyons said the ability to see and experience the mechanical operations of a modern nuclear power plant will be invaluable to the students who train on it. He added that there will be a growing demand for engineers to work in nuclear power plants in the years ahead, and that such a training tool will give CETA students a tremendous advantage, particularly since he knew of no other educational institution in the Northeast that has such a tool.

This model nuclear power plant will also be available to provide training courses for those newly hired into the region’s nuclear power industry.

This power plant model features glass tubes so that students can see how the plant generates steam and then converts that steam into power to turn a turbine, as a Pressurized Water Reactor power plant does, noted CETA graduate student Jason Smith, who provided a demonstration of the model power plant. The model also features computer display screens that are replicas of the control panels in working nuclear power plants, added Smith, who was one of the leaders of the student team of designers and builders.

The Sub-Scale See-Thru Nuclear Power Plant was made possible through a $121,000 grant from the NRC, a $10,000 grant from Dominion Energy (owner of the Millstone Nuclear Power Plant), and $5,000 from Westinghouse Corp. The University is currently working on getting a grant to purchase the supplies to build a turbine that could be connected to the current model.

Source: http://www.hartford.edu/daily/Article/View/14411