CoT Communication: The results are in
by Mary King, communications director
Thanks to all who participated in the online survey to assess internal communications for the college. The response rate was 14 percent with a nearly even split of faculty and staff respondents. Sixty percent of the college’s employees feel informed to very informed about what is going on within the college and just slightly less (52%) of us feel informed about news at the University.
A sizable portion of the college community is utilizing the communication vehicles that are in place, including the e-newsletter with a readership rate of 75 percent. Among the news topic preferences, we have identified two subjects — human resources and personnel news — that are relatively absent from the e-newsletter, which serves as the primary internal communications tool for the college.
Currently, 75 percent of respondents indicated word-of-mouth as one method they use to stay informed while only 10 percent of respondents indicated “high” preference for this method of communication as a source of news.
The marketing communications department will continue its efforts to proactively seek out news within the college. In addition to this survey, we encourage and highly value your feedback on a regular basis. Please feel free to use the college's online news form or contact us by email, phone, or whenever you see any of us with news and suggestions for communication.
- 52 Responses (14.05% response rate)
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- 26 faculty members/27 staff members
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- 75% read the biweekly newsletter
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- 25% don't read the newsletter; of those who don't read it, 9 of the 13 cite "lack of time" as the primary reason followed by "too much email" and "irrelevant content."
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- 69% have no preference on day of week to receive the newsletter; Monday was the highest preference day (13.4%)
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How can we better serve the college?
- Only two suggestions garnered multiple responses -- more proactive seeking out news (3); change newsletter format to "Purdue Today" (2)
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How informed faculty and staff feel about the college and University:
- CoT: 60% feel informed to very informed
- University: 52% feel informed to very informed
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Preferences for staying informed:
- “High” Preference (top 3): e-news (60%), e-mail (42%), monthly meetings (29%),
- “Low” Preference (top 3): Intranet (69%), Web site (40%), word-of-mouth (38%)
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CoT News Preferences:
(total responses/question offered multiple response option)
- Human resources (benefits, professional development, wellness, etc.) (38)
- Events
Departmental (38)
College (37)
- Press coverage (35)
- Research and new innovations (32)
- Personnel news (appointments, resignations, marriages, births, etc.(29)
- Student activities (27)
- Faculty endeavors (25)
- Statewide location updates (23)
- Alumni profiles (17)
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How CoT faculty and staff stay informed:
(total responses/question offered multiple response option)
- E-newsletter (40)
- Word-of-mouth (39)
- Tech All Faculty/Staff email (34)
- CoT Web site (29)
- Publications (27)
- Department meetings (25)
- Dean's forum (24)
- Faculty convocation (17)
- Don't try to stay informed (2)
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CoT Marketing Communications Staff Members
Faculty Profile
Linda Naimi
Title: Assistant professor of OLS
Time at Purdue: Started in fall 2004
Background: Naimi’s educational background includes five degrees: a law degree from the University of Connecticut; a master's and doctorate from Harvard University in administration, planning and social policy; a master's from the University of Alabama at Birmingham in elementary education; and a bachelor's degree from the University of Cincinnati in elementary education. Before coming to Purdue, she worked as an attorney and in management roles in information technology.
What I'm working on: I teach courses on ethics and law, including an undergraduate course on leading with integrity and a graduate course on leadership and ethics. I am currently conducting research on leadership in technology innovation, virtual reality simulations, and intelligent system technologies.
How I would describe my teaching style: I like to incorporate current events and role-playing into my teaching. This keeps students guessing and interested in class. I frequently introduce ethical dilemmas to my students to teach them through personal experiences the consequences of their actions. I want to think critically and reflectively before making decisions. And I want to teach them to take responsibility and to hold people accountable. I teach them the three R's: rights, responsibility and respect. From my courses, students learn that just because a professor or a boss may appear to allow you to get away with something, such as skipping work or class, that doesn't mean they think it is acceptable. Sometimes people will test you to see if you actually do the right thing. Making the wrong choice can damage your reputation. I tell my students that the product coming out of my class is a better "you."
(This fall, Naimi was inducted into the Purdue Teaching Academy, which recognizes and fosters outstanding teaching and learning. She also is a 2008 Murphy Award winner and served on the Book of Great Teachers Selection Committee. Naimi has been honored with a number of outstanding teaching awards, including the James D. Dwyer Outstanding Undergraduate Teaching Award, Outstanding Non-Tenured Teaching Award and the Purdue University Panhellenic Outstanding Professor Award).
When I'm not teaching: You can find me doing this: Writing (she's the author of three books), reading, gardening, swimming, horseback riding, and taking nature walks with her husband.
TSC Canned Food Drive
The Technology Student Council is sponsoring a competitive food drive for the college December 1 to 12. Silver boxes for each department will be available in the first floor lobby to place canned food goods. TSC will take daily counts and chart them. For more information, contact Justine Spychalski, TSC president.
CoT News Submissions
Report your CoT news through the online reporting form. Feel free to use this form to notify the communications team of your college-related news, events, and achievements. This information will be distributed to the team for potential use in news releases, the dean's e-newsletter, Innovation magazine and updating information on the college's Web site. The next e-newsletter is scheduled for distribution on Monday, December 1.
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Faculty Endeavors
Mark French, assistant professor of MET, authored the book "Engineering the Guitar: Theory and Practice," published by Springer. The book describes the mechanics of the guitar for both engineers and craftsmen and includes a chapter devoted to manufacturing processes.
Student News
CIT student Zhanibek Datbayev was a member of a Purdue team that placed third among colleges and  fourth among all teams in the ACM-International Collegiate Programming Contest East Central North America Regional held Nov. 1.
The team, called Purdue Cheburashka, finished behind two teams from Carnegie Mellon University and one team from the University of Waterloo.
Other members of the Purdue Cheburashka team were Nathan Claus, a mathematics major, and Arman Suleimenov, a computer science major.
The team might qualify to compete in the world finals next spring in Stockholm, Sweden. The final decision will be made by ACM officials based on overall team strengths in the various regions.
Another Purdue team, made up of computer science students, placed 25th in the contest.
The contest is a five-hour event in which teams of three students work together to solve eight programming puzzles. Ranking among teams is based first on how many problems are solved correctly, then on how
many minutes it takes to solve each problem. A 20-minute penalty on solved problems is added for each submission that fails to pass the judges' test cases. Programming is done in Java or C/C++. More Info.
Students in Dave Peter's EET 157 class at the College of Technology at Anderson recently participated in a tour of the IPower facility in Anderson. IPower makes small power units that are responsive to customer demands in the areas of electricity and thermal energy (combined heat and power called CHP), shaft power for irrigation pumps and other applications. In addition to the tour, students took part in a discussion of production methods and a discussion and demonstration of IEEE Standard 1547 (interconnections). They also saw firsthand how microcontrollers and the C language are used in industry. IPower utilizes microcontrollers using C to control the engine, generator and the interconnect circuit. After the meeting, members of the class posed for a picture with IPower's new V12 unit.
Sponsored Search Activity
Visit the applied research section of the CoT Web site for an updated look at the sponsored research projects within the college.
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In the News
Purdue students compete in contest to build a better bacteria
Purdue University students put their knowledge about biology and bacteria to the test when they competed Nov. 8-9 in the annual International Genetically Engineered Machine competition.
The event, known as the iGEM Competition Jamboree, involved more than 80 teams from around the world and was held at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. The main objective is to teach undergraduate and graduate students how to engineer biological devices to solve challenges.
The Purdue team created a computer model of a device to engineer bacteria that can sense ultraviolet radiation, such as that produced by the sun. The goal of their research is to develop a real-time device to measure DNA damage caused by UV radiation, which has been directly linked to skin cancer.
University News Service
CIMT students to demonstrate jelly bean selector at Automation Fair
Nine students in Brad Harriger's computer-integrated manufacturing technology program will showcase an original creation — a machine that chooses, dispenses and packages jelly beans — at the annual Automation Fair Nov. 19-20 in Nashville, Tenn.
The trade and exhibition fair, which demonstrates the latest in manufacturing technology, is sponsored by Rockwell Automation. The Purdue group will demonstrate an automated machine created especially for mixing flavors of Jelly Belly brand jelly beans.
Connoisseurs of Jelly Belly jelly beans — a brand known for making a wide variety of unusual flavors — frequently create new flavors by mixing candies together. The Purdue-created machine is designed to do the work for you.
Dustin Wise, one of the students involved in building the creation, said the clear plastic machine contains 25 hoppers, each of which will contain separate flavors of jelly beans. A human-machine interface, or small computer screen, allows the user to select which flavor they want, then the machine — known as a pick-and-place robot — uses suction technology to select the candies, dispense them into a small cup and place a lid on the final "order."
The machine can produce 30 different recipes or combinations of jelly beans. Wise said the team purchased about 125 pounds of jelly beans for the machine, costing about $800.
The team was expected to continue building and refining the machine throughout Monday, with the team leaving for Nashville on Tuesday. Wise said the machine will likely stay around the Knoy 258 lab for a while after the competition to be used as a teaching tool.
He said that although the machine sounds like a simple concept, there is a lot of designing, coding and logistical work the team has had to do. But he said the exercise is a valuable one because pick-and-place robot technology is widely used in the manufacturing industry.
In addition to Wise, students who will attend the fair are Matthew Auter, Joseph Bettenhausen, Chad Burnett, Josh Harriger, Brandon Karpowicz, Brandon Malone, Brian McClain and Jeffrey Schmidt.
Purdue, which has had a team attend the fair for the last several years, is one of six universities attending. The others are Case Western Reserve University, Marquette University, Milwaukee School of Engineering, Texas A&M and the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
College of Technology students to compete in Cluster Challenge
Five students in Jeff Evans' high-performance computing course in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Technology will participate in the Cluster Challenge at the Supercomputing 2008 Conference in Austin, Texas, which runs through Wednesday.
Cluster Challenge computers are judged on the speed of benchmarks and the throughput of application runs over the first three days of the conference. The teams will test and tune their machines until the green flag drops. The teams will then be given data sets, or a "problem," to solve. Teams will be judged on the amount of data they can process and the amount of power they use. The team with the most points will win.
Purdue's team consists of Andy Howard, Alex Younts, David King, Paul Willmann and Ryan Weinschenk.
University News Service
Purdue team places fifth in SAFECON flight competition
The Purdue Flight Team placed fifth overall and received several individual awards at the 2008 regional Safety and Flight Evaluation Conference, known as SAFECON, held Oct. 29-Nov. 1 at Southern Illinois University-Carbondale.
First-place awards were given to Matthew Baranowski in the ground trainer competition, and Tony Cole (pilot) and Dan Pothala (drop master) in the message drop contest.
Other Purdue top awards included:
- Navigation: Kaitlin Mroz (safety pilot) and Justin Conner (planner), fifth place
- Preflight Inspection: Matthew Baranowski, fifth place
- Preflight Inspection: Justin Conner, sixth place
- Short field approach and landing: Chris Levy, eighth place
- Aircraft recognition: James Polivka, ninth place
- Simulated comprehensive aircraft navigation: Kaitlin Mroz, 10th place
Justin Conner is captain of the Purdue Flight Team. Others on the team who competed were Jordan Ashley, Wayne Carmickle, Pat Colligan, Erik Dewinne, Vincent Ponce, Jason Reinhart, David Rozovski, David Ruthsatz and Rebecca Taylor. The coaches were Ronda Cassens, Patti Keen and Pascal Nguyen.
Anderson-area high-schoolers to get taste of Purdue life at Day in College
Area high school students will get a taste of university life during a Day in College event offered Nov. 21 at the College of Technology at Anderson.
More than 40 high school students from Madison, Delaware and surrounding counties have been recommended by counselors and teachers for the event that will take place from 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. at the Anderson University Flagship Center, located at 2705 Enterprise Drive at Interstate 69 and Pendleton Avenue.
Barbara Alder, director of the College of Technology at Anderson/Muncie, said the program allows students to see the types of courses and degrees that Purdue offers in Anderson. Students and their parents will have the opportunity to attend a customized course in each of the college's degree programs available in Anderson and talk with faculty and financial aid representatives.
University News Service
FIRST Lego League qualifying event coming to Columbus
Students ages 9-14 will put their engineering, building and computer programming skills to the test at the FIRST Lego League qualifying competition on Nov. 23.
Purdue College of Technology at Columbus is the host for the third annual event that will take place 8:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Holiday Inn at Interstate 65 and Indiana 46 in Columbus.
Twenty-four teams from Richmond, Fishers, Indianapolis, Greenwood, Lawrenceburg, Columbus, Scottsburg, Taylorsville and Jasper will compete. The top eight teams will advance to the state tournament at Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne on Dec. 13. Columbus is one of seven locations in Indiana holding qualifying events.
University News Service
'Everyone is vulnerable' to workplace uncertainties
As the economy continues to deteriorate and the nation's unemployment rate reaches a 14-year high, uncertainty is shaking the workplace.
"None of us likes to think about losing our jobs, but the reality is that everyone is vulnerable," said Alexander Crispo, an associate professor of organizational leadership and supervision at Purdue.
Lafayette Journal and Courier
Peer networks key to success
Peer networks can help female IT leaders succeed in their career and boost job satisfaction, according to a Purdue expert.
Studies have found that about 20 percent of IT jobs are held by women, and an even smaller segment are CIOs. Gail Farnsley, a visiting professor in Purdue’s Department of Computer and Information Technology and a former VP of IT and CIO at Cummins, says developing strong support systems is one way to help retain women in tech fields.
“Women face special issues when they pursue careers like being a CIO where it is not unusual to have 70-hour workweeks,” Farnsley says. “I know a lot of female CIOs who have left their jobs, not because they didn't’t love it, but because they felt so conflicted when it comes to work vs. family life.”
networkworld.com
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