11-19-2009

Students Discuss, Explore Beliefs

Twelve student organizations gathered in the University Center on Wednesday, Nov. 18 for "Unity of Faiths: We Believe." Participants representing a variety of faiths and secular organizations created and discussed posters explaining their groups' core values and how they, as individuals, find meaning in their lives. Sudeep Yagnashankaran, a College of Engineering graduate student, planned and facilitated the event with the assistance of College of Humanities and Social Sciences students Naomi Shah and Archit Kumar.
 
The event is part of the third annual Spiritual Development Month organized by Lucas Christian, coordinator of student development, and Jenna Peterson, graduate coordinator for housing and dining services. This November, students have participated in discussions regarding spirituality and meaning making as it relates to topics such as art, community service and sexual orientation. They also had the opportunity to attend "faith field trips" to explore traditions of Baha'i, Islamic, Jewish and Pagan faiths.
 
The monthlong celebration will conclude Monday, Nov. 23 with a Thanksgiving Dinner. Last year, more than 600 students attended the event to enjoy traditional holiday fare while discussing what they valued most with their peers.

Pictured above are Archit Kumar, Swetha Reddy, Aneesh Devi and Naomi Shah.

Abby Houck

11-13-2009

You're Invited To Join the Show

CNBC's Maria Bartiromo is hosting an hour-long special at Carnegie Mellon called "Meeting of the Minds: Rebuilding America" at 6:30 p.m., Monday, Nov. 30, and students, faculty and staff are invited to be a part of the studio audience in the Wiegand Gym.

The manufacturing industry led the United States to become the richest nation in the world and has been the foundation of the middle class. But, times have changed and today's economy values innovation and design over manual labor.

Are the manufacturing jobs in the U.S. gone forever? Does an economy that doesn't produce anything have any real value? Has 'Made in the USA' died?

Speakers include:

• Jeff Immelt, Chairman & CEO, General Electric
• Hilda Solis, U.S. Secretary of Labor
• Bill Ford, Executive Chairman, Ford Motor Company
• John Engler, Former Governor, Michigan, President, National Association of Manufacturers
• Dan DiMicco, Chairman, President & CEO, NuCor
• Leo Gerard, International President, United Steelworkers

Along with some of the most influential leaders in manufacturing, CNBC welcomes the campus community into this discussion. To register for free tickets, visit http://cmutickets.cnbc.com. All guests must be registered to attend. Audience check-in begins at 4:45 p.m. for the 6:30 p.m. taping.

Bruce Gerson

11-04-2009

Soap Opera Shoots Scenes in Pittsburgh

"As The World Turns" Executive Producer and Director Christopher Goutman (CFA'76) watches Maura West and Michael Park rehearse a scene for the long-running soap opera in front of the College of Fine Arts on Nov. 2. The show was on a three-city tour, and Pittsburgh stops included Carnegie Mellon, Charles Spiegel for Men in Squirrel Hill, New Hope United Methodist Church on the North Side and the Clark Bar & Grill on the North Shore. The scenes filmed in Pittsburgh are scheduled to air Nov. 20.

Eric Sloss

11-03-2009

Rejudging of ACM-ICPC Regional Sends Dragons to World Finals

A Carnegie Mellon team will be competing at the World Finals of the Association for Computing Machinery's International Collegiate Programming Contest in China next year, but it won't be the Tartans.

Judges of the East Central North American Regional Programming Contest say they misjudged one of the problems, mistakenly disallowing a solution to Problem B. Once the correction was made and points re-tallied, they proclaimed a team from the University of Waterloo as the champions and awarded second place to the Carnegie Mellon Dragons, a team consisting of sophomore Si Young Oh, junior Yun Dong "Stanley" Yeo, and senior Dan Schafer, all computer science majors.

The original winners, the Tartan team of computer science juniors Tom Conerly and Alan Pierce and electrical and computer engineering senior Celestine Lau, ended up third.

Greg Kesden, associate teaching professor and one of the Carnegie Mellon coaches, said the rejudging resulted in a three-way tie between the Dragons, Tartans and Waterloo's Black team; a tiebreaker formula produced the final ranking. The University of Michigan's Victor team, originally second, ended up in fourth place. Carnegie Mellon's third team, the Cardinals — freshmen Chiranjith "Jitu" Das and James Koppel and junior Ida Mayer, all computer science majors — remains in 10th place

The top two teams from the regional — Waterloo Black and the Dragons — will be among 100 teams that will compete at the World Finals, Feb. 1-6, 2010, in Harbin, China.

Byron Spice