November 6, 2008
Vol. 19, No. 18

In this issue:

• Carnegie Mellon's GigaPan Encourages International Conversations
• Miller Gallery Presents Major Exhibition of Activist Group "Yes Men"
• Carnegie Mellon Athletes Earn Academic Honors
• Open Enrollment Ends Monday, Nov. 17
• News Briefs
• Personal Mention
• Calendar Highlights

Carnegie Mellon's GigaPan Encourages International Conversations

A 21st Century "pen pal" program in which students in Pittsburgh, South Africa and Trinidad and Tobago exchange explorable digital images of their communities is the focus of an international trio of art gallery shows featuring the giant panoramas created by the students. The show, "GigaPan Conversations," will run Nov. 4-16 at Artists Image Resource on Pittsburgh’s North Side. A special, public event will be held from 5 to 6:30 p.m., Friday, Nov. 14.

Like last month's exhibit at MuseuMAfricA in Johannesburg, South Africa, the show features 20-foot-wide prints of panoramas photographed using the GigaPan robotic camera developed by Carnegie Mellon and NASA. The students' ocean-spanning conversations regarding the panoramas will be printed on the gallery walls and visitors will be invited to join in by jotting down their thoughts.

For the past seven months, students at Falk Middle School in Oakland and the Manchester Craftsmen's Guild in Manchester have been creating GigaPans of their communities and exchanging them with students at Lavela High School in Soweto, South Africa. The giant images can be shared and explored via computer, with each viewer able to zoom in on details of his or her choosing. The image exchanges prompt email conversations regarding the history, cultures, diets, languages and activities of each community.

For more: http://www.cmu.edu/news/archive/2008/November/nov4_gigapanconversations.shtml

Miller Gallery Presents Major Exhibition of Activist Group "Yes Men"

The Miller Gallery will present the first major exhibition of the renowned artist group The Yes Men, "Keep It Slick: Infiltrating Capitalism With The Yes Men," from Nov. 14 through Feb. 15, 2009. The Yes Men have gained international acclaim and notoriety for exposing dehumanizing business practices and helping to keep critical issues in the international spotlight. They do this through impersonating representatives of powerful corporations and government organizations, such as ExxonMobil, McDonald's and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. "Keep It Slick" exhibits the Yes Men's practice with elaborate costumes, slapstick videos, outrageous posters and selections from their personal collections.

The Yes Men will conduct a workshop and lecture, titled "How To Be A Yes Man," from 5 to 6 p.m., Nov. 14 on the Miller Gallery's second floor. Their presentation will include clips from their upcoming feature-length film to be released next year. A business casual-themed reception will be held from 6 to 8 p.m. on the gallery's third floor.

For more: http://www.cmu.edu/news/archive/2008/October/oct29_yesmen.shtml

Carnegie Mellon Athletes Earn Academic Honors

Brian Freeman, senior offensive tackle on Carnegie Mellon's football team, has been named one of 15 finalists for the Draddy Trophy, an award that honors the nation's top scholar-athlete in all of college football. Freeman is one of only two finalists for the award — considered to be the "Academic Heisman" — from a school that competes on the NCAA Division III level, which prohibits scholarships based on athletic ability. Freeman, who will receive an $18,000 post-graduate scholarship for being named a finalist, is a chemical and biomedical engineering major with a 3.95 grade-point average. He is the Tartans' third Draddy Award finalist, joining 1987 honoree Bryan Roessler and 2006 candidate Aaron Lewis. The winner of the Draddy Award will be announced at the National Football Foundation Awards Dinner Dec. 9 in New York City.

For the first time in program history, six Carnegie Mellon men's soccer student-athletes have earned academic honors from the College Sports Information Directors of America (CoSIDA). To be nominated for the award, a student-athlete must be a starter or significant reserve and maintain a GPA of 3.3 or better. All six honor recipients are juniors and have achieved higher than a 3.7 in four semesters of work. They are Jon Hall, Ricky Griffin, Ryan Browne, Austin Good, Keith Haselhoff and David Drochner.

Open Enrollment Ends Monday, Nov. 17

The Open Enrollment period to select your 2009 benefits has begun and you must enroll online using HR Connection by 5 p.m., Nov. 17 to make your selections for next year. Over half of all benefit plans have retained their 2008 rates; the Highmark HMO plan will experience some changes to make it consistent with our other PPO and HMO offerings. This is not a dental or vision election year. More information is available at http://www.cmu.edu/hr/benefits/OE. Contact the Benefits Office with questions at 412-268-2047. For technical questions, contact hrit@andrew.cmu.edu.

News Briefs

• Carnegie Mellon will once again be one of six regional sites for the Siemens Competition in Math, Science and Technology Nov. 14-15. The annual research competition for high school students, sponsored by the Siemens Foundation, awards college scholarships ranging from $1,000 to $100,000 in individual and team categories. Regional winners will compete in the national finals Dec. 5-8 at NYU.
• Carnegie Mellon's 15th Annual Food Drive, sponsored by Staff Council, continues through Friday, Nov. 14. Collection containers have been placed in many campus buildings, including the University Center. For more: http://www.cmu.edu/staff-council/
• David Macaulay, 2006 MacArthur Genius Award winner and author and illustrator of "The Way Things Work," will engage students in an informal Q&A session from noon to 1:20 p.m., Monday, Nov. 17 in Hamburg Hall, Room 1002. Macaulay's on-campus appearance is a collaboration between Carnegie Mellon's Professional & Technical Writing Program, directed by Karen Schnakenberg, and The Drue Heinz Lectures. Macaulay will appear at The Drue Heinz Lectures the same day at 7:30 p.m. at Carnegie Music Hall. He will present his new book, "The Way We Work," which discusses the architecture of the human body. A group of Carnegie Mellon students will attend Macaulay's lecture and the book signing following the program.
• Carnegie Mellon's Alumni Association is seeking nominations for the 2009 Alumni Awards, which will honor alumni, students and faculty who have given outstanding service to the university, and alumni who have achieved exceptional success in their careers. Visit the Alumni Awards Web site at http://www.cmu.edu/alumni/find/awards.html for nomination forms, award categories and descriptions, and a list of past recipients. Nominations must be received at the Alumni Office by Nov. 30, 2008.

Personal Mention

• Professor of Art Martin Prekop will be honored for his work at the Society for Photographic Education Mid-Atlantic Regional Photo Conference, Nov. 7-8 at Carnegie Mellon. Former dean of the College of Fine Arts, Prekop is a photographer, painter and sculptor whose work has been shown worldwide. His work appears in the permanent collections of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, the University of Illinois at Evanston, the Art Institute of Chicago and the Cranbrook Academy of Art Museum. He has served as a consultant to the Fulbright Commission, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Interior Design Institute in Denver and the U.S.-China Arts Commission at Columbia University.
• Librarians Donna Beck, Rachel Callison, John Fudrow and Dan Hood co-authored the chapter "Your Library Instruction is in Another Castle: Developing Information Literacy Based Videogames at Carnegie Mellon University" in the newly published book "Gaming in Academic Libraries." With funding from the Buhl Foundation, the authors collaborated with the Entertainment Technology Center to build information literacy games for the Library Arcade, which opened in 2007 at http://search.library.cmu.edu/.

Calendar Highlights

• Friday, Nov. 7: "Civil Rights and the Fight Against 'Social Disorganization:' The Urban League and Black Middle Class Reform." 5 p.m., Adamson Wing, Baker Hall 136A. The Center for Africanamerican Urban Studies and the Economy presents Toure Reed, an associate professor of history at Illinois State University. The lecture will be preceded by an informal reception at 4:30 p.m. For more: http://www.hss.cmu.edu/cause/Cevents.html
• Saturday, Nov. 8: Bhangra in the Burgh. 7 p.m., Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Hall. Carnegie Mellon's Mayur-South Asian Student Alliance hosts the national dance competition. Ticket sales benefit the Homeless Children's Education Fund of Allegheny County. For more: http://www.bhangraintheburgh.com
• Monday, Nov. 10: University Lecture Series. 4:30 p.m., Adamson Wing, 136A Baker Hall. Marilyn Taft Thomas, professor of theory and composition in the School of Music, explains how she lives life with a "purple crayon."
• Wednesday, Nov. 12: "The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It." 4:30-5:30 p.m. Maggie Murph Cafe, Hunt Library. Engineering Librarian Donna Beck will lead a discussion of Jonathan Zittrain's ebook. To download the book, visit http://futureoftheinternet.org/download.
• Thursday, Nov. 13: The Center for Product Strategy and Innovation and professors Jonathan Cagan and Peter Boatwright present "Innovation Tournaments," a talk by Karl Ulrich, a professor of entrepreneurship and e-commerce at the Wharton School of Business. 5:30 p.m., Scaife Hall 125. Ulrich is co-author of the leading graduate textbook on product design. A reception at 4:30 p.m. in Scaife 224 will precede the lecture.
• Thursday, Nov. 13: "How Race Affected the 2008 Presidential Election." 4:30 p.m., Porter Hall Room 100 (Gregg Hall). Marcus Mabry, international business editor, The New York Times, will share his perspectives on the election, hosted by the Global and International Relations Program and the Heinz Washington, D.C., Program.
• Nov. 13-22: The School of Drama presents "Into the Woods." The work integrates the storylines of Cinderella, Rapunzel, Jack the Giant-Slayer and Little Red Riding Hood into one extravagant master plot. For more: http://www.cmu.edu/news/archive/2008/November/nov3_intothewoods.shtml
• Friday, Nov. 14: "The Chemists' Approach to Carbon Materials." 1:30 p.m., Mellon Institute Auditorium. Klaus Mullen, a director of the Max-Planck-Institute for Polymer Research in Mainz, Germany, presents the first Stephanie Kwolek Lecture in Materials Chemistry.
• For more events, visit http://my.cmu.edu/site/events.