Personal Mention
Don Coffelt (E ’08), associate vice president for Campus Affairs, director of Facilities Management Services, and an adjunct faculty member in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, has been elected a fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) for his contributions to the field and his service to the society. Coffelt has expertise in infrastructure management and facilities operations with a special focus on promoting student and faculty access to university facilities for education and research. Coffelt is a licensed professional engineer, and an active member of numerous organizations and professional societies, including the ASCE and its Architectural Engineering Institute. He is a board member of the Andrew Carnegie Society and recently retired as a Captain from the U.S. Coast Guard Reserve.
Natalie Ozeas, professor of music education and director of Graduate Studies, has been chosen to be a Lowell Mason Fellow for her contributions to music education. She was nominated by the Pennsylvania Music Educators Association and elected by the Executive Board of the National Association for Music Education. Lowell Mason was the first to introduce music instruction into the public schools in Boston in 1838. Ozeas, creator of the CMU Urban Music Education program for students in grades 4-12, received Carnegie Mellon’s Gelfand Service Award for Education Outreach in 2013.
Chemical Engineering Professor Erik Ydstie was selected as the recipient of the 2014 Kun Li Award for Excellence in Education. The award is given to the CMU Chemical Engineering Department faculty member who had the greatest impact on the graduating class as determined by comments from the senior class. Seniors Jackie Budz and Bennett Kriete presented the Kun Li plaque and the senior gifts — a CMU Class of 2014 chair and a CMU blanket that was signed by the entire class —at the Chemical Engineering Senior Banquet on May 12.
Mariana Achugar will present a paper at the Latin American Studies Association International Congress in Chicago, today, May 22. She will be participating on the "Panel on Chile and Uruguay 40 years later: Inter- and Intra-generational transmission of memory in the post-dictatorship." This congress has a special theme, Democracy & Memory, marking the 40th anniversary of the repressive military rule in the Southern Cone region and numerous other countries in Latin America during the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s and extending into the 1990s. Achugar is associate professor of Hispanic Studies and Second Language Acquisition.
Justine Cassell, director of the Human-Computer Interaction Institute, discusses the Quantified Self (QS) and how electronic devices that measure and interpret our physical and mental processes will improve our everyday lives in an essay posted by Scientific American. "QS devices and apps don’t tattle to your doctor. They don’t yell at you. They just help you see what you’re doing — and maybe how to do it better," she writes. Read her essay titled Quantify Thyself, Know Thyself.
Sue-mei Wu, teaching professor of Chinese Studies in the Department of Modern Languages, has established The Chinese Language Teachers Association of Western Pennsylvania (CLTA-WPA, http://clta-wpa.org) to help advance the teaching and research of Chinese language and culture in western Pennsylvania. Wu, founder and president of CLTA-WPA, and fellow faculty members Yueming Yu (vice president) and Gang Liu (treasurer), organized a successful inaugural conference at Carnegie Mellon on May 4. The conference theme was “Chinese Language Teaching and Learning in the Global Context.” Seventy Chinese teachers registered for the conference, in which activities included paper presentations, a general membership meeting and open forum, student performances, a book exhibition and a drawing for prizes. CLTA-WPA is a nonprofit, nonpolitical, academic and educational organization. It aims to provide a forum for exchanging information, expertise, ideas, experiences, and materials related to teaching and learning Chinese, thus serving the community by promoting quality Chinese education for K-16 in the western Pennsylvania.