Private Giving
Penn State Intercom......January 18 , 2001

$1 million gift will benefit
College of Earth and Mineral Sciences

Alumnus and retired petroleum industry executive Donald F. Harris has pledged more than $1 million to broaden educational opportunities for undergraduates and faculty in the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences.

The gift, to be made through Harris' future estate, is targeted to endow the college Center for Advanced Undergraduate Studies and Experience (CAUSE) and to establish the Donald Harris Academic Excellence Fund in Global Business Strategies.

Harris designated $400,000 for global business strategies, a new minor that the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences created cooperatively with The Smeal College of Business Administration. The minor introduces students to financial, investment and management concepts of private sector organizations whose operations emphasize the earth and its environment; the energy and mineral industries; and the development of new and enhanced materials. This part of the Harris gift also will provide an opportunity for the development of a CAUSE course that will integrate the curriculum of global business strategies into the CAUSE program, according to John A. Dutton, dean of the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences.

The remainder of the gift will support the CAUSE program directly. CAUSE provides students with "real life" experiences encompassing research, discovery, speculation, writing and debate. Each year, a select number of outstanding juniors and seniors, representing a cross-section of the college's disciplines, are invited to participate in a CAUSE project involving the earth and its resources. Students have traveled around the country and the world engaged in projects as diverse as studying the effects of global warming on rural Pennsylvania; examining coral reef demise in the Florida Keys; and discovering the impact of natural hazards in New Zealand. For the 2000 CAUSE project, students are studying the effects of energy choices on the environment.

Harris earned his degree in petroleum and natural gas engineering from Penn State in 1948. During his 46-year career, Harris worked for Standard Oil of California, the Gulf Oil Corp. and Kuwait Petroleum.

Materials Research Lab receives
$800,000 grant for new laboratory

By Anne Danahy
University Relations

The W.M. Keck Foundation has awarded an $800,000 grant to the Materials Research Laboratory (MRL) to provide funding for a new laboratory specially designed to support MRL's work in smart materials.

"Right now, MRL is designing devices that bring together electrical, mechanical and optical functions to create a new generation of integrated components," said Gary Messing, director of MRL and professor of ceramic science and engineering. "We want to extend the ideas of integration and miniaturization beyond the realm of silicon integrated circuits."

Smart materials are those that can both sense a change in the environment and respond to that change in a useful way, according to Robert Newnham, an emeritus faculty at MRL, who is one of the pioneers of the field.

In addition to the $800,000 grant, MRL will receive $310,000 in University funds to cover the estimated cost of the $1.1 million laboratory, which will be housed in MRL's current facilities at University Park. The W.M. Keck Smart Materials Integration Laboratory will be staffed and open for use by students and faculty. MRL faculty will work closely with the medical, communications, consumer electronics, manufacturing and transportation industries on the integration of novel materials into devices.

"When you open up a computer or a cell phone, there are often hundreds of individual components on the main boards," said Susan Trolier-McKinstry, MRL's associate director who also is an associate professor of ceramic science and engineering and will head the lab. "The Keck Laboratory will greatly enhance our ability to learn how to co-process many of these devices, so that they can be made smaller, lighter and less expensive. This is just one example of the type of work the Keck Laboratory will enable. We also will be using the new facility to build novel miniature sensors for medical diagnostics and industrial equipment monitoring, optical components for telecommunications and tiny actuators for minimally invasive surgery."

MRL is an interdisciplinary unit, bringing together fields such as mathematics, physics, materials science and engineering, electrical engineering and acoustics. It is internationally recognized for work in ferroelectrics and smart materials, and for the design of devices such as the ultrasonic probe used for prenatal monitoring, electronic components for cell phones and passive electronics for consumer electronics. The new facility is scheduled to open in spring.

The Los Angeles-based W.M. Keck Foundation is a philanthropic organization founded in 1954. It awards grants to support research in medicine, science and engineering.

Alumnus donates patent
on military seat to University

By Anne Danahy

University Relations

U.S. military forces may suffer fewer injuries from high-impact collisions and explosions with the development of specially designed vehicle seats that the University hopes to develop, thanks to a monetary gift and the gift of a patent from alumnus Alan Cantor.

The University's Pennsylvania Transportation Institute will work with Cantor and his company on the seats' developments. The donation is valued at more than $9 million by an outside independent evaluator.

"The seat has been designed to control forces coming up from the bottom of the vehicle and going into the spine," said Cantor, who is chairman and CEO of ARCCA Inc., a Bucks County-based consulting firm that specializes in preventing and investigating transportation disasters. "The force from a collision multiplies as it travels through the vehicle, and it has a catastrophic effect on the spine. This seat design offsets the forces very simply by the use of specialized foams and the specific geometry of the seat structure and the seat belts."

Engineers at ARCCA will work with Don Streit, professor of mechanical engineering and director of the Vehicle Systems and Safety Program in the Pennsylvania Transportation Institute, on the research and development of the seats.

The initial research will examine light trucks going over land mines, which can cause passengers to suffer from fractured spines, according to Streit.

ARCCA already has performed a series of crash tests on the vehicle seat with excellent results and the U.S. Army currently is using a prototype of the seat, according to Cantor.

"This is of important military value," said Ron Huss, associate director of Penn State's Intellectual Property Office. "One thing that might be down the pike is that this patent design may have civilian application in relieving stress on the spine that comes from accidents and from sitting in automobiles for lengthy periods of time. Right now, the intent is for all U.S. Army vehicles that are deployed to be protected with this technology."

Cantor earned a bachelor's degree in aerospace engineering from Penn State in 1972. From 1982 through 1987 he worked for the U.S. Navy as an engineer specializing in occupant crash protection. In 1987 he founded ARCCA, which focuses on promoting high levels of occupant safety in both ground and air vehicles.

Report puts Penn State first in awarding
baccalaureate engineering degrees

A new report on engineering and technologies degrees by the Engineering Workforce Commission named Penn State as the top university in number of engineering baccalaureate degrees granted.

During the 1999-2000 academic year, the College of Engineering awarded 1,263 bachelor's degrees. Georgia Tech was second with 1,243 and Illinois third with 1,136.

Robert Pangborn, associate dean of undergraduate studies, said the numbers are encouraging for both students and employers.

"The new engineering graduates are enjoying an extraordinarily attractive employment market," Pangborn said. "A survey of students graduating from the College of Engineering during the 1999-2000 academic year indicated that students were invited to visit three companies on average and received two job offers. The demand is strong in every engineering discipline. The new baccalaureate graduates in 1999-2000 reported accepting entry-level positions at salaries averaging $45,700."

Penn State also ranked third in total number of engineering degrees awarded, including bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees, with 1,834 for 1999-2000. Georgia Tech had the most with 2,019 and Michigan followed with 1,853.

Other rankings issued by the commission placed the College of Engineering sixth in the number of bachelor's degrees awarded to women and eighth in total degrees (undergraduate and graduate) to women.

Engineering also ranked ninth in the number of master's degrees awarded and 10th in number of doctoral degrees awarded.

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