CORe Digest
October 7th 2005
Alumni Association Steering Committee Appointments
Congrats to our first reps!
Coming Out Day 2005
More info:
National Coming Out Day is a day for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and otherwise queer people all over the country to celebrate their sexualities and promote LGBT awareness (see the HRC Website, http://www.hrc.org, for more information).
In honor of this day, Open is sponsoring an event for the entire Olin Community - no matter what your sexual orientation, you are invited to come join us for food, music, friends, and fun! The main activity at this event will be t-shirt silk screening. You can make your own shirt with any of several designs relating to coming out and LGBT awareness - whether you are homosexual, bisexual, heterosexual, transgender, questioning, etc., there will be a design for you. We have the classics, plus some new designs for this year. Shirts will cost $5, and all other necessary supplies will be provided. But remember, even if you don't want to make a shirt, you can still come hang out, have a good time, and show your support!
If you would like to contact somebody confidentially about the coming out process or other LGBT- or sexuality-related issues, email questioning@olin.edu. Please be advised that Open does not provide trained counselors.
Join WZLY
WZLY 91.5 FM would love to have some Olin DJs on our airwaves this year.
Our station is currently over 60 DJs strong and broadcasts via webcasting in addition to via radio an average of 14 hours a day. We play all kinds of music and also have a news program on Fridays. If you're interested in having your own show (or a co-show), DJing parties, working for News, hearing new music first, or bringing bands to our respective campuses, please e-mail interning@wzly.net.
We encourage any interested students, faculty or staff to contact us; we'd love to hear from you!
Kate Tetreault
WZLY General Manager
www.wzly.net
Diversity, Social Justice, and Olin
Discussion: Race, Class, and Lessons from Hurricane Katrina
Location: Crescent Room
Date: October 12
Time: 12:00-1:00pm
We’ll listen to two NPR reports on the subject and finish with a group discussion:
Examining Race, Class and Katrina By Juan Williams (September 16, 2005)
Juan Williams examines what the response to Hurricane Katrina says about race and poverty in the United States. One interviewee says the hurricane ripped the covering off the class lines and racism of America.
Choosing Your Terms: The Language of Katrina by Geoff Nunberg (September 8, 2005)
Linguist Geoff Nunberg considers the language that's been used to describe the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. What words do we use, "looting," "finding" or "foraging"? "Refugees," "evacuees" or "the displaced"?
Fall 2005 Olin Seminars
Prof. Rajit Manohar, Cornell University
Olin College Auditorium
Reconfigurable Asynchronous Logic
Abstract:
Asynchronous logic is a way to design digital systems without clocks. The approach abandons the notion of global synchrony in digital design and replaces it with local synchronization among parts of the design that exchange information. Prototyping asynchronous systems using commercially available reconfigurable hardware is difficult, because commercial reconfigurable logic systems (field programmable gate arrays, or FPGAs) have been optimized for implementing synchronous logic.
This talk will present an overview of the asynchronous design approach. We examine some common asynchronous constructs, and use the analysis to design a new reconfigurable logic architecture---an asynchronous FPGA (AFPGA)---suitable for implementing high-speed asynchronous pipelines. Our design significantly outperforms previously proposed asynchronous FPGAs, and for the first time outperforms commercial synchronous FPGAs as well. We also describe a synthesis flow that can translate algorithms into the basic building blocks provided by the AFPGA architecture.
All Invited to Family Weekend '05
Oct. 21-23
Family Weekend Volunteers Needed
Staff or students who are available to help with any portion of family registration on Friday (10/21) from 5-6:30 p.m. and Saturday 8:00 a.m.- noon should contact Cara Szeghy.
Student Project Presentations Needed
Are you working on something interesting at Olin? Would you like to show it off? At brunch on the Sunday morning of Family Weekend (10/ 23), we're looking for a few students to sit by a project and show it off to parents and community members as they come in to eat. Please contact Andrew Bouchard if you are willing to help.
Faculty Course Presentation Slots Open
Faculty who would like to offer a 30 minute course presentation on Saturday (10/22) at 11:00a, 11:30a, and/or 12:00p should contact Teresa Kelleher as soon as possible.
Habitat for Humanity Collegiate Challenge
NASA RASC-AL Program
Details of the program can be found at the USRA/NASA RASC webpage at http://rasc.larc.nasa.gov/rasc_new/index.html and the RASC-AL Program website at http://www.sop.usra.edu/rasc-al/. Interested parties are also invited to contact the program director at USRA, Jeffery Cardenas, at (281) 244-2026 or cardenas@sop.usra.edu for additional information.
Honor Code Values and Ethics Speaker
This annual event will provide an opportunity for students to hear the words, stories, and expertise of nationally known speakers and philosophers as well as faculty, staff, and parents that have (1) taken the time and energy to engage in the tough work of defining one of the Honor Code’s core values and (2) understands the implications of ‘doing something’ when one believes in one or more of those values.
Students, staff and faculty are invited to participate in the Honor Code Values Speaker series by suggesting a speaker. Please forward your suggestions with a brief rationale to Nick Tatar (nick.tatar@olin.edu) by Nov. 1. All suggestions will be carefully reviewed by a five-member committee of the Honor Board.
Rocket Pitch 2005
Call for pitches
Friday, October 28, 2005
Olin Hall, Babson College
In today's intense, rapidly changing market, lengthy business plans are being replaced with Executive Summaries and "Rocket Pitches." The Arthur M. Blank Center for Entrepreneurship invites Babson and Olin students and alumni the chance to pitch their early stage business opportunity to a powerful audience - Venture Capitalists, Angels, Corporate Partners, Faculty, Alums, and other "friends of Babson" The plan is to provide presenters with feedback, mentoring, networking opportunity and possibly even financing!!
Space is limited!!!
If you are interested in participating as a "Presenter" and would like more information (guidelines, submission deadlines, resources available to presenters, and to download forms), please visit www.babson.edu/eship
Should you have any questions, please feel free to contact Andrea Ross (rossa@babson.edu)
Deadline for submission is Monday, October 17, 2005
Join the Community Service Incubator
Olin students' engineering experiences and skills are some of the greatest assets that can be donated to the community. Things our students already do for fun are often the jobs that non-profit or under-funded agencies are least likely to be able to afford. Web design, mechanical design, fabrication, software development, IT support, and other engineering skills can be very effective community services offerings.
This "incubator" will provide a central contact and work distribution point to coordinate the time our students donate. The incubator will also be responsible for promoting our model to a wider audience and linking students with requests from community organizations. In coordinating this effort with SERV, we hope to attract even more people to perform community service.
If you are interested, please contact Mark Chang (mark.chang@olin.edu) directly. We will be coordinating meeting times and short/long-term goals very soon. I anticipate the time commitment for meetings to be low, and commitments to actually doing something to be flexible.
Join the Social Justice Reading Group!
Join the Social Justice Reading Group! We will meet twice a month, from about 8:30-10 p.m., in Mark and Caryn's apartment in East Hall. The day of the week can be decided once we have an idea of everyone's schedules. Readings will be light (about 35 pages per session), and can be chosen together, but may range from critical theorists such as Michel Foucault or Antonio Gramsci, postmodernists, cultural studies or postcolonial theorists, or critical race theorists. These folks will help us to think about concepts such as ideology, race, hegemony, class, oppression, feminism, identity politics, language, and, ultimately, social change.
Join us in thinking about what kind of citizens we want to be, or what the world would look like if we could fashion it according to our own vision. This reading group is all about taking the red pill.
If you are interested, please email Mark Chang (mark.chang@olin.edu) directly. We will be getting started soon, so get on board!
New Community Public File Shares
Groups - This is a secured space, meaning that access to folders needs to be explicitly given by IT, and the data within each group folder will be restricted to the members of the group. All of the previous data from Groups is in this folder, and secured as before.
Public - This is an area open to the community at large that can be used to store Olin-related data. It is important to note that data in this space will be accessible to the entire community, therefore if your data is of a secure nature, it should not be put here.
OldShare and OldStudentPublic will be kept online until January 15, 2006. At that time they will be taken offline and will no longer be accessible.
Sandbox - A space requested by members of the community and one of the recommendations of the IT Student Working Group. This space is meant for any data, as long as it is legal and falls within the Olin Acceptable Use Policy (see http://it.olin.edu/policies/AppropriateUsePolicy.pdf). This space is meant for very short-term storage. The Sandbox share will be automatically erased at 12:00AM on the first day of each month. Also, it will not be backed-up, and therefore files stored here will be unrecoverable if they are lost or deleted.
Please contact the IT Help Desk at help.desk@olin.edu if you have any questions or concerns.
The diversity committee needs you!
What would you change about the academic environment at Olin?
8-9 PM: West Hall 3rd floor Antelounge
9-10 PM: East Hall 1st floor Lounge
Here are just a few questions we have been thinking about:
Why do students struggle (academically or socially) at Olin?
What are the major divisions among students at Olin?
How do you respond to different teaching styles and how do you perceive that others respond?
If you can't make it on Monday, feel free to shoot us an e-mail or talk to us and let us know your thoughts.
Printer/Copier Resources
You can access black & white printer/copiers in the following locations 24/7:
Library
1st floor and lower level
Academic Center
AC214
AC314
AC414
Campus Center
Student Work Room second floor
Please check the IT Web Site for locations of other copiers available during normal operating hours.
If you need further info, please contact helpdesk@olin.edu.
Prototyping Project Available
"I am working with an inventor on a new breed of mobile phone games -- our games are audio, instead of screen based. We'd be interested in having a PC-based prototype built, and I am wondering if it is the sort of thing that an Olin student or team might be suited for -- either for class credit or as a for pay (modest pay!!) project? Key skills would include familiarity with or willingness to learn about voice recognition software (I assume using open source tools, rather than concocting something new). Also, we need the demo to run on a PC with a phone card fielding a phone call from users. So an IVR (interactive voice response) background or willingness to learn would also be helpful.
The actual application would ultimately be ported to a handset under BREW or J2ME, but that's another story for another day. Please let me know if you need more info. I can guarantee it would be a fun project!"
Interested parties should contact Lynn Andrea Stein (las@olin.edu) and she'll put you in touch.
Seeking Software Developer For Olin Start-up
Thanks,
The Limeworks Team (Alex D, Chris D, Nicole H, James K, Lindsay R, and Sutee)