Dear Friends,
As we near the end of the semester, we look forward to our spring commencement to be held at 9 a.m. on Saturday, May 10th, at the Rushmore Plaza Civic Center Arena. Thirty-four M.S. degrees, 180 B.S. degrees and eight A.A. degrees will be awarded at the ceremony. Jerry Brown (BS CE65; MS CE70) will be presented the Guy E. March Medal. We will also recognize 36 graduates of the Class of 1958. Our guest speaker is Dr. Thomas O. Hunter, President of Sandia Corporation and Laboratories Director of Sandia National Laboratories. Student speakers are Firas Khoury and Wes Snaza.
Dr. James Martin, professor, department of geology and geological engineering, has been chosen as a 2008 Nominee for Induction into the South Dakota Hall of Fame. Dr. Martin will be accepting his award in September at a formal reception in Aberdeen.
Dr. Karen Braman, assistant professor, math and computer science department, was recently selected for the Household Symposium, which is an international gathering devoted to matrix computations and linear algebra. Candidates complete an application process for the conference which is held once every three years. Dr. Braman's work in the QR algorithm using middle deflations was selected from the highly competitive list of applications.
Dr. Stuart Kellogg, chair/Pietz professor, industrial engineering, has been elected to serve as the Chair of the 2010 ASEE Rocky Mountain Region Conference for 2010. Dr. Kellogg also earned the award for the best presentation at the recent conference in April. Another of his papers will be presented at the National ASEE conference in June.
Patrick Satchell, a sophomore industrial engineering major, has been awarded the Marlin R. Scarborough Scholarship by the South Dakota Board of Regents. The $1,000 scholarship honors the late Marlin R. Scarborough who was president of the Board of Regents at the time of his death.
The School of Mines 2008 Senior Design Fair was held on April 22. The annual fair features dozens of senior projects from various fields of science and engineering.
Dennis Clary (ME01) has been named as the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society's Man of the Year in the State of Kansas.
Summer is coming fast, and students will need something to do with all their free time. We have scheduled seven STEPS Engineering Camps (Science Technology Engineering Preview Summer) starting in June. During this one-week introduction to the world of technology and engineering, students will participant in hands-on activities that give them an understanding of what engineers do. These camps are not co-ed, but offered separately to girls and boys entering grades 6-8 and 9-12. For more information, and a list of camp dates, please visit http://sdmines.sdsmt.edu/learn/youth%20or%20call%20394-2693.
As always, I welcome your thoughts and comments. I can be reached at charles.ruch@sdsmt.edu.
Charles Ruch