Subject: NSBE Undergrad research

From: Christopher Rose <crose>
Date: Tue, 4 Mar 97 17:01:18 EST

Hi Folks,

This is a followup to our meeting last night.  I've set up a mail drop
for us

	[email-masked]

Anything sent to this address will reach everyon who signed up last
night.  I will not moderate the list, but I have some guidelines for
what should appear there.  The info posted should be related only to
special problems projects and/or group technical projects.  It should
not be repository for general news.  Why? My disk space is limited and
such posting will clutter the disk.

Speaking of which, I'll be soon setting up an archive on my home page
which will contain all our past correspondence.

So far we've talked about the following as project possibilities;

1) REMOTE CONTROL PROFESSOR CONTROLLER: each student has a transmitter
with two buttons.  Button 1 says "speed up" and button 2 says "slow down".
A box at the front of the room registers the votes and indicates
whether to speed up or slow down.  This could be a multiple person
project (maximum of 3 I think)

2) WEB DISTRIBUTION OF COURSE MATERIAL: the student would prepare a
lesson (module/lab, topic) for distribution over the WWW.  The
parameters of exactly what would be involved are open.  What I'm
looking for is a self-contained tutorial unit that students could use
to learn material in various courses or extend their understanding.
If enough courses could be covered, I believe this could blossom into
a hallmark NSBE project with (I'm not exagerating) WORLD CLASS IMPACT.

3) CAMERA ON A BOOM: A remote access camera with a controller would be
used to move a camera around and look "from afar".  I gave the example
of a camera in my office with which I could look at papers, but the
context could be anything really.  This would be agood project for
about 2 or three students.

4) SKI-DOMETER:  A device which could be mounted on a ski which measured
snow speed.  Current versions are mechanical.  I envision something
a bit more sophisticated which uses optics (leds) to measure speed

Now, here are the caveats.  It looked like more than 40 people in the
room last night from various disciplines.  Unfortunately, I'm only one
person, so I don't see having more tan about 5 or so students as
special problems students under my sole direction.  HOWEVER, if we can
figure out a way to do group projects along the lines of the web
distribution stuff above, we might be able to achieve departmental
"buy-in" from various departments.  That is, your home departments
would LOVE to have such web distribution of coursework and maybe we
could work out a deal where I'm the secondary advisor and you hook up
directly with a prof in your department. 

So that's the scoop.  If you're interested in doing special problems,
submit a proposal to this group so we as a group can tear it apart
and rebuild it into something wonderful.  Post questions/clarifiactions
etc as well.

If you wnat more detail on my background (technical) chck out my web
page (http://winwww.rutgers.edu/pub/about/people/staff/crose/crose.html).

Cheers,

Chris