Brown and White Vol. 120 no. 14

              Vol. 120 No. 14
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
‘All the Lehigh News First’
THE BROWN AND WHITE
Lehigh University’s Student Newspaper Founded in 1894
SPORTS
Zack Rey wins national title
Page 16
ONLINE
Check online for breaking news
thebrownandwhite.com
Facebook becomes
more complicated
Page 7
LIFESTYLE
By ALYSSA SALEM
Some of Lehigh’s most talented engineering students got the chance to show off their hard work at the David and Lorraine Freed Undergraduate Research Sympo­sium last Tuesday in the STEPS building.
According to the Lehigh website, Lehigh Engineer­ing’s annual Undergraduate Research Symposium, held each spring, showcases the intense academic capabilities of today’s rising Lehigh engineers and highlights the resources and opportunities Lehigh provides to under­graduates. Furthermore, the event’s format has been carefully designed to mirror larger-scale scholarly con­ferences and industry research workshops.
The event helps students, who are nominated by their departments, to learn how to express the significance of their work to both faculty and peers.
“The students know what is expected up front, but we do provide coaching and support from faculty in the various different departments,” said Himanshu Jain, a professor and symposium organizer. “We want to bring them to a point where they can make an effective pre­sentation on their chosen topic.”
Jain said the real focus of the symposium is “inquiry-based learning.” The engineering department wants students to look at problems that are not found in text­books but are real-life problems that can be exciting to work on.
According to Jain, this is great learning opportunity for students because they can show their progress on work that they formulated from the beginning to end, which looks great on a resume and to potential grad schools and employers.
Marianne Sullivan, ’11, of the materials science and engineering department, did her project on bovine
Undergrads compete in research symposium
By SARAH FADEM
In honor of Women’s Empowerment Week, the Baker Institute for Entrepreneurship, Cre­ativity and Innovation sponsored “Women Who Innovate,” a discussion featuring four women entrepreneurs sharing their journeys last Tuesday.
The event is part of the Baker Institute’s iDeX, or “idea exchange,” program, which was created to “foster creative thinking that leads to creating value in the world,” according to its mission statement.
Lisa Getzlet-Linn, administrative director of the Integrated Product Development program, said the panel was meant “to inspire women in the Lehigh community to recognize the inno­vator in themselves.”
The “Women Who Innovate” program began with a list of objects including a bullet­proof vest, windshield wipers and a fire escape, which was prefaced by the question, “What do these things have in common?”
The answer: They were all invented by women.
This was the first of many women-centric themes, and each member of the panel brought a different perspective to the table.
Speakers included Stephanie Olexa, an entrepreneur who earned a master’s degree in business administration from Lehigh; Xian­hong Cheng, a Lehigh researcher and leading contributor to AIDS research; Donna De­Marco, founder of Viddler.com and Lehigh graduate; and Lissa Hilsee, founder of Greater Philadelphia Cares.
Olexa, the first to share her story, began with an anecdote about a calendar hanging on her wall picturing a row of lily pads across a stream.
“My pathway to where I am now is not a straight line,” she said. “My life has really been jumping from lily pad to lily pad, and maybe one day I’ll make it across that water.”
Olexa began as a scientist and spent five years teaching and researching at Temple Uni­See
EMPOWER Page 5
Baker Institute hosts alums, entreprenurs
‘Red Show’ opens art studios to community
By KIRK GREENWOOD
ArtsQuest’s Banana Factory held an opening reception for its fifth an­nual “Red Show” last Friday.
The reception lasted about two and a half hours, starting at “6:03” p.m. and ending at “8:27 (ish)” p.m., according to a postcard adver­tising the show.
“We artists are silly,” said Ba­nana Factory sculptor Virginia Ab­bott about the reception’s idiosyn­cratic start and end times. “It’s just a piece of whimsy.”
The reception was a chance for visual artists like Abbott, who work on the Banana Factory’s third floor, to open their creative spaces and exhibit their work to students, fel­low artists and the local community.
The Banana Factory is a unique visual arts gallery and studio space in the ArtsQuest complex off Third Street in South Side Bethlehem.Home to 27 resident artists and three formal galleries, the Banana Factory has been a focal point of the Bethlehem arts scene since it first opened in 1998.
“ArtsQuest has the studios; they rent them out to the artists,” Ab­bott said. “It’s a modern-day artists’ colony, sort of an incubator.”
“We’re a community-based arts organization,” said Berrisford Boothe, associate professor of art who has a painting and printmaking studio on the Banana Factory’s third floor. “At the core, our responsibil­ity is not just to generate art but to provide a lot of arts-related services to the community.”
The Banana Factory’s renowned
See ART Page 6
Photo courtesy of NICK ANSHANT
The entire cast of Dancefest poses for a photo after its performance at Zoellner Arts Center on Saturday night.
See SYMPOSIUM Page 3
n Banana Factory opens its doors to the community, while exhibiting many of its third-floor artists.
Just dance