Brown and White Vol. 121 no. 17

              Vol. 121 No. 17
Friday, November 11, 2011
‘All the Lehigh News First’
THE BROWN AND WHITE
Lehigh University’s Student Newspaper Founded in 1894
SPORTS
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LIFESTYLE
By KIRK GREENWOOD with additional
reporting by COURTNEY BUCHANAN
and AMALIA SAFRAN
The unexpected autumn nor’easter that pounded the Lehigh Valley two weekends ago dumped a half-foot of snow on parts of Lehigh’s campus, tore down trees and power lines and left most residential buildings cold and in the dark.
The university closed down on Sunday night, Oct. 30, and remained closed through Nov. 2, as crews from the university’s energy supplier, PPL Electric, scrambled to get the campus back online.
While students huddled in “refugee camps” in two campus buildings that still had power – Centennial II and Brodhead House – and Windish Hall, a community center on Packer Avenue across from the Rauch Business Center, activity was going on behind-the-scenes to assess and manage the crisis situation and get power restored.
When the power first went out at around 5:30 p.m. on Oct. 29, Lehigh administrators had no idea how long it would take to be restored, said Jen Tucker, Lehigh’s assis­tant vice president of communications, in an email to The Brown and White.
“At the time, we did not have a full understanding of how long the power would be out, as PPL was working to identify where and how extensive the damage was,” she said.
Tucker said that at first administrators did not want to alarm or inconvenience students by relocating them, especially while snow was still falling outside Saturday night. During the early stages of the power outage, the university’s priorities included ensuring student safety, stabilizing dining operations at Rathbone Dining Hall, assessing damage on campus, clearing trees and working to keep telecommunications lines open, Tucker said.
“We had security personnel and residence hall staff checking buildings where power was out,” she said. “Stu­dents did have the ability to be relocated to an area with emergency lighting if they were uncomfortable in their building.”
As more information came in and initial surprise gave way to a realistic view of the situation, Lehigh administra­tion mobilized the university’s crisis management team. The team –
provost, vice provost for student affairs, vice president of communications, vice president of finance and ad­ministration, general counsel and dean of athletics – was ultimately responsible for decisions to relocate students and cancel classes each day, Tucker said. The team was advised by a much larger operational group of faculty and staff, she added.
“We had 200 faculty and staff on hand and onsite to
Officials share insider info from evacuations
By TIANLI ZHANG
The College of Arts and Sciences announced the undergraduate research grant opportunities that offer funding to encourage students of all academic interests to engage in projects that explore their person interests, under faculty supervision.
Augustine Ripa, the CAS associate dean of undergraduate studies, said a year ago, CAS Dean Anne Meltzer created the CAS under­graduate research grants and achieved great success for the first open call-out.
This year, Donald E. Hall, who has recently been pointed the CAS dean, said he enthusias­tically endorses the grants and wishes to con­tinue the program for the second year in a row.
“Students engage not just in the past of ac­quisition of knowledge of textbooks, but in the creation of new knowledge,” Ripa said. “They confront the kinds of things that will benefit them for a lifetime, and their educations will just playing never end.”
These grants are intended to enhance the opportunities for undergraduate research. They promote the idea for students of all academic interests to work with members of the faculty in the CAS to engage in independent research at any level that is appropriate for them and their faculty mentors.
Travel, research supplies and other valid expenses may be reimbursed up to the limit of an individual grant. Grants will fall into a range of $100 to $1,500.
“The faculty endorsement is what we are looking for,” Ripa said. “We are providing a great number of opportunities for students to work closely with individual faculty mentors on their projects.”
This year, the CAS had the great fortune of
See RESEARCH Page 3
CAS funds offer more research opportunities
Students meet industry execs at supply chain event
By KO YAZAKI
The Center for Value Chain Re­search hosted its semi-annual sympo­sium about the various game changers that have occurred in the supply chain industry on Nov. 3.
The night before the symposium, CVCR hosted a networking session between students, faculty and industry representatives at the Historic Hotel Bethlehem. Around 100 students and faculty from Lehigh attended this event, as well as 70 industry represen­tatives. The majority of students who attended were supply chain and indus­trial engineering majors, and they were able to interact with leading executives of companies, such as Pfizer, Robinson and Bosch Rexroth Corp.
“The networking session is great for [students] because there is only so much [students] can learn in a class­room; meeting people who actually work for the industry helps [students] prepare for the future,” said Zheng Han, a graduate student studying in­dustrial engineering at Lehigh.
Some of the topics that were dis­cussed during these dialogues included transportation efficiency, intellectual property and how businesses have adapted to the integration of supply chain management into their business plans.
Keith Gardiner, professor of indus­trial and systems engineering, said he was very impressed by the turnout and appreciated the commitment of both students and industry representatives because “it is very important for them to get out and experience a world out of academia and business.”
Because of the fact that supply chain is a relatively new aspect of business, it is especially important for students to be exposed to leading executives in the field.
Dirk Schmidt, a representative from Bosch Rexroth Corp., called supply chain a “mystical world that only came into existence recently, which is why
See NETWORKING Page 2
B&W photo by KO YAZAKI
Industrial engineering students, faculty from Lehigh, and industry representatives mingle during a networking reception for supply chain research at the Historic Hotel Bethlehem on Thursday, Nov. 3.
See REFUGEES Page 4