Alicia

Fall 09 off to a great start!

1.    NSBPA Conference in Woodshole, MA... Check!

2.    Graduate Research Day... Check!

3.     ASBPA Conference in St. Petersburg, FL... Check!

4.    Midterms... Check!

and most importantly...

5.    Yankees winning the World Series... CHECK!

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    The Fall 2009 semester couldn't have gotten off to a better start.  This is my first official semester as a Ph.D. student, and classes and research are going well!  We are still surveying the Long Branch renourishment project on a monthly basis.  Our analysis of the feeder beach evolution has given our coastal group the opportunity to present at three conferences this semester.  In September, my advisor Dr. Thomas Herrington and I went to the Northeast Shore and Beach Preservation Association conference in Woodshole, MA where Tom presented the preliminary results from our first quarterly monitoring report.  In October, Stevens hosted the Graduate Student Research Conference, where graduate students from Stevens had poster presentations of their ongoing research.  I was fortunate enough to speak at this conference about our jetski surveying system called the Dynamic Underwater Coastal Kinematic Surveying (DUCKS) System, which is the system we use to monitor the fill evolution in Long Branch.  Later in October, Dr. Jon Miller and I went to the American Shore and Beach Preservation Association conference in St. Petersburg, FL where I gave a presentation rearding the feeder beach evolution in Long Branch and the impacts the fill had on surfing.  Attending conferences is a great way to network with professionals in the field, and learn about case studies and research being done at various universities and institutions around the country.  I am also taking a full class load this semester: Mixing Processes in Inland and Coastal Waters, Multi Hazard Engineering, and Littoral Processes.  Midterms are officially over, so now we are in the home stretch til finals! 

    Last week, a former doctoral student in ocean engineering at Stevens, Dr. Harry Friebel, gave a seminar at the Davidson Laboratory entitled "Long-Term Drag Coefficient Measurements at the US Army Corps of Engineers Field Research Facility and Understanding Coastal Wave Energy Dissipation in STWAVE."  Dr. Friebel now works for the Philadelphia District of the Army Corps.

    And the Yanks won the World Series!!! Being at a school in Hoboken really pays off when local teams win.  Hoboken went crazy Wednesday night when the Yanks won, and it was great to be a part of it.  I was fortunate enough to go to the parade in NYC on Friday morning.  Granted, I didn't see much... but it was a great experience.  Here are some pics from the parade!

Wrapping up... finals, FE exam, research day...

Well, the semester is just about over.  Friday was the last day of classes, and now we move into final exam week.  Luckily for me, I only have one class to take, so I am not nearly as stressed out as I have been in previous years.  Last year when I was a senior, I had 24 credits, including senior design. So at the end of the semester, I had about 4 finals to take, plus to finish senior design. Stressful!!! But this semester is a nice change... I'm not used to it actually. Since freshman year, I would be looking forward to summer as a relief from classes and schoolwork.  But graduate school is no where near as stressful as my undergraduate years.  I usually take 9 credits a semester as a graduate students, and only 3 credits right now!  So the workload is much less than usual.  I have much more time to myself, which is fantastic.  I am still involved in choir, but do not have all the meetings and events I had the past few years. 

And for the first time since high school, I am NOT taking any classes this summer.  I need a break... I plan on auditioning for a couple musicals in a few weeks with a local theater company, so that will keep me occupied for the majority of the summer.  I performed with them when I was in high school, so I figured this summer would be the perfect opportunity to be involved in something I love doing... performing!!!

On April 25th, I took the Fundamental of Engineering (FE) or Engineer-in-Training (EIT) exam.  It is a state run exam, which many engineers take upon graduation with their bachelor's degree.  I applied a few years ago to sit for the exam, but something happened with my application so I couldn't take it.  Most engineers who take the exam are civil and environmental engineers, but there are some mechanicals who take it too.  Basically, any engineer who wants their professional engineering (PE) license in the future has to pass this exam first.  The exam is 8 hours long... yes... I did just say 8 hours.  There is a 4 hour morning session, and a 4 hour afternoon session.  The morning session has 120 multiple choice questions on the following subject matter: mathematics, statics, dynamics, chemistry, physics, materials engineering, engineering economics, thermodynamics, heat transfer, ethics, and my favorite... fluid mechanics (I may have missed one...).  You can chose to sit for a diciplined exam in the afternoon (civil, environmental, chemical, mechanical, industrial) or you can take the general exam (which asks more in depth questions on math, statics, dynamics, materials, economics, thermo, fluids, and biology). There are only 60 questions in the afternoon session, but the questions are more involved than the morning session.  There is an hour lunch break between the two exams.  I finished an hour early in the morning session, and an hour and a half early in the afternoon session.  It didn't help that it was GORGOUS out, and about 75 degrees.  Taking that exam was the last place I wanted to be on such a beautiful day. But I'm glad I took it, and even more glad it's over! I'm fairly certain I passed.  It takes 12 weeks to get the results back... so keep your fingers crossed!

Friday May 8th is Technogenesis(R) Research and Entrepreneurship Day at Stevens.  Different departments present posters of the research they have been working on over the year.  Also, several senior design projects are showcased as well.  We have a poster we are presenting from the Center for Maritime Systems, discussing our project in Long Branch, NJ and our jetski surveying system.  Below is the poster we presented at R&E Day in 2008!

Senior Design, Wind Power, and a Greener Stevens!

In the engineering curriculum at Stevens, senior engineers must complete a senior design project.  Last year, my senior design project was to design a water treatment plant with two design alternatives: membrane filtration and granular filtration.  Our project was sponsored by Hazen and Sawyer, an environmental engineering firm.  Many projects have outside sponsors.  I worked with one other environmental engineer, and four civil engineers, who were responsible for the geotechnical design, swale design (water resources), site access design, and cost analysis.  Senior design projects span the entire year, from fall through spring.  Intermittent progress presentations are given to advisers, and a final report and presentation are given at the end of both the fall and spring semesters.  In the last week of April, Stevens holds Senior Design Day in the gym, where all engineering senior design groups create posters of their project for the rest of the school and sponsors (and possible employers) to see.  It's a pretty big deal... many of the design projects are manufacturable, and sometimes apply for patents of their design!

This year, of my sorority sisters (and fellow environmental engineer), Dawn Herring, was involved in a great, innovative, and green senior design project.  She, along with fellow environmental engineer Christine Couzo, and mechanical engineer Kate Vaupel, aimed to install a wind turbine on top of the Babio Center to generate wind power.  The trio determined that the average wind speed on top of the Babio Center was 11.2 miles per hour, which was sufficient for generation of wind power. 

The team researched the micro-turbine Whisper-200.  This unit has 3 blades, a 9-foot wingspan, is approximately 12 feet tall, and weighs only 87 pounds!  The team decided to use this micro-turbine to achieve their goal: they wanted to prove that a wind turbine on top of the Babio Center could produce 200 kilowatt hours per month (which is enough to power a small home).  The team would eventually like to see 20 of these micro-turbine units lined on top of the building to help generate energy for Stevens.  Below is a picture of the one Whisper-200 unit installed on the top of the Babio Center.

The team presented their design project on Monday, April 20th at Fairleigh Dickinson University for Green Day.  They will also be presenting at Senior Design Day, which is Wednesday April 29 in the Canavan Arena.  The team  received some press this past week when a press release was written about their project.  You can view the press release by clicking on the following link (Press Release). 

Stevens has been making strides toward greener practices.  Solar panels have been installed in the 8th street parking lot, and on the back slope toward the Davidson Laboratory.  Also, Stevens is involved in Recyclemania this semester.  A group of Business and Technology seniors organized Stevens involvement this year.  Recyclemania is a competition between schools to see which school can accumulate the most recycleables.  For the 2009 school year, 512 schools worldwide are involved.  The Stevens newspaper, The Stute, ran an article about Recyclemania.  You can view the article by clicking the following link (Recyclemania).  

Hopefully, Stevens continues to make progress toward being a more environmentally aware campus and university.  The new addition of the Green Engineering Minor is a wonderful example of how Stevens is incoorporating sustainable engineering and energy and green design alternatives into the engineering cirriculum.  Plus, many more student clubs and organizations have been emerging that are pushing for a greener Stevens, such as SAVE (Students Against Violating the Environment) and the Recycling Club. If you are a prospective student and want to be involved in these clubs when you attend, be sure to check them out at the Club Fair during orientation!

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!

Hurray for winter coastal storms! Hoboken received about 7.5 inches of snow Sunday night into Monday, closing school on Monday. We are having record low temperatures for this time of the year, so take that global warming!

Coastal communities got even more snow than we did up in Hoboken. Long Branch, NJ received about a foot of snow, and we were right back out surveying Wednesday and Thursday. Surveying in the snow is pretty intense. There were snow drifts on the beach, and when we stepped in them, we sunk into the drift to about our knees, and once to our waists! Our benchmark on the seawall was covered with snow, so we had to dig around to find it.

Here are some pictures from our surveying adventure on Wednesday. We set up our base station on the seawall, next to the boardwalk. Look how much snow there is on the beach!

This Saturday is the infamous Hoboken St. Patrick's Day parade. Thousands of people come to Hoboken to see the parade. This town is like a mad house! Hoboken has the parade about two weeks before the New York parade. A lot of my friends are coming in to see the parade, so I am really looking forward to it!

And next week is Spring Break! A few sorority sisters of mine are going to the Bahamas. One friend is going to Europe with his class... that's an awesome spring break trip. I am not doing anything for Spring Break this year. Last year, I visited a friend in Miami, which was amazing. I can't believe it's Spring Break already. The semester is almost over! Graduation is slowly approaching....

Surveying and Opera Night!!!

Currently, I am finishing up my Master's in Ocean Engineering, and will begin my Ph.D. studies in May 2009.  I am working full time at the Center for Maritime Systems (CMS) which is a research facility associated with Stevens Institute of Technology. I am a graduate research assistant there, and work on lots of interesting projects!

The main project we are working on right now is developing a GPS-jetski survey system to survey beaches. We have been developing this system since the summer of 2008. Before we employed our GPS-jetski survey system at the project site in Long Branch, NJ, our field operations (Field Ops) team conducted many tests at Liberty State Park in Jersey City, NJ.  Now that the beach replenishment is complete in Long Branch, NJ, our Field Ops team conducts weekly surveys of the Long Branch beach.  We typically do two surveys a week: one using the GPS-jetski to survey offshore, and one using a backpack with GPS to survey the dry beach.  Here are some pictures from recent survey excursions!

We have many people on our Field Ops team that help with this project. First, we have one person set up the base station on the boardwalk.  This base station is set up over a known position (USGS benchmark), and will tell the rover (GPS-jetski or backpack GPS) what it's position and elevation are at any point in time. So one person mans the base station the whole day. Two poeple are on safety patrol on the beach, in case the person on the jetski happens to fall off. One person rides the jetski, surveying half of the project area.  Another person surveys the second half of the project area.  We also have a research vessel offshore for emergencies. On the day when we survery the dry beach, again, there is one person at the base station.  One person carries the GPS on their back with the antenna sticking out, while a second person walks along side of them, taking down any notes in our field notebook.  Here is a picture of me surveying with the GPS-backpack on!

This is why I love my job! I get to go to the beach twice a week! And in the summer time, it's going to be even better. It's been a little cold out there these past few weeks, but it's not unbearable. The water isn't even that cold. When we are surveying the dry beach, we have to wade into the surf zone up to our knees, so the offshore and dry beach surveys overlap. But the water has been fairly warm. It would definitely feel much colder if I wasn't wearing a 5mm wetsuit!

Tonight is Opera Night!!! Several students from the voice studio of Bethany Reeves (myself included) are singing opera arias tonight at 7pm, in the Music Room (4th floor Howe Building).  We have been working on these arias for several months, and are ready to perform them! Check out the flier below!