CM student team wins national MCAA competition
A team of students from the SPSU Construction Management (CM) Department won the national Mechanical Contractors Association of America (MCAA) Student Chapter Competition and a cash prize of $5,000 on March 19 in Orlando, Fla.

In SPSU’s first time as one of the four finalists, the team competed against students from the Milwaukee School of Engineering, Illinois State University and California State University at Sacramento. The competition took place during the MCAA National Convention, with teams making oral presentations before a panel of industry judges.

“This is a real coup and is testimony to the fine work that goes on within the CM program,” Vice President for Academic Affairs Zvi Szafran said in congratulating the team, its faculty advisor, Prof. Maureen Weidner, and CM Department Chair Khalid Siddiqi.

The SPSU MCAA Competition Team was captained by Trent Anderson and made up of Sean Barden, Daniel Epps, Billy Hancock, Larnell Jewell, Brian Nelson, Eric Pagan, Tyrone Sheffield and Charles Wall.

The journey to this victory began at the October 2011 MCAA Student Chapter Summit in San Francisco, where students were invited to prepare and submit a proposal to retrofit a historic San Francisco building into the Asian Art Museum. In January, judges selected the four best submissions for the Orlando competition.

Dr. Meg Dillon receives Fulbright Specialists Award
Dr. Meighan I. Dillon, professor of mathematics, has been selected to participate in a Fulbright Specialists project in France by the United States Department of State and the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board.

The Fulbright Specialists Program provides short-term academic opportunities to prominent U.S. faculty members and professionals to support curricular and faculty development and institutional planning at post-secondary, academic institutions around the world.

Dr. Dillon will teach a mathematics course at the Université de Technologie Belfort-Montbéliard (UTBM) for most of May and June. She will also give a series of lectures on mathematics history and pedagogy.

Dr. Dillon has visited the French institution twice since 2010 and hopes that this project paves the way for more exchanges between SPSU and UTBM students and faculty.

A member of the SPSU faculty since 1992, Dr. Dillon has written research articles on infinite dimensional Lie algebras, co-authored an upper-division textbook on geometry, and is now developing a project with a Chicago artist. Dr. Dillon was SPSU’s 2000-01 Teacher of the Year.

CSE advisor wins Womenetics POW! award
Lisa McVey, a member of the School of Computer and Software Engineering (CSE) Dean’s Development Council, was awarded the POW! Award from Womenetics, an organization that develops and supports impactful female leaders at all levels of business and society.

McVey is the chief information officer for McKesson Technology and Physician Practice Solutions, and she has overall responsibility for information technology leadership for MPT, the largest division of McKesson Technology Solutions, and the ambulatory business. She is a member of the Women in Technology Foundation board of directors.

Womenetics gives this award to women in Georgia who have “stirred the status quo and advanced their organizations, celebrating their excellence in leadership as a fresh standard for business and the community.”

McVey will be formally honored at the third annual Womenetics Awards on April 17 at the Georgia Aquarium.

Tommy Dillon nominated for NAIA Coach of the Year
Tommy Dillon, interim head coach of the SPSU men’s basketball team, was nominated as one of 10 finalists for the 2012 Don Meyer National Coach of the Year Award, presented annually to the top basketball coach in the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA).

Dillon has completed two seasons with the Hornets as assistant coach and served as interim head coach for the first time this season. In his short time at SPSU he has helped lead the team to a Southern States Athletics Conference championship, first-ever 2010 appearance in the finals of the NAIA Division I Men’s Basketball Tournament and a total of three NAIA tournament appearances. This year, the Hornets went undefeated at home and rose as high as No. 3 in the NAIA Top 25 Coaches Poll. Dillon has an impressive 77-23 record at SPSU.

Finalists for the Don Meyer National Coach of the Year Award also included coaches from Shorter University, Concordia University, Irvine (Calif.) and Mountain State University (W.Va.).

“It is an honor to be included with such great coaches.” Coach Dillon said.

The winner, Paul Peck of Lindsey Wilson College (Ky.), was announced at the CollegeInsider.com awards banquet on March 30 in New Orleans, site of the National Collegiate Athletic Association Basketball Championship.

SPSU partners with Azerbajjan institution
Qafqaz University in Baku, Azerbajjan, has signed a memorandum of cooperation with SPSU.

Like many of SPSU’s other partner programs, the one in Azerbajjan will be largely centered on double-degree programs. According to Dr. Richard Bennett, director of international programs, “the initial emphasis with Qafqaz will be in the area of engineering, with gradual expansion over several years into other academic areas.” Double degrees in business, the sciences and computer science are possibilities.

SPSU’s first CGDD grad lands job in industry
Billy Olden, SPSU’s first graduate from the Computer Game Design and Development (CGDD) program, has landed his first job in the gaming industry.

The May 2011 grad is working with Kiz Studios, maker of Planet Muck, as a lead programmer on a mobile application. He also plays a role in a multiplayer-online-battle-arena (MOBA)-style game for kids called SmashMuck Champions, which should be entering the testing stage soon.

Olden started out at SPSU as a computer science major in 2008 but switched to CGDD when SPSU launched the program in the fall of 2009.

Currently the CGDD program has two graduates and more than 137 enrolled students, with up to four on track to graduate in May. Additional students are pursuing a minor or a double-major in CGDD.

SPSU ranked among University System’s Top 10 fundraisers in 2010-11
According to a recent report in the Chronicle of Higher Education ranking colleges and universities around the country by the amount of money they raised during 2010-11, SPSU was No. 7 among the 35 institutions in the University System of Georgia and No. 12 among the state’s 44 public and private institutions.

“SPSU ranked extremely well among our Georgia colleagues, especially given the size of our advancement staff, which is much smaller than most of the other institutions on the list,” said Dr. Ron Dempsey, vice president for University Advancement. “I’d like to congratulate Kit Trensch, director of the Development Office, and development officers Andrew Schmidt and Cheryl Hammock, as well as the rest of the advancement staff, for a job well done. I also extend my personal thanks to President [Lisa A.] Rossbacher, who is an exceptional fundraiser and friend-raiser and is always supportive of our department and the SPSU Foundation.”

SAMSOG seminar at SPSU yields faculty presentations
Several faculty members delivered presentations during a Surveying and Mapping Society of Georgia (SAMSOG) Annual Technical Seminar held recently on the SPSU campus.

Dr. Lourdes Abellera of the Civil Engineering Technology (CET) Department gave a talk on “Water Resources Modeling Using Geographic Information Systems.”

Dr. Fatih Oncul, Prof. John Lee and Prof. Dan Branham, all of CET, joined Dr. Wasim Barham of Civil Engineering and Dr. Pavan Meadati of the Construction Management Department to give a joint presentation on the SPSU Rubble House project entitled “Deformation/Displacement Measurement Using 3-D Laser Scanning.”

Have news to share?
If your department has an upcoming event or other news to share with the campus community, please send an e-mail with all the pertinent information to Diane Payne (dpayne@spsu.edu). To be considered for use in a specific issue of the SPSU Hornet’s Nest, a news item must be submitted no less than four weeks before the date of the issue.

Volume 5, Issue 13
April 4, 2012