Carl Nielson on the Washington Mall.

WPI's first off-campus project center was launched in the nation's capital 25 years ago. After all these years, it remains one of the hottest spots for student project work.

In 1974, two years after the implementation of the WPI Plan, the University established its first off-campus residential center for student project work in Washington, D.C. It was the first step in a steady march that has taken WPI around the globe. Today, through the Global Perspective Program, about half of the University's juniors and seniors head out to one of 10 project sites on five continents to tackle important problems and issues for agencies, organizations and corporations, making WPI the acknowledged leader in global technological education.

Washington was selected as the site of the first residential project center because of the wealth of opportunities that exist in the nation's capital to examine societal and political issues within a technical context for the broad range of government, professional and special-interest organizations headquartered in the city. The procedures and policies worked out in Washington for off-campus project advising provided a solid foundation for other centers established over the last quarter century.

Every year since the center was founded, teams of students have traveled to Washington in the late fall to complete Interactive Qualifying Projects with federal, private and nonprofit agencies and organizations. In all, about 300 projects have been completed in the city. Last fall, 28 students in eight teams spent seven weeks at the center working with faculty advisors Chrysanthe Demetry, Norton Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering, and Angel Rivera, assistant professor of Spanish. (Susan Vernon-Gerstenfeld, adjunct associate professor of interdisciplinary studies, directs the center.) Here's a brief look at what those student teams accomplished:

The Greening of Our Cities
Urban planners and policymakers often overlook the benefits that urban forests provide to their surrounding communities. Juniors Ryan Avey, Milissa Cormier, Manna Neghassi and Carl Nielson took a look at whether an economic analysis of tree cover might help address the major environmental concerns of the Chesapeake Bay area and influence public policy and urban planning nationwide. The goal of the project, commissioned by the nonprofit organization American Forests, was to gauge the benefits of tree cover to storm water management, air quality and energy conservation. The students also determined the effectiveness of a computer program called CITYgreen by using the software to analyze the tree cover in Arlington, Va., and Baltimore, Md. They gave high marks to the program, which they described as "a good tool for educating communities on tree-cover benefits that could potentially impact urban planning and policy making in those areas."

Beware of Hedge Trimmers
The Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) estimates that more than 225,000 people were treated in hospital emergency rooms in 1996 for injuries caused by lawn and garden tools. Jeremy Dexter '00, Mark Oliveira '99 and Brian Rapp '00 collected data about injuries related to gasoline-powered lawn and garden equipment and interviewed representatives of trade organizations, rental outlets and retail stores to determine how best to reduce the hazards associated with their use. The students discovered that homeowners were most often injured by hedge and lawn trimmers (edgers and log splitters were the second and third most dangerous devices). The most common type of injury was caused by an object hitting the eye of the operator. As part of their IQP, the students produced a reference booklet for lawn and garden power equipment that will help the CPSC look at the safety of these tools in the future.

Ryan Avey, left, and Manna Neghassi completed a project on urban forestation for American Forests.

Engineering for Ecology
Cleaning up the environment starts with public education. That was the conclusion reached by juniors Richard Bradshaw, Uri Braun and Simon Nance, who completed a case study of contaminated sediment creation and removal in the Baltimore area of the Chesapeake Bay for the National Science Foundation. The project's goal was to address the direction and sustainability of ecological engineering, which the students described as "a perspective or systems approach to environmental management that ties the environment and local society together in a conscious symbiotic relationship, sharing costs and benefits." They concluded that while it is not easy to reach mutually agreeable solutions to problems such as this, the best way to begin is to improve education and communication. "The NSF can give support to those elements," they wrote, "by aiding projects that promote public ecological education, industrial cooperation and local public awareness, responsibility and involvement."

Safe Sailors
The U.S. Coast Guard commissioned a project to evaluate and improve the medical and physical standards applied to merchant mariners to determine if they are meeting the needs of the maritime community while ensuring a safe environment at sea. For their IQP, Jeremy Bernier, Matthew Ericson, Joseph Malboeuf and Crissy Montgomery, all members of the Class of 2000, gathered information from mariners, marine labor unions, medical professionals, examiners in regional centers, National Maritime Center administrators, advocacy groups and agencies of the Department of Transportation. They gave their stamp of approval to the physical and medical standards currently used to ensure that mariners are fit for duty. "The process used to apply the standards appears to be allowing all capable mariners to work in the industry," they wrote. Their recommendations included standardizing the process of determining fitness for duty and improving documentation of marine accidents and injuries.

Improving Access to Web Education
Science, math and engineering professors may have easier access to high-quality education through the World Wide Web, thanks to an IQP completed by Benjamin Clark '00, Adriano Palombizio '99 and Taryn Syverain '00. The National Science Foundation's Division of Undergraduate Education sponsored the project, in which the students analyzed professors' opinions and assembled focus groups to determine how to break down the barriers to Web-enhanced education. The students used the Web to conduct their research at George Washington University, Georgetown

University, the New Jersey Institute of Technology, Prince George's Community College, and Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University. Their recommendations were based on what they called "the five Ts": technology (hardware), technical support, time, tools, and tenure and other incentives. Each T provides a key to resolving the problems teachers find in trying to implement Web-based studies.

Perfecting Product Patents
A commercial database, used wisely, can improve the way the government examines patents for new products, according to juniors Adam Blomberg, Thomas Hall and Jason Katz, whose IQP was sponsored by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. In 1997 the PTO spent about $9 million on commercial databases it used in prior-art searching; the total escalated to $12 million in 1998. Directors of the PTO's Technology Center 2700 wanted to justify their portion of this expenditure. Because no data on the use of these databases by the Technology Center was available, the team focused on measuring effective use, providing helpful data, and identifying methods for improving the effectiveness of commercial database searches for patent examiners. They reached a number of conclusions about how the center could improve tracking methods and which commercial databases were most useful and successful. They also made time- and energy-saving suggestions intended to simplify future database tracking. Their recommendations include enforcing office policy on required paperwork for patent applications, modifying forms, and using a database to track applications.

Joseph Malboeuf, left, and Crissy Montgomery, right, with a liaison from the U.S. Coast Guard, which sponsored their project on the medical and physical standards applied to merchant mariners.

Sea Grant on the Web
Colleges and universities with marine science programs may soon enjoy online information resources, thanks to a project completed by Ryan Barbini, Jonathan Manning, Darren Ranalli and Christopher Stank. The IQP team, all juniors, created a prototype Web site for the National Sea Grant Office's policy reference material. The information, currently contained in several loose-leaf binders, included a policy manual that had become badly outdated. To improve Sea Grant's organizational communication, the students conducted interviews and surveys that provided the updated information they needed, then created a prototype for the Web site that will allow the agency to update the data quickly and inexpensively. The National Sea Grant College Program, a department of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, sponsored the project. Sea Grant funds projects in the marine sciences and operates through 29 coastal colleges and universities that report to the national office. Ronald C. Baird, former director of corporate relations at WPI, directs the National Sea Grant College Program, which is based in Silver Spring, Md.

Marketing the NSPE
Matthew Denicourt '99, Ryan Fournier '00, Sowmya Luckoor '00 and Angela Malaquias '00 developed an action plan that focused on communication and marketing strategies the National Society of Professional Engineers might use to increase student membership. The team used interviews, surveys, focus groups and benchmarking analysis to gather opinions and develop recommendations. They found that personal communication would help keep student members involved and that students put a high value on help they receive in preparing for exams and employment interviews and in learning about their major. They recommended reviving NSPE's Student Services Department and establishing a liaison in each of the society's six membership regions, developing products and services to present to new student members when they apply, and reorganizing the Web site to advertise student benefits and make the existing career development system better known to students. NSPE plans to use the action plan on all of its organizational levels.

-Arlie Corday