Scroll down to read the following articles:
1. Mandatory FERPA tutorial available online
2. EHS: New websites for environmental health and safety functions
3. Open forums to be held for research safety director candidates
4. Seeking your input for Ecology at Clemson website
5. Clemson University competes in 2013 RecycleMania Tournament
6. Going for the gold: Clemson’s Brian Dean uses computing to create champions
7. Memorial service for student Steven Grich set for Feb. 15
8. Learn about Clemson’s lecture capturing capabilities at Echo 360 “Lunch and Learn”
9. Risk Management: Safe Tiger Mug winners
1. Mandatory FERPA tutorial available online
To educate the campus community about federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), the Registrar’s Office has developed an online tutorial. FERPA mandates that Clemson University maintain students’ records in a certain way and prohibits the disclosure of student records except in limited circumstances. Anyone on campus who sees, maintains or handles information relating to a student must be familiar with this law.
Please take a few minutes to review these materials here and acknowledge tutorial completion via e-signature if you have not completed the tutorial in the past twelve months.
PLEASE NOTE: If you have completed the tutorial in the past 12 months, please do not retake this tutorial.
2. EHS: New websites for environmental health and safety functions
The former Environmental Health and Safety (EHS) Web site has been replaced by two separate sites. EHS was restructured into two units, with one assigned to the Research Division and one to University Facilities.
Access the Environmental Safety (ES) Web site on the University Facilities home page: http://www.clemson.edu/facilities/es/index.html. View the Research Safety (RS) Web site at http://www.clemson.edu/research/safety/index.html.
To aid those who may rely on bookmarked webpages, the old EHS web page will remain active for 30 days and contains the links to the ES and RS web sites. After 30 days, the site will be removed, so please bookmark the new sites for future use. The ES and RS home pages are cross-referenced to assist users with finding the appropriate content.
ES is responsible for indoor air quality investigations, hood ventilation testing, lead and asbestos abatement programs, occupational employee safety, industrial hygiene and exposure assessment, pollution prevention and water quality.
RS oversees lab safety, chemical safety, biosafety, radiological safety and hazardous waste management.
For more information or questions, contact Bob Wells at rjwells@clemson.edu or 656-0244, or contact Tracy Arwood at tarwood@clemson.edu or 656-1525.
3. Open forums to be held for research safety director candidates
Four candidates for the Director of Research Safety will visit the Clemson campus in the next two weeks for a series of meetings and interviews, including open forums for faculty, staff and students. All open forums will be held in the Fluor Daniel Engineering Innovation Building in conference room 132. They are:
- James Grieger, currently Associate Director of Research Safety at Cornell University, will visit Feb. 19 and 20. He will participate in an open forum from 9:30-10:30 a.m. Wednesday, Feb. 20.
- Carolyn Harding, currently the Southeast Regional Environmental Health and Safety Manager for Cardinal Health, will visit Feb. 21. Her open forum will be from 3-4 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 21.
- James Kearney, previously the Senior Director of Environmental, Health and Safety at MedImmune, LLC, will visit Feb. 24 and 25. His open forum will be from 2:30-3:30 p.m. Monday, Feb. 25.
- Paul Novak, currently the Director of Environmental Health and Safety at Slippery Rock University, will visit Feb. 26 and 27. His open forum will be from 2:30-3:30 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 27.
This position is open until filled. Applications for the position are still being reviewed by the search committee.
4. Seeking your input for Ecology at Clemson website
Creators of the Ecology at Clemson website are requesting input for updating the content of this site, located at http://www.clemson.edu/cafls/ecology/.
The site was launched in October 2012 and provides news, resources and information about ecology-related courses, degree programs, student groups, and upcoming seminars and other events.
To ensure that the most up-to-date information appears on the site, the Ecology at Clemson web team is requesting:
- Information about faculty and post-docs with expertise in ecology. Faculty or post-docs who would like to be listed on the Who We Are section of the Web page should send an email with their name, academic/research unit, and research specialty to saarad@clemson.edu.
- Full citations for ecology-related publications (journal articles, books, book chapters) written by Clemson faculty, post-docs, students or staff in the past five years. Please note the format on the Publications page and send these citations to saarad@clemson.edu.
For questions or suggestions to improve the site, contact Saara DeWalt at saarad@clemson.edu.
5. Clemson University competes in 2013 RecycleMania Tournament
Clemson University is working to be a little more green as it competes with more than 500 other colleges in the 2013 RecycleMania Tournament to see which can reduce, reuse and recycle the most waste in an eight-week period.
Clemson will enter data on paper, cardboard, cans and bottles, food waste and general trash generated each week until March 30. The information collected will determine which school recycles most on a per capita basis, produces the least waste and recycles the largest percentage of its waste.
Clemson also is participating in a new RecycleMania category, Game Day: Basketball, in which schools are challenged to increase recycling and reduce waste at a single home game. Clemson’s is Sunday, Feb. 17, against Miami.
During Sustainability Week Monday-Friday, Feb. 18-22, there will be building competitions around campus, giveaways and prizes.
“Clemson University takes great pride in our sustainability efforts. We can showcase our efforts through RecycleMania,” said Dave VanDeventer, Clemson’s recycling manager. “RecycleMania is about more than simply winning,” he said. “It is an opportunity for us to raise awareness about our campus recycling program, as well as waste-reduction and conservation issues in general. Understandably, it’s also about recycling more.”
Last year Clemson placed fourth nationally in the Most Improved Paper Recycling category, which measures how much schools increase paper recycling during the competition. Clemson’s paper recycling increased 88 percent.
Clemson also placed first among South Carolina colleges and among ACC schools in the Waste Minimization category, which focuses on the efforts to reduce the amount of waste generated, including recyclables.
Clemson received the Judge’s Award in the 2012 RecycleMania video competition with its “Spirit of Recycling” entry.
RecycleMania draws participants from 47 states, the District of Columbia and Canada.
6. Going for the gold: Clemson’s Brian Dean uses computing to create champions
When it comes to competition, Brian Dean is a champion of his sport. But Dean, an associate professor of computer science, isn’t concerned with jumping hurdles or making the perfect shot. As the director of the USA Computing Olympiad (USACO), Dean sticks it to the competition by going for the gold in the realm of computer programming.
The USACO is one of several national programs for high-school Olympiads in mathematics and the sciences. This program contributes to computer science education at the high school level through algorithmic programming competitions and online training materials. “We have a lot of online resources for people to learn how to do advanced computing, problem solving and programming,” Dean said. “It’s one of the largest online computing programs out there.”
Dean is passionate about high school computer science education, and contends that it is an area that is lacking in programs. It requires development beyond standard courses. “Students who are superstars in computer science at the high school level have to learn it mostly on their own,” he said. “In South Carolina, there are small pockets of places with a lot of course offerings, but it’s scarce.”
Thus, the program seeks to bridge this gap, hosting six online programming contests annually with as many as 1,000 students around the world competing at one time. There are three levels of competition: bronze, silver and gold — the gold level being the most difficult. “Most of the graduate students I teach probably couldn’t solve the problems at the gold level,” Dean said. “But there are high schoolers out there who actually can. They are exceptionally bright.”
From these contests, Dean and his staff identify the top 16 students in the country and invite them to Clemson for a summer training program. During the week-and-a-half-long camp, the students are given fast-paced instruction, challenging programming problems and enrichment lectures on cutting-edge topics in modern computer science. “They get to interact with a bright peer group, the best in the country, and learn highly advanced concepts,” Dean said.
The top four students from the camp are chosen to compete on the U.S. team at the International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI), the most prestigious worldwide competition in computing for high school students. And it is a competition that, much like the Olympic games, moves from country to country. “This past fall it was in Northern Italy,” Dean said. “This summer, it will be in Brisbane, Australia, and then it moves to Taiwan, Kazakhstan and Russia for the next few years. It’s been a wonderful experience for me to travel to some exotic places.”
However, you won’t find any vuvuzelas or face painting at this event. The two-day competition takes place in a large room with hundreds of computers where participants program for five hours each day. “It’s unfortunately not much of a spectator sport,” Dean said.
The competitors are given three or four problems and must write a computer program to solve them. To calculate scores, each program is run on different inputs to see how many it can solve within a short time limit. “It’s not just about whether you can write the program, but whether you can actually find a way of solving the problem fast enough and write that in code. It is an algorithmic contest as well as a programming contest,” Dean said.
And Dean knows the ropes. He was a member of the U.S. team as a high school senior in 1994, and traveled to Sweden to compete in the IOI. In college, he became interested in coaching for the organization. He also began attending training camps and getting more involved in the program overall. As others retired, he became the director, taking on the responsibility of managing sponsorship and funding, running summer programs, operating online programming contests, managing the website and coordinating team travel. “It’s been a lot of work, but a lot of fun,” he said.
Dean also travels to education conferences to spread the word about the program — he even has students join in on the recruitment effort. Last summer, one of his Ph.D. students organized a camp in the Greenville area with help from a computer science teacher at Southside High School. “We taught high schoolers how to program their cell phones. Since all kids have cell phones, we thought this would be a good way to get them excited about computer science,” Dean said.
And it sure is a good time to be excited for the USACO. At the most recent IOI competition in Sirmione, Italy, the USA team won first place overall with a total of three gold medals and one bronze medal. One team member even achieved a perfect score. The team’s success has Dean looking ahead with excitement. “We have a lot of people returning from last year,” Dean said. “There are a lot of really smart kids coming back.
7. Memorial service for student Steven Grich set for Feb. 15
A service to celebrate the life of student Steven Gregory Grich will be held at 4 p.m. Friday, Feb. 15 in the Tillman Hall auditorium. Grich, 23, an electrical engineering major, died Dec. 8.
8. Learn about Clemson’s lecture capturing capabilities at Echo 360 “Lunch and Learn”
Learn about the Lecture Capture capabilities that Clemson has to offer. Clemson’s Learning Technologies Group in partnership with Echo360 invites you to a “Lunch and Learn” on the benefits of lecture capture with Echo360. Clemson Faculty will show us how they use lecture capture to enhance their on campus and distance education courses. An Echo360 representative will provide an overview of the Echo360, and the benefits for faculty and students. A brief demo will also be provided. Tours of the new Distance Education classroom to follow.
• What: Lunch and Learn: The Benefits of Lecture Capture
• Lunch will be provided by Echo360.
• When: Wednesday, February 27, 2013 11:45 a.m. – 1:15 p.m.
• Where: Student Senate Chambers
Who Should Attend: Faculty and staff that would like to learn about Echo360 Capture as well as existing users who are interested in hearing about new features.
9. Risk Management: Safe Tiger Mug winners
January 2013:
- Sally Mauldin – Office of the Board of Trustees
- Elise Schnabel – Genetics and Biochemistry
- Anthony Harvey – University Housing
Upcoming events
- Clemson national print and drawing exhibition Feb. 18
- Pendleton District Gem and Mineral Society: jewelry making: centrifugal casting in ice cream salt crystals Feb. 19
- Delphine Dean: Hospitals in other countries: Why improving medical equipment design can help all of us Feb. 21
- Grow your own shiitake mushrooms workshop Feb. 28
