Robots FIRST

The FIRST National Championships were in St. Louis this year, and as a scholarship provider, Harvey Mudd was invited to attend and have a table on their scholarship row. As the only member of the admission staff not otherwise engaged in travel during this time, I was forced (forced!) to go.

This was really no great hardship. FIRST is an organization whose goal is to foster entrepreneurship and invention among elementary, middle, and high school-age students. The tools they use? Awesome robots.

A qualifying match begins...

There are several divisions in FIRST, for different age groups and for groups with differing amounts of resources. FRC, the FIRST Robotics Competition, tends to get most of the glory because their robots are person-sized. Each year, a new game is released for the robots to play. Here's a description of the game for this year, called LOGOMOTION. Check out the animation!

Being able to be at the national championships was a terrific experience for a number of reasons. Most obviously, the robots are pretty darn cool. The creativity that teams show in in figuring out how to address the game is amazing and inspiring. This year, teams even had a chance to build more than one robot -- check out that description for more information, but the basic gist is that teams could gain bonus points at the end of the game for having a mini-bot that could most quickly climb a tall pole on the playing field.

Gracious Professionalism -- helping your competitors as much as possible, while simultaneously attempting to kick their butts.

There are also corporate sponsors who bring cool things to show off. Honda demoed their Asimo! (here's a Youtube video of an Asimo demo on another occasion)

My favorite part, however, has to be all the students I had the opportunity to meet. FIRST is not like a typical college fair-type event. At most college fairs, there's a mix of students with different interests. Some are definitely into what we do, but many aren't as interested in engineering and science as they are in other things. Not so at FIRST. It's a robotics competition, so the vast majority of students there are enthusiastic about engineering and the sciences, and have a ton of questions about the particulars of what our programs are like.

Beyond their academic interests, the kinds of students who do FIRST are usually an awesome fit for our community as well. They wear silly hats.

Guess which state this team was from.

They make awesome costumes.

Isn't she a little short for a stormtrooper?

Best of all, they're fully engaged with the experience of working with their team to create the best product possible.

Also, they have great pants.

A fair number of FIRSTies agree with us about the fit. While at the competition, I ran into one of our current students who's helping to mentor a rookie team at a local high school.

Mudders take St. Louis!

That team did such an amazing job at their regional competition that they were able to come to nationals in their very first year doing FIRST. I like to think that their Mudder mentors had something to do with that.

This experience was capped off for me with the invited guest events on Friday night. Dean Kamen, the founder of FIRST, apparently networks like mad; during the dinner, he showed a "trailer" for FIRST featuring narration by Morgan Freeman. Who also attended the dinner. I died. After the dinner, we headed to a concert featuring the Black Eyed Peas and Willow Smith. Apparently will.i.am is a huge supporter of science and technology education, and is organizing a TV special about FIRST to raise awareness about the program. As he put it, "FIRST is already cool. I'm going to make it loud."

They did, in fact, make it loud.

As cool as a free Black Eyed Peas concert was, I have to say that I'm really more excited about the opportunities I had to talk to the competitors. I met some enthusiastic and engaged students who I would of course love to see apply to and attend Harvey Mudd, but will also be the people who lead innovation and invention in the next few decades. The person who cures Alzheimer's or invents fully-functional replacement organs might even have filled out one of my information cards! It doesn't get much more exciting than that.

Okay, except for Morgan Freeman. Morgan Freeman!

School-Sponsored Shakespeare

It probably doesn't surprise you that the upcoming alumni weekend will include lectures on surface tension and cosmology, inner tube water polo, and a bonfire.  But Shakespeare?  Actually, the annual Shakespeare performance is such a longstanding tradition that it even merited an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education this year.  And even though I like Shakespeare, and I've seen the rehearsals from afar on many an occasion, the performances have a pesky way of falling during times when I'm out of town.  Such as now.

So imagine my delight when Thyra gave me official deanly permission to join her at the dress rehearsal of A Midsummer Night's Dream.  Um, yes please!  Is there anything better than a shaded courtyard on a sunny day, with immortal lines echoing off the warted walls?

No.  I thought not.  And since this is the last year Thomas-Garrett courtyard will be used for the performance (don't worry, the new building replacing TG will have an awesome outdoor performance space too, with wide steps serving as built-in seating) I thought I'd commemorate the occasion with a few behind-the-scenes photos.

Past playbills adorning the temporary theater setup in TG courtyard

The prop room, missing Puck's ginormous axe and a few other choice items

The actors warming up with tongue twisters and stretches

There are a few photos of last year's performance in the Chronicle article, and there'll be more to come on our website after Midsummer makes its official debut this weekend.  You won't want to miss Laura as the terrifying, Thisbe-chasing lion or Ryan and Josh wearing their fearsome fairy masks.  Thanks to Jeff and Thyra for giving me a front row seat!

Happy Easter!

Okay, maybe this isn't really an egg "hunt"

Dean Chris restocking the Easter eggs

Wishing you a Peepsful and prosperous holiday.

My favorite Mudders

Last week I showed you my ASP photos, but I withheld this one -- I didn't want it to get overlooked in the shuffle.  These are (most of) the HMC tour guides, looking fetching in their stylish black t-shirts.  And, well, I love them.  The guides, that is, not the shirts.  They're endlessly enthusiastic, genuinely warm, and (sorry guys) completely adorable.  I know, I know, you're adults.  You're still adorable.

As the spring semester of tour guiding nears its conclusion, I want to say a big THANK YOU to the student ambassadors who make each and every day in the admission office possible.  You're why I love working at Mudd.  Thanks for all you do.

MCM/ICM Contest Results

Mudd competes in the Putnam each year, but in my personal opinion, the International Mathematical Contest in Modeling and Interdisciplinary Contest in Modeling are even better fits with our curriculum and collaborative emphasis.  Here's Professor Susan Martonosi's description of the contests:

The MCM/ICM is analogous to an applied Putnam exam, in the form of a grueling-96 hour competition. As Ben Fusaro, creator of the contest in 1983, puts it: "Most problems that come up in business, government, or industry are solved by teams, are likely to take many hours, and would not be restricted to using only pencil and paper. Moreover, the answer must be presented to an executive who wants a clear understandable response." Thus, during the contest, students work in teams of up to three students and have 96 consecutive hours to develop a mathematical model and write a formal paper describing their work. The team's papers are judged not only on their scientific and mathematical accuracy, but also on their clarity of exposition, insight and creativity. 

Sounds kinda like an abbreviated, low-budget version of Clinic, no?  Anyway, this year seven teams from HMC chose to compete.  Here were the topics they attacked back in February:

(A) Maximizing "vertical air" achievable on a snowboarding half-pipe
(B) Minimizing the number of cell phone repeaters needed to serve a geographical area
(C) Modeling the social, environmental, health and economic impacts of Electric Vehicles

Cool problems, huh?  And they really do sound like Clinic projects, especially problem B) -- so not surprisingly, that's what the top-scoring HMC team chose to attack.  Dylan Marriner (CS/M '12), Louis Ryan (Math '12) and Daniel Furlong (CS/M '12) earned the top designation of Outstanding (given to only 8 teams out of the 2775 entries worldwide!) and the SIAM Prize.
 
Another HMC team earned the designation Meritorious (top 15%), three earned Honorable Mention (top 45%), and two were Successful Participants.  Several first-year students competed, which made me happy, and our very own blogger David Rolfe was named a "successful participant" (be proud, David, be proud).

For complete results and judges' commentaries, see http://www.comap.com/undergraduate/contests/mcm/contests/2011/results/  The site also posts all the contest problems going back to 2000, so if you have some free time, you can even try the MCM/ICM for yourself.  Enjoy!

ASP = Phew!

Admitted Student Program. It happened!  Afterwards, I wanted to go straight home, put on my pajamas, and sleep for a week -- but the program itself was a blast.  In fact, so much fun was had that I remembered to take exactly three photos during the event itself.  So instead, I give you a behind-the-scenes tour of the lead-up to the program. 

"Harvey Hipsters": you've seen it on video, now here's the Hipstomatic version of the folder stuffing extravaganza.  (Photo by Aasim Rizvi)

Saturday: chilling with the PSP finalists in Platt Living Room.  This was before they were coerced into singing the theme song from "Sponge Bob SquarePants."  You think I'm kidding.

Ready for the admits!  Corinne, Stephen, Aileen, Sarah, and David at the registration table.

Aasim wrestling with the jumbo-size research posters.

Done with the research posters!  Peter, Garrett, Katie, and Rebecca. 

Pat arranges the parent nametags just so.

Still no guests . . .

More hanging of paper.  Hannah with the all-important restroom signs (the #1 question at ASP).

Guests!  The dorm runners prepare to haul the luggage.  FYI, last year the dorm runners toted prefrosh bags on unicycles.  This year, they thought better of it.

Attendees, I hope you enjoyed the program as much as we did!  It was wonderful to meet all of you in person.  Thank you for being so gracious and for not being scared when I (despite Thyra's wise advice) spouted off random facts from your applications (sorry to Andrew, Katie, and Lydia -- I won't let it happen again).  And to everyone who was kind enough to mention you read my blog -- thank you!  That made my week. 

Can't get enough Mudd?  Our second admitted student chat (topic: "Academic Life") is tonight at 5:30 pm PDT.  Click on the chatroom link on the admitted student website for access.  See you there!

ASP Alert

Our Admitted Student Program starts Sunday, and as you can see in the video, it's been sixes and sevens trying to get everything in order.  It took all the student help we could muster just stuffing the folders.

Thanks to Leslie, Garrett, David, and Crystal (and Aasim and Hannah too) for their super speedy work.  Just look at the intensity!  Please, if you're coming for ASP, treasure your folder, created specially for you (and, okay, 175 of your new best friends).  And don't (fingers crossed) find any typos.