Sparks fly and steel melts as engineers learn fiery new skills in EJC workshop

Apparently he had the right flare because Engineering Science senior Austin Minnich lit the torch on his first try. It roared to life in a bright swath. He adjusted the knobs that controlled how much oxygen and acetylene flowed from large tanks behind him. Carefully, he brought the flame within an inch of scrap metal lying on the table. He held it there. A line of steel melted away. Sparks flew, and Minnich made his first cut.

In days not so long ago, engineers completed projects by swinging hammers, cutting metal, and forging pieces of raw material together. They sweated, but not figuratively, over problem sets. Engineering today is more brain and less brawn, but a group of 24 Berkeley engineers recently stretched their muscles and their minds during a day-long workshop at The Crucible in West Oakland. In small groups, students were taught to torch-cut metal, weld, blacksmith, and shape molten glass using fiery tools and techniques. The workshop was the first in a series that will teach hands-on engineering skills. Future workshops may cover automotive mechanics, soldering, robotics, and/or computer skills like networking, Linux, or designing web pages. The series is sponsored by the Engineers’ Joint Council and the College. [FULL STORY]

Returning ASUC senators outline their plans and goals for this year

Chris Abad
ME senior

Chris Abad wants engineers to have their due, and to make it happen, he’s taking on both large and small projects. On the larger side, he helped create the ASUC Resource Guide for Engineers and recently held the first of several workshops to go over the guide with engineering student society officers.

“It covers how to get ASUC funding, how to get space, like if Tau Beta Pi wanted to host a career fair, how to get the MLK Ballroom, and how to publicize your activities,” he explains. “I’m also trying to connect northside students to campus more. One of the things I’m working on is getting more distribution boxes for The Daily Californian around northside, particularly between Soda Hall and Etcheverry.”

He’s also working on projects that will benefit the whole student body. Abad says he’s amping up “From All Perspectives,” the large diversity event he has been working on since last year. It’s a showcase of different cultural groups and this year Abad says he hopes to snag Zellerbach Hall as a venue and the chancellor as a speaker. Also, he wants the ASUC to reach out to UC fall extension students in everything from hosting an orientation to facilitating social events. “I was a fall extension student and I wish I had something like that,” he says. [FULL STORY]

For new NE chair, future is looking radiant, indeed

Even as a teenager, NE professor Jasmina Vujic knew she wanted to go into the nuclear field. “I was very interested in math and physics, particularly nuclear physics. It was a new field, an exciting field, and it attracted me,” she remembers telling a reporter from her high school newspaper. That was in the 1970s in her home country of Yugoslavia, where, she says, everyone was steered toward math and science.

Last July, Vujic became the first female chair of Berkeley’s NE department and the first woman to lead an NE department ranked in the top 10 in the U.S. “There are relatively few women in engineering, so I’m really proud,” she says. “It’s a great boost for female engineering students.” To reach this point so distant from her youthful declarations, Vujic pushed through difficulties, big and small. She witnessed profound changes. But most important, she’s elated about the future.

Vujic joined the Berkeley faculty in 1992. Already she’d been in the U.S. several years working on her doctorate at the University of Michigan. When she arrived at the NE department, she was its first female faculty member. Naturally, she wanted tenure. But she was also raising her daughter Nevena (B.S.’02 CEE). So she walked the crazy tightrope. In between it all, she observed how boys in her new adopted country were encouraged in math and science, girls not so much. [FULL STORY]

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