Augsburg College - Augsburg Now

Augsburg College mathematics and science students—in addition to winning such prestigious awards as the Goldwater Scholarship (five in the past seven years)—often find themselves in line for major summer research opportunities and acceptance into some of the nation's leading graduate programs, thanks in no small part to the research work and outside consulting efforts of their professors.

Faculty like Nicholas Coult in mathematics, Ron Fedie in chemistry, and J. Ambrose Wolf in physics, bring both "real-world" experiences directly to their classroom instruction and provide faculty-student research partnerships that help prepare their students for graduate school, industry internships, and job opportunities.

Coult, who earned his Ph.D. in applied mathematics at the University of Colorado, came to Augsburg three years ago after serving as a postdoctoral research associate at the Institute for Mathematics and its Applications at the University of Minnesota. With his U of M connections, he is assisting in developing opportunities for students to take internships at its St. Anthony Falls laboratory as well as in places like Target Corporation, where they'll have the chance to use their mathematics skills.

Fedie, who came to Augsburg in the mid-1990s after earning his Ph.D. in physical/polymer chemistry from the University of Minnesota, said many chemistry students find research or internship opportunities in places like 3M, Aveda, Aspen Research, Honeywell, General Mills, and Medtronic. He has also been able to work in a team setting with one of his students at the U of M's Research Site for Educators in Chemistry (RSEC), where Augsburg has a grant to help undergraduate students work under the supervision of Ph.D. advisers.

The University of Minnesota also serves as a key summer research site for Wolf and his students who have worked at the Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC) for the past four summers. There, projects bring together researchers from chemistry, physics, materials science, and engineering. In addition to his physics students Wolf has also worked with students researching polymers, the same field as Fedie.

"Polymers are at the heart of my work," Fedie stated. "Because there are probably 200 or more local companies involved directly with polymer use, the industrial applications are almost limitless. As a chemist, you have higher than a 70 percent chance of working with polymer chemistry, so I'm pleased that we've created a number of ties between Augsburg and the industry. Through the RSEC collaboration we are able to give our undergraduates opportunities that only graduate students might get at other institutions."

A course developed by Fedie, The Properties of Polymers, has been the only regular undergraduate course offered on this topic in the Associated Colleges of the Twin Cities (ACTC) consortium.

Polymers are long chain molecules that are either natural, such as DNA, proteins, and cellulose, or synthetic. Synthetic polymers range from poly(ethylene terephthalate) PETE, used to make soft drink bottles and polyester fibers, to poly(styrene) PS, used for insulation and coffee cups, to poly(ethylene), the flexible type used in plastic sheeting and trash bags. It also can be blended for use in everything from car tires to fabrics to artificial turf. "Polymers," Fedie said, "are the synthetic age of materials that we're in today. In many ways, the 1960s movie The Graduate still has it correct—the future is plastics."

Polymer study also carries over to physics and the thin films applications research that Wolf is doing. "Polymers allow for flexibility and could be used to make transistors, the building blocks of computer chips. These could then be sprayed onto any surface and logical elements created. Specifically, they could be sprayed on non-rigid surfaces like clothing, since they are very thin and lightweight. If everything in a store, for example, had these sprayed-on polymer information pieces, all items in a shopping cart could be scanned

at the same time without being taken from the cart. It creates great research possibilities for our students."

Wolf's primary research has centered on Magnetic RAM (MRAM), a complex process used for storage density on the read-heads of computer hard drives. "MRAM will revolutionize computer memory and storage as we know it," he said. "Part of this research also is done in my Augsburg lab. We are working on basic equipment at this point, but the research should reach 'publishable' level during the next academic year."

Because of the extensive research work Augsburg students have done not only at the University of Minnesota, but in places like Wisconsin, Cornell, Stanford, and University of California-Berkeley, the Chemistry and Physics Departments are cooperating on creating a bachelor's degree in materials science for students interested in that area and currently doing double majors in physics and chemistry. Through ACTC classes, the new major also will serve University of St. Thomas engineering majors.

"Our new general education curriculum provides for the course arrangement for such a major," Wolf said. "And local industries

are interested in this type of major. Its graduates will be very employable, both locally and nationally; and it mirrors the research side in our coursework."

Wolf, who created Augsburg's solid state physics concentration, did postdoctoral research at Basel, Switzerland, and the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C., after earning his Ph.D. from the University of Koln and the Research Center in Julich, Germany. The new concentration brings all of the physics research support—such as computer programs and equipment—directly into the classroom. At the same time, it provides elective courses for students majoring in chemistry and mathematics.

Coult's research also has brought new equipment to Augsburg, primarily in the form of computers. The equipment is purchased through grants from a Texas-based seismic-exploration company and is used to support his research in computational methods in applied mathematics. Augsburg student researchers make heavy use of the equipment both during the summer and throughout the school year.

"I am working on several software packages that use advanced mathematics to improve the processing and analysis of data used in exploration for oil and gas," Coult said. "A mathematical perspective allows us to have a precise understanding of why a process does or does not work, and how it can be improved. My plan is to get our students directly involved in this kind of work."

Coult has summer students working with National Science Foundation-funded research. His students build software that will be applicable to computational research—solving problems by using the computer. Like his colleagues in chemistry and physics, Coult has helped start new classes, including Math 355, Numerical Mathematics and Computation, which lies at the intersection of mathematics and computer science—his primary field of research.

"This is an elective for both mathematics and computer science, and students from that class are well prepared to do computational work in the field," he said.

"It is of interest to students in the sciences, too, especially those interested in doing computational modeling. Genomics, where scientists will be sorting through snippets of DNA, and bio-infomatics, which deals with processing and gathering in the biological sciences, are going to be growing fields where this type of training will be ideal."

Dan Jorgensen is director of public relations and communication.