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Engaging
Research by Lynn Mena • Photos by Mike Habermann When summer arrives, life around the Augsburg Quad slows considerably. For the students who stay, summer can be a time of opportunity to work closely with a favorite professor, delving into original research and exploring problems and questions in ways that the semester schedule doesn't permit. Last summer, among the students on campus were physics major Taher Omar, computer science student Cameron Rowe, and history major Cassi Van Ausdall. Read on to learn about their explorations in designing and building equipment for subatomic-sensitive films, in turning children's Legos into computer robots, and in searching for faith biases in history. Building writing skills and small ovens In the short time since assistant professor J. Ambrose Wolf joined the physics faculty in August 1999, he has won great favor among his students, and his research has attracted both corporate and intellectual interest. Previously at the University of Missouri-Columbia, Wolf brings to Augsburg ideas, hopes, and dreams to develop his specialization in experimental condensed matter physics. He began by establishing a Thin Magnetic Film Research Laboratory earlier this year. From the start, Wolf knew that he wanted students to be involved in the lab's set-up and ensuing research. So, in January, he recruited two students, seniors Taher Omar and Marc Tollefson, with an eye toward expanding their involvement into full-time summer research. "Ambrose broke us in very slowly," says Omar, a physics major. "He held a weekly seminar to discuss methods of research and certain topics that we would be dealing with in the lab. Then we did literature research and presented our findings to him." The seminar allowed Omar and Tollefson to become familiar with the material, so that when they entered the lab, says Wolf, they could "hit the floor dancing." "My aim is to get this on a continuous cycle and start out two or three students every year, get their feet wet in the seminar, and then get them into the lab," says Wolf. By summer, Wolf determined
that Omar and Tollefson were ready to begin research and start making thin magnetic
films. These are essentially thin layers In order to make these films, Wolf, with Omar and Tollefson's help, designed and built the equipment. "To start, we organized the lab, found what we could use of what was already here, and how to use it most efficiently," says Wolf. "And this chamber [pictured at right] is our first result. I designed this bottom part, which we had built at the University of Minnesota machine shop. Then Marc designed a mirror system that goes inside, and Taher designed a shutter system that's also inside." Crucial to the chamber are the two small ovens located on the bottom. Basically, the ovens are used to evaporate metals, which then condense on a substrate to form a thin film. Each film can be created with subatomic sensitivity, which can be made to the thinness of a single atomic layer. Omar and Tollefson each built one of the ovens, which followed a design used by Wolf during his post-doctoral research at the Naval Research Laboratory. The three recently presented their research to the Augsburg community and guests from Honeywell and Northwestern College, among others. Omar and Tollefson's research participation was funded by a grant from NASA during the school year, and by a Bush Foundation Grant during the summer. Omar's summer research was also funded by a McNair Scholars grant. In addition, Omar himself wrote a Bush Foundation grant proposal which was funded for the fall semester. "I had a lot of fun here this summer," says Omar. "I've never thought of myself as very mechanical, but we've been able to get this thing up and running. You can relate this project to so many thingsgrantwriting, technical writing, computer science, mathematics, chemistry, physics, engineeringit's a spider web. I found something that I really like to do. Hopefully come graduate school, I'll be able to focus on research, because I truly enjoy it." Getting to play with Legos Augsburg senior Cameron Rowe never thought the Legos he played with as a child would reappear years later in college. But this past summer, he used the brightly-colored plastic blocks as the foundation of a robot he created in a computer science research project. The project, entitled the Robotic Navigation Project, was conceived and developed by Augsburg associate professor Karen Sutherland and assistant professor Charles Shaeffer. Funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation, this undergraduate program involved eight students from four schools. Rowe, Maisian Xiong, Ryan Forsberg, and Abdulrashid Salad were among the Augsburg students; the other four participants came from the College of St. Catherine, the University of Minnesota, and the Fond du Lac Tribal and Community College. "My partner [Daniel Curry from Fond du Lac] and I worked on using neural networks as a control system for our robot's navigation," says Rowe. "Neural networks simulate the working of a human brain." Rowe and Curry's neural network was a software construct written in a simple form of the C programming language.
The robot, nicknamed CB3 for Cataglyphis Bicolor 3-Wheeler, is about one foot in height, and is composed of Lego blocks and three Lego wheels, a Handy Board control board (developed at MIT and sold in robotics stores), two different types of sensors, and three Lego gear motors. Part of Rowe's research experience included writing a technical report of the project. The 22-page document, which included detailed background information and instructions, pictures, and diagrams, was a valuable component of the program, allowing Rowe the opportunity to develop advanced technical writing skills. "A lot of people don't think of research as being something that an undergrad does," says Rowe. "This was a great opportunity, and I really enjoyed getting into programming issues that I had never even considered before." Professor Sutherland agrees. "I think it's so important for undergraduates to have the opportunity to get involved in a research experience. It's certainly a great benefit for the faculty, too, because it lets you stay active in your field. I also really like working with undergraduatesthey have more interesting ideas, and they're not restricted to the set ideas they've read about. "Employers and graduate schools look for NSF-sponsored work because they know that you wouldn't get this grant if it wasn't a quality project," continued Sutherland. "The NSF is very selective, and they don't often give these grants to small schools; they more often go to large research universities, so it was really nice to be able to do this research." Rowe recently began a paid internship with United Defense in Fridley, where his work involves modeling and simulation of the Crusader Artillery System for the U.S. Army. He credits his robotics research experience with landing a higher-then-normal internship wage. In the future, Rowe says that he would love to work further with robotics, and has considered applying to a robotics graduate program. The NSF grant is a three-year grant, and Sutherland hopes to continue receiving it beyond this period. "The bottom line is that what a student learns in the classroom has to work, it's not just about theory," says Sutherland. "A student research opportunity such as this really brings everything together." Searching for faith in history Not all research projects involve robots or physics equations. This past summer, senior Cassi Van Ausdall and associate professor Jacqueline deVries teamed up for history research, which was funded by a faculty/student research grant from Augsburg's Center for Professional Development. "We did a literature review and a summary draft based on the question of whether there is a Christian perspective on history," says Van Ausdall. "And if there is, should that perspective be presented in the classroom? "A lot of the project was spurred on for me by the Augsburg 2004 document that the College published," continues Van Ausdall. "A big question that this document asks is how do we integrate faith into the classroom?' This project went hand-in-hand with that question." Accordingly, the second phase of the project, which is still in progress, involves taking beginning-level Augsburg classes and exploring how these faith perspectives could be integrated into the classroom. "Also, in the course of our research, Cassi asked some really good questions about who these historians were and what faith traditions they came from," says deVries. "It opened up a whole other line of inquiry about different kinds of church-related schools, and how Augsburg differs from a Mennonite college or a Calvinist college. I think in the process we both became much more in tune with what Augsburg is, and what its theological and constituency base is."
"One thing we realized coming into this research was that this was not necessarily original research," says Van Ausdall. "We knew that a lot of historians had tried to tackle this question or had asked the question 'how does my faith integrate into my scholarship?' So we had wanted to go back into the discussions that they had opened up and present the different views we saw. From that, we were curious to see if we could discover a new perspective that's particularly applicable to a place like Augsburg." DeVries, who approached Van Ausdall about the project as a result of the student's performance in her history class, The Shaping of the Modern World, was thrilled to have the chance to work together. "It's been extremely useful and really quite wonderful to work with Cassi," says deVries. "I think too often faculty lose sight of their audience. We don't often have these kinds of discussions where we know what is really going on in students' minds. This project opened up some of that, and I believe it helped me think more carefully about what my role is as a professor." After graduation, Van Ausdall hopes to go into youth ministry. In addition to the history research project, she also held an internship with the Fellowship of Christian Athletes over the summer where she helped organize their high school camps. She currently serves as president of the FCA on campus and volunteers with a youth group at her church. "I've always had a heart for kids, especially the high school age group," says Van Ausdall. "That's where my passions are." She also believes that she gained a lot from her summer research project with deVries. "Jacqui is such a knowledgeable person; it was awesome to be able to work with a professor of such high caliber," says Van Ausdall. "I for one believe that faith should be integrated more into the classroom, and this research has given me a chance to see that other people have asked these questions, too. Being able to take a look at the different perspectives has allowed me to develop my own. That's one of the reasons why I'm a history major to see what other people have gone through and written before me and apply it to my own life." |
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of
magnetic materials, currently being used for read/write heads in computer drives.
"Both Honeywell and Seagate have prototypes for magnetic computer RAM,"
says Wolf. "The RAM currently used in computers is fast-working, but when
the computer is turned off, you lose information. With magnetic RAM, when you
turn it back on, a second later you're right back where you left off. The applications
that were open are still open, and the text you were editing in a word processing
program is still there." 
"Our
initial goal was to create a robot that would be able to navigate within the
environment of the computer science wing of Sverdrup Hall," says Rowe.
"But after some research and testing, we found that our robot's control
board wasn't capable of handling that complex of a task. In the end, we created
a neural network that would be capable of helping a robot learn how to drive
in a straight line, which may not sound so impressive. But what a lot of people
don't think about is the fact that when they were children they had to learn
how to walk in a straight line, too. And the way this robot is learning is very
similar to the human brain." 
Van
Ausdall points out that their research served more as a "re-opening, rather
than as an opening, of discussion concerning the nature of Christian scholarship."