Published: November 10, 2007 10:27 pm         

Rose student-athlete, campus leader featured on podcast

The role of Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology senior mechanical engineering major Thomas Reives as a student-athlete and campus leader is being featured in the Alpha Tau Omega fraternity’s “ATO Roadshow” podcast, which is currently available on the organization’s national Web site.

The podcast is available at www.atoroadshow.org/ars/multimedia.asp?id=232 or ato.org.

Reives excels in the classroom and athletic fields, maintaining a 3.97 grade point average and earning all-conference honors as a football player and track-and-field athlete. He is vice president of Rose-Hulman’s ATO Gamma Gamma chapter and has completed summer internships for Eli Lilly and Co. and Rolls-Royce in Indianapolis, his hometown.

Reives maintains a hectic athletic and academic schedule through setting priorities and commitments.

“First, I have to prioritize,” the former Indianapolis Arsenal Tech High School valedictorian told ATO Road Show Host Jay McGraw. “Not each one of those [activities] is demanding each day. I have a schedule which I plan out all of my days, what I need to get done by the time I go to bed.”

This fall, Reives has been named the Heartland Collegiate Athletic Conference’s Special Teams Player of the Week, has had a school-record 98-yard kickoff return, leads the team in receiving yards (466 yards on 21 receptions) and punting average (32.8 yards), and has started all eight games. He also helped lead the ATO chapter to its second True Merit Bowl in three years. He is a former public relations chairman for the student organization.

“Whenever I’m in an organization or group, I don’t like to just sit there and watch it go well or go badly without me,” Reives told The ATO Roadshow. “If it’s going badly, I’d like to help out. If it’s going well, I’d like to be a part of it.”

In athletics, Reives earned Academic All-American honors from ESPN The Magazine in track and field from ESPN the Magazine in 2007 after earning all-district academic honors in football. He is a two-time Heartland Collegiate Athletic Conference champion in the high jump and triple jump, and barely missed qualifying for last year’s NCAA Division III Indoor Track and Field Championships.

Wilson captures first in math competition

Kyle Wilson was the top problem solver among students participating in the 19th Alfred R. Schmidt Freshman Mathematics Competition, which tested students’ problem-solving skills on six challenging problems over a two-hour testing period during the fall academic quarter.

Wilson is a freshman mechanical engineering major from Dublin, Ohio. He received a book, a copy of Math Horizons and a cash prize.

Second-place honors went to Jenny Levey, an electrical engineering major from Palatine, Ill. She also received a book, a copy of Math Horizons and a cash prize.

Tying for third place were Eric Crockett, a software engineering major from Georgetown, Ind., and James Dalton, a mechanical engineering major from Salem, Ore. Both received a copy of Math Horizons and a cash prize.

Meritorious mention honors were given to Joel Carlson, Andrew Johnson, Alexander Jones and Tim Murphy. Honorable mention awards were presented to Hanna Chadd, LeMoyne Michael Habimana-Griffin, Matthew Middleton and Clancy Soehren.

A total of 16 students participated in this year’s competition. The problems were compiled by Rose-Hulman mathematics professor John Rickert, Paul Kominers and Scott Kominers. Grading the tests were professors Kurt Bryan, Joshua Holden, Tanya Jajcay and Rickert.

The competition helps the Department of Mathematics identify students that might be interested in representing Rose-Hulman later this school year in the William Lowell Putnam Mathematics Competition and Mathematical Contest in Modeling. The competition was started in 1989 to honor Schmidt, who served as a mathematics professor at Rose-Hulman from 1949-95.

Student Wins ASCE Mead Essay Contest

Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology senior civil engineering major Rachel Howser has won the American Society of Civil Engineers’ National Daniel W. Mead Student Essay Contest on professional ethics. Her article on “Eminent Domain and the Engineer’s Ethical Responsibilities” will be published in an issue of ASCE’s Civil Engineering magazine.

A native of Scottsburg, Howser is secretary of Rose-Hulman’s Cecil Lobo student ASCE chapter and has earned engineering experience as an intern with Hannum, Wagle & Cline Engineering of Terre Haute. She also is involved in the college’s Student Government Association, cheerleading team, drama club, The Thorn student newspaper and craft club, and serves as a tutor for the Homework Hotline toll-free telephone tutoring service for Indiana middle-school and high-school students.

This summer, as a National Science Foundation Scholar, Howser helped with an earthquake concrete research project at the University of Houston, including 10 students from universities throughout the United States. She came up with equations that describe the behavior of reinforced concrete under seismic loads. Howser’s research gave her an opportunity to work with a 15-foot tall, 40-ton, $1 million concrete cracker known as the universal element tester.

Howser has been invited to discuss her research at two civil engineering conferences, one in Vancouver, Canada; will have aspects of her research published in an international structures journal; and has been asked to work with the same University of Houston group next summer at the National Earthquake Center in Taiwan.

The Daniel W. Mead Student Essay Contest was established and endowed in 1939 by Daniel W. Mead, a former ASCE president. The specific topic of the essay contest is selected each year by ASCE’s Committee on Student Activities, which selects the national winner from four district nominees and an international candidate.

Student and chapter accomplishments have helped Rose-Hulman’s ASCE student chapter receive the Robert Ridgway Award as the nation’s top chapter award twice during the past three years.