Mentor Program Aims to Prevent Violence

The Black Political Empowerment Project’s Coalition Against Violence and Carnegie Mellon University will partner to have CMU athletes mentor local high school students.

B-PEP Community Liaison Kenneth Huston says his “Five for Five” initiative will pair up students from five local school districts with CMU basketball players in an effort to prevent violence.

Huston says the students, who hail from West Mifflin, Gateway, Brashear, Clayton Academy and Pittsburgh Public Schools, will be able to communicate better with mentors closer to their own age. He says in addition to attending basketball games, the pairs will talk about college life and attend summits involving regional businesses and nonprofits.

Huston says he was inspired to create the program after giving an anti-violence speech at a local high school.

“Young people that walked up to me said, ‘Mr. Huston, all that is well and good, but we’re always being talked at, and we’re not being talked to, and we’re not getting a chance to voice our concerns.’ And so I thought about that long and hard and said, ‘How can we come up with a way to give these young people a chance to really voice their feelings?’” says Huston.

The result is the Five for Five program, which Huston says stands as a challenge for other local universities to take part in.

Five for Five’s first mentoring event was February 20, when the CMU men’s and women’s basketball teams played Emory University.

CMU Students Intern in Africa

Students from Carnegie Mellon University’s Pittsburgh and Qatar campuses returned Tuesday from a ten-week internship in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The interns worked at the Uhuru Mchanganyiko (mah-chan-gahn-eek-o) Public School, providing mobile technology services for social workers, students, and visually impaired children. CMU students from the United States, Qatar, and Sri Lanka worked together to design a cell phone application that will help social workers track down missing or at-risk children; an English-teaching cell phone game for teachers and students; and an update of a Braille program that fits the needs of Swahili-speaking Tanzanian natives.

CMU student Brad Hall says he oversaw the revamping of the Braille Tutor program, which uses a “slate and stylus system” to teach Braille electronically. Among the changes he and his team made were translating all text to Swahili, building an audio menu for easy navigating, and designing a popular game called “Music Maker” that allowed visually impaired students to make songs using Braille. Hall says these sorts of Braille programs are necessary because Tanzanian law requires that visually impaired students attend the same schools and classes as sighted children. He says laws like this make classes in schools like Uhuru (“freedom,” in Swahili) very diverse – and difficult to teach. “The school we worked at, Uhuru School, is one of the largest schools in Dar es Salaam. It has about 900 children, 90 of whom are visually impaired. It also hosts students who are mentally and physically challenged, and they have 12 deaf-blind students,” says Hall.

He says that cities like Dar es Salaam are far from what some Westerners might think when they picture Africa. “It’s certainly not undeveloped. Y’know, a lot of times people think of Africa, and they think of wilderness and people living in shacks, and that may be true for parts of Tanzania, but that’s certainly not true for all of Dar es Salaam. They have high-rise buildings, and they have electricity, and a running water system that has problems, but is still working,” says Hall.

Game Education Summit

Carnegie Mellon University has been a leader in innovation for a long time. Don Marinelli, who is the Executive Producer of the school's Entertainment Technology Center, says video games deserve no stigma, given the complexity of the work and math involved with making them. As a matter of fact, almost a century ago, Marinelli says Carnegie Mellon was delving into a new innovation then, too: Drama. It was one of the first schools, in 1914 , to have such a program. Now they are continuing the same tradition, only with video games and simulations. The 2nd Annual Game Education Summit being held there June 16 and 17 is to bring game educators together to show different aspects of the industry, and provide a platform for them. Conference Director Suzanne Freyjadis says seven different topics are being discussed that vary from narrative games to a serious games track.

CMU Wage Freeze

Due to an ailing economy, Carnegie Mellon University has decided to freeze employee wages during the next fiscal year. That year starts on July 1, 2009, and runs through June 30, 2010, says University spokesperson Ken Walters. The pay freeze affects more than 4,700 employees. Walters does not know how much money it would save the University, but the effort is done in part of the stock market decline, which has shrunk the University endowment. Walters says Carnegie Mellon, like many other institutions, will be keeping a close eye on the financial crisis in the next fiscal year, hoping things will improve. He says pay increases will resume as soon as it is reasonable to do so.

Carnegie Mellon builds new Computer Science Complex

A new computer science complex at Carnegie Mellon University is to open by July of 2009, said Computer Science Associate Dean Guy Blelloch. There will be two buildings to make up 200,000 square foot complex. It will hold 15 new classrooms and assist in connecting the main campus and west campus at CMU. Blelloch said it is the biggest building to be built on campus in decades.

The two buildings are named after the primary donors. The Bill and Melinda Foundation gave $20 million, and the Hillman Foundation gave $10 million. The complex project totalled approximately $100 million. A bridge named after the late Randy Pausch will connect the two buildings. A topping off ceremony to commemorate the placement of the highest steel beam of the building is to take place this afternoon.

CMU Energy Forum

United States Secretary of Commerce Carlos Gutierrez spoke with various company CEOs from Westinghouse Electric, Equitable Resources and Plextronics Inc. at Carnegie Mellon University in a forum about what innovations are needed to harness new energy. Gutierrez says there is a tremendous amount of work that is being overlooked. With over 200 million gas stations in the United States, the country cannot simply convert from fossil fuels to renewable energy overnight. Gutierrez says changing energy needs to be looked at in the long term. However, to get to the future, the United States must use a broad range of sources that include offshore drilling and nuclear power as options.

CMU Working On Trucks That Drive Themselves

Carnegie Mellon University is working with Caterpillar Inc. to develop autonomous versions of large-haul trucks used in mining operations. CMU has won national honors for creating vehicles that can drive themselves in an urban environment. CMU's Robotics Institute will adapt its research for trucks that will be used for loading and dumping of mining materials. A CMU professor says the project should lead to improved safety and productivity in mines. The trucks are expected to be introduced for use in 2010.

U.S. Youth Suicide rates spike in 2004

After declining U.S. youth suicide rates from 1996 to 2003, the numbers increased 14.5 percent in 2004. A Carnegie Mellon statistics professor is trying to understand why. Dr. Joel Greenhouse says the jump was first looked at as an statistical anomaly. Common risk factors such as substance abuse and the use of firearms have not changed in 10 to 19-year-old youths.

However, one possible influence is the Food and Drug Administration's "black box" label on antidepressants, initiated in 2004. Others include the increased use of internet social networks and increases in suicide among U.S. troops. Suicide statistics declined in 2005, but Dr. Greenhouse says those rates are still well above the previous regression.

Saudi Students Organize 4th Annual Open House

The Saudi Students House has organized its 4th annual open house about Saudi Arabia. The Saudi Students House comprises students from Saudi Arabia who attend the University of Pittsburgh, Carnegie Mellon University, and Duquesne University. The goal of their open house is to open up avenues of communication with Americans who do not know much about Saudi Arabian culture. The event is being held on Friday, Feb. 22nd, in the William Pitt Union Assembly Room at Pitt. It will start at 4:30 and conclude at 9 pm.