Daily Pioneer News

PLATTEVILLE - When the University of Wisconsin-Platteville's new engineering building opens, physics students will be among a select few in the nation to combine lectures and hands-on lab work during the same class session.

Phillip Young, UWP professor of chemistry and engineering physics, said he and other physics teachers at UWP discussed designing classrooms in the new building that would allow the best ways to teach and learn.

"We decided we would design classrooms around what we understood to be the best pedagogy in physics education research," he said.

The new engineering building will include three classrooms that accommodate 56 students each in a combination lecture/lab setting. Each room will have 14 lab stations with four students at each station. At the same time, the rooms are designed so students will be able to follow a lecture. Each room will have two projector screens and a whiteboard at the front.

Each lab station will include a computer and other commonly used equipment. Additional equipment will be stored in a fourth room that can be accessed easily by instructors in all three of the classrooms.

The combined classroom concept is not common. It currently is being used only at a few other universities around the nation, Young said.

Students learn best in an "active and interactive environment," Young said. The interactive environment means that there is interaction between the student and professor, while the class also is active because the student is "mentally engaged and doing stuff in the classroom instead of just sitting and taking notes."

The configuration will allow the instructor to move fluidly between a lecture, group work on problems, group discussion of concepts, observing experiments and analyzing the results of experiments, he said.

The computer at each workstation also will allow students to collect data, enter it immediately into the computer and observe the graphs or other results.

"They'll be able to see what's going on in a real-time environment instead of waiting until next week to do a lab," Young said.

With 56 students, UWP will retain the same class size for labs that it has now. Some schools using the combined teaching method schedule up to 99 students at a time, he said.

UWP students will put the same number of hours into a class under the new arrangement as they do now. Starting next semester, most classes will meet twice a week for two hours and twice a week for an hour. Currently, most classes meet four times a week for an hour lecture and also include a two-hour lab.

When the new classrooms were designed, Young said care was taken to ensure that professors would be able to teach the way they want. For instance, he said the lecture-lab combinations at some schools are not conducive to a lot of time spent lecturing with a whiteboard or PowerPoint slides.

UWP received a $150,000 grant from the National Science Foundation for equipment and assessment on the transition to the new teaching style. That grant is in tandem with a $50,000 grant to Madison Area Technical College, which uses some similar teaching methods, but with much smaller class sizes.

Students and professors will start using the new physics labs and all of the other facilities in the new engineering building when second-semester classes get under way.

The building at the intersection of Southwest Road and Longhorn Drive will open officially on Saturday, Dec. 13, when Gov. Jim Doyle speaks at an 8 a.m. ceremony.

In addition to physics, the $25.6 million, 108,500-square-foot building will be home to electrical engineering, engineering physics, the general engineering labs and the Nanotechnology Center for Collaborative Research and Development. Student organizations also will have workspace.

For more information on the physics lab-classrooms, contact Young at (608) 342-1406 or youngp@uwplatt.edu.

Contact: Phillip Young, UWP professor of chemistry and engineering physics, (608) 342-1406, youngp@uwplatt.edu Written by: Gary Achterberg, UWP Public Relations, (608) 342-1194, achterbergg@uwplatt.edu

Labels: new engineering building, physics, young

A two-piece project, Beads and Branches, created by Mineral Point artist Peter Flanary, is located at the entrance of the new engineering building.

PLATTEVILLE - As the University of Wisconsin-Platteville's new engineering building nears completion, the final touches include the artwork that will make a strong first impression for many visitors.

The first thing students, faculty and other visitors will see as they approach the front entrance of the new 108,500-square-foot building is a two-piece work, "Beads and Branches," created by Peter Flanary, a Mineral Point artist.

The first piece is a rod holding up a vertical stack of granite boulders with palm-like aluminum fronds topping off the 27-foot-tall structure. It will be located behind a 14-foot bench made from boulders strung together and suspended on a post-tensioned threaded rod approximately 16 inches above the ground.

Flanary said the pieces are intended to convey a sense of the impossible in engineering, referring to the way the boulders appear to be suspended in space.

"Without proper engineering, you tend to overbuild things," he said in an interview earlier this year when the artwork was commissioned.

The artwork is funded through a program that requires that two-tenths of 1 percent of the total construction costs of new state buildings or renovation projects be designated for the commission or purchase of artwork. The Wisconsin Arts Board Percent for Arts was established in 1980 for the purpose of placing artwork in the public setting, both to beautify public buildings and urban environments and to draw attention to the wealth of artistic experience in the region.

Flanary has done several other pieces of art across the state with the Percent for Arts Committee including "The Wave" on the UW-Madison campus.

Linda James, UWP assistant professor of art history, served as a member of the UWP Percent for Arts Committee that commissioned the Flanary piece. In addition, she said that several other pieces of art on campus also have been commissioned through Percent for Arts. They include the Scott Wallace Strategem, the chess pieces near the Pioneer Student Center installed in fall 2006, and the Sticking Tommies, the lit blue columns near Ullsvik Hall installed earlier this fall.

"I think that our public sculpture adds visual poetry to the UWP campus, often becoming gathering places, interesting passageways or simply places to pause," James said.

The seal of the old Wisconsin Mining School has been recreated in the entryway to the new engineering building.

While Flanary's work in front of the new engineering building is modern and cutting edge, visitors to the building also will come in touch with the school's past as they enter the front door and see a reproduction of the seal of the Wisconsin Mining School laid into the lobby's floor.

The seal is as similar as possible to one in the floor of Rountree Hall, previously the main building of the Wisconsin Mining School. That building now houses apartments and is no longer a part of the school.

Douglas Stephens, UWP campus planner, said he started the process of replicating the logo approximately two years ago when he did a scaled architectural drawing of the Rountree Hall seal.

Stephens said he jumped at the opportunity to help re-create the seal.

"I accessed Rountree Hall and found the existing seal in a dark vestibule on the east side of the building," he said. "I set up portable work lights in the vestibule and spent a couple hours on my hands and knees taking every measurement necessary and then worked to develop scaled and dimensioned AutoCAD drawings."

Peter Davis, UWP interim director of facilities management, said the original seal was brass set in stained concrete. The current version has replicated the brass and laid it into terrazzo, a colored glass-like tile.

Andy Hudzinski, construction administrator for River Architects in La Crosse, said finding acceptable material to use to recreate the old seal using modern construction materials was the biggest challenge.

Hudzinski said the terrazzo combines colored, recycled glass and colored epoxy. He said a lot of time and attention was put into trying to match the colors of the seal in Rountree Hall as closely as possible. He described the colors as deep red and "root-beer" brown.

The architect worked with Wisconsin Terrazzo and Tile in Onalaska and another firm that supplied a three-eighths-inch-thick sheet of brass. The images and rings in the logo were cut from the brass sheet with a water jet, Hudzinski said.

Gov. Jim Doyle will preside over the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the $25.6 million building on Saturday, Dec. 13. The new building, located at the intersection of Southwest Road and Longhorn Drive on the UWP campus, will open at 8 a.m. The ribbon-cutting ceremony is scheduled for 8:30 a.m.

Richard Shultz, UWP dean of Engineering, Mathematics, and Science, and UWP Chancellor David Markee also will deliver remarks.

When classes resume after winter break, the building will be home to electrical engineering, engineering physics, physics and the general engineering labs as well as the Nanotechnology Center for Collaborative Research and Development. Student organizations also will have workspace.

For more information on the new engineering building, contact Lisa Riedle, associate dean, UWP College of Engineering, Mathematics, and Science, at (608) 342-1686 or riedle@uwplatt.edu.

Contact: Lisa Riedle, associate dean, College of Engineering, Mathematics, and Science, (608) 342-1686, riedle@uwplatt.edu. Written by: Gary Achterberg, UWP Public Relations, (608) 342-1194, achterbergg@uwplatt.edu

Labels: flanary, new engineering building, wisconsin mining school

PLATTEVILLE - When the University of Wisconsin-Platteville's new engineering building opens next month, students will walk in the shadows of faculty members who nurtured the university into the force that it is today.

The two wings of the new engineering building will be named for two former engineering faculty members, Dale C. Dixon and Edward O. Busby, who both were popular with students and influential in guiding the department as it grew into a widely respected and multi-faceted engineering school.

Dixon, who died in 1999 at age 83, retired from UWP in 1980 after a 42-year teaching career. He taught in Platteville during the transition from Wisconsin Mining School to the Wisconsin Institute of Technology and the merger with UW-Platteville. He also coached many sports at the mining school.

Busby, who now lives in Madison with his wife, Lois, was dean of the College of Engineering from 1966 until his retirement in 1988. The Busbys have provided numerous scholarships to engineering students through the Edward O. and Lois E. Busby Endowed Scholarship.

The administrative wing of the $25.6 million, 108,500-square-foot building will be named for Busby, who shepherded the school's engineering programs through accreditation and expansion. The building's other wing - housing mainly classrooms, laboratories and student work spaces - will be named for Dixon, who frequently has been cited by mining school alumni and others as one of their favorite professors.

The ribbon-cutting for the new building will occur at 8 a.m. on Saturday, Dec. 13. Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle will open the building and later speak at the first of UWP's two fall commencement ceremonies. Classes in electrical engineering, engineering physics and physics will begin in January in the new building, which also will house general engineering labs, the Nanotechnology Center for Collaborative Research and Development, workspace for student organizations and display cases to highlight student projects.

Busby said he is thrilled to be able to attend the opening of the new building.

"Obviously, I'm extremely proud of what's been accomplished at Platteville while I was dean and professor of civil engineering," he said, adding that Dixon, who played a role in hiring him at UWP, and Chancellor Bjarne Ullsvik, who "gave engineering the kind of support we needed to get accredited," also deserve a lot of recognition and credit.

Busby said that he was very proud to be at the department's helm as the civil engineering program received national accreditation in 1968, followed by the mining program in 1970. That provided the opportunity to establish other new programs, including mechanical engineering in 1974 and electrical engineering in 1982.

He said he is very happy to see how the engineering programs have blossomed over the past few decades, adding that he remembers when starting an electrical engineering program was a dream and that the school now has just awarded its 1,000th electrical engineering degree.

"The world is a better place to live because of Platteville engineering grads," he said.

Dixon received a mining degree in Platteville in 1936 and taught on campus for approximately three years before enlisting in the Navy and serving in the South Pacific during World War II. He participated in the battles for the Gilbert Islands, Marshall Islands, Mariana Islands, Palau and the Philippines. He returned to Platteville in December 1945 and resumed his teaching duties in the mining school. In addition, Dixon coached the mining school football team from 1952 to 1959 and also coached basketball, track and baseball.

Dixon is widely remembered by mining school alumni as a favorite professor. In a program printed for a 2006 reunion of graduates of the Wisconsin Mining School and the Wisconsin Institute of Technology, student after student listed Dixon as a "significant professor" in questionnaires completed for the book.

Dixon was referred to as "#1 Miner" in the headline of a story announcing his retirement in The Geode, UW-Platteville's engineering newsletter. His car also had the Wisconsin license plates carrying that title.

He clearly had a dry sense of humor. The retirement article included a quote on what he called the "large increase" in the number of women choosing mining as a major.

"I think four years ago there were maybe one or two women in mining," he said. "Presently, there's about eight or nine."

Dixon's sons, Dale and Bill, both live in Tucson, Ariz. Bill Dixon said that he and his brother would like to attend the building dedication although they haven't yet finalized travel plans.

Bill Dixon said the naming is a well-deserved recognition of his father.

"He put 42 years of his life into the place," he said. "The attention might unnerve him a bit but I think he would be proud to have such an honor."

The decision to name the wings after Dixon and Busby was an easy one, said Dennis Cooley, assistant chancellor for University Advancement and executive director of the UWP Foundation.

"When we asked miners if it was appropriate to name a wing for Dale Dixon, who was greatly respected by the students he taught and mentored, the response was overwhelmingly positive," Cooley said. "And, when we wanted to name the administrative wing for Dean Busby, who led to the accreditation of many of our engineering programs and was outstanding in his development of the engineering faculty, we also received overwhelmingly positive support."

For more information on Busby, Dixon or the naming of the engineering building wings, contact Cooley at (608) 342-1309 or cooleyde@uwplatt.edu.

Contact: Dennis Cooley, assistant chancellor for University Advancement and executive director of the UWP Foundation, (608) 342-1309, cooleyde@uwplatt.edu Written by: Gary Achterberg, UWP Public Relations, (608) 342-1194, achterbergg@uwplatt.edu

Labels: Busby, Dixon, new engineering building

PLATTEVILLE - Workers are readying classroom equipment and furniture while others complete landscaping at the University of Wisconsin-Platteville's new engineering building as the scheduled Dec. 13 ribbon-cutting draws closer.

Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle will speak at the 8 a.m. ceremony to open the $25.6 million, 108,500-square-foot building at the corner of Southwest Road and Longhorn Drive. Commencement for UWP's fall semester is later in the day.

The project is on budget and on time, said Lisa Riedle, associate dean of the College of Engineering, Mathematics and Science, adding that the much-needed building will be put to use immediately.

"We hope to have 90 percent of the items moved in and in working order for the start of second semester," she said.

The new building will be home to electrical engineering, engineering physics, physics and the general engineering labs as well as the Nanotechnology Center for Collaborative Research and Development. Student organizations also will have work space.

"Almost the entire first floor is dedicated to student projects," Riedle said, adding that there will be many display cases to show off student work.

Plans for the new engineering building were driven by a need for more space as enrollment and other program needs had grown past the capacity of the Ottensman Hall, the current engineering building. The possibilities presented by the new building extend well past providing more space, Riedle said.

"It's really given us an opportunity to enhance our high-tech programs," she said. "Electrical engineering, for instance, is advancing on a daily basis. Incorporating some of that fast-moving technology is going to be key for our professors and our students."

While some areas will move to the new building and others will remain in Ottensman Hall, Riedle stressed that the change gives UWP the capacity necessary to foster growth in all areas.

"For all of our programs to have the opportunity to grow, we need to give them the space to do so," she said.

Discussions already are under way for an extensive renovation of Ottensman Hall. That could be included in the 2011-13 state budget, she said.

The new engineering building also will include physics classrooms that will allow professors to integrate lectures and lab activities into a single class session. Lectures and labs now are conducted separately.

The building will have more than 300 computers, many dedicated for special equipment. There will be three computer labs, facilities for distance education and nine study areas for students.

Riedle said the new engineering building makes a commitment to keep UWP as a cutting-edge engineering program.

"We're going to be educating our freshmen for jobs that don't even exist now," she said. "We want to give them the best possible advantages we can."

For more information about the engineering building, contact Riedle at (608) 342-1686 or riedle@uwplatt.edu.

Contact: Lisa Riedle, associate dean, College of Engineering, Mathematics and Science, (608) 342-1686, riedle@uwplatt.edu Written by: Gary Achterberg, UWP Public Relations, (608) 342-1194, achterbergg@uwplatt.edu

Labels: nanotechnology center, new engineering building