Undergraduate @ MindSay 
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Undergraduate Student Research Program
NASA -- USRP
New this year
Spring Session
NASA-USRP offers undergraduate student internships at NASA centers across the United States under the supervision of technical mentors. This prestigious program seeks rising sophomore, junior and senior students in the disciplines of engineering, math, computer science and life/physical sciences. Students may apply for 10-week summer session and 15-week spring or fall sessions. NASA-USRP provides students with hands-on, real-life research experiences that challenge, inspire and bring practical application to complement the students academic education. Stipends are $6,000 for the summer session and $9,000 for fall and spring, plus a round-trip travel allowance. Application deadlines are:
Spring October 22, 2007
Summer January 31, 2008
Fall February 29, 2008
Visit http://education.nasa.gov/usrp for more details.
[The picture below speaks a thousand words.]
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Iraqi Christians brave violence to celebrate Easter
Sun Apr 16, 8:40 AM ET
BAGHDAD (AFP) - Iraqi Christians braved violence and walked to churches across Baghdad to celebrate Easter amid a power vacuum and raging sectarian violence that continues to keep peace away from the country.
Dressed in their Sunday best, men, women and children were seen attending prayers for peace and special Easter mass services in various churches.
In central Baghdad's Saint George's Church, dozens of devout Christians were led by father Raad Saleem, 55, for a special Easter prayer appealing for "peace and normalcy in Iraq."
"I pray that life returns to normal in Iraq and the country gains stability," said Saleem as worshippers kneeled and bowed their heads.
Calling for an end to the sectarian violence that has killed hundreds, Saleem said, "We want a national unity government soon and not a government that encourages selfish interests."
"We want ministries serving Iraqis, providing employment, law and order and not ministries that are based on sectarianism."
Four months after elections for the first post Saddam Hussein parliament, Iraq has failed to put together a cabinet due to bickering over ministerial berths and the candidacy of incumbent premier Ibrahim Jaafari.
In a corner of the church, musicians played pianos as a group of children sung carols in Arabic while their teacher Nada Izzat, 30, watched.
Remembering the days of the former regime, Izzat spoke ruefully about both past and present.
"Iraq is free now but far away from peace," the teacher said.
"At that time (under Saddam), we used to face restrictions on our freedom of expression. Today we are free, but unfortunately there is no security."
Gesturing to the sky, she said, "We pray for the sake of Iraqis and to bring peace to this country. Today was the day when Jesus came back for the sake of humanity and I hope that this day brings peace for everyone."
Easter commemorates the resurrection of Jesus Christ, which according to the Bible occurred three days after he was crucified.
Abu Marian, 40, prayed for peace.
"In Iraq, the Christians have been attacked many times, but terrorists have failed to arouse hatred among them."
Since the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime in 2003, violence has wracked Iraq and many churches have been bombed. Iraq's estimated 700,000 Christians have kept a low profile amid fears of attack from Islamic extremists, who view the community as pro-American.
"My wish is to leave Iraq because of this violence which does not differentiate among people," said 19-year-old Nubras Fadhal.
"I feel scared and insecure as I go about in Baghdad and my movements are restricted."
The community, which stood at more than one million people before the 1990
Gulf War, has shrunken over the years, with more and more people fleeing Iraq's insecurity for safer shores.
But Father Saleem, mindful of his community's exodus, rallied the faithful Sunday to fight for the rebuilding of their country.
"This country has been destroyed and now needs people who will reconstruct it," Saleem told AFP.
"We have to work together ... to rebuild and bring prosperity to this land. On this occasion we must forget hatred as it will only lead to failure of Iraq."
Offering his wishes for Easter, President Jalal Talabani said, "My Christian brothers and sisters are working jointly with their other brothers of Iraq in building a secured and democratic Iraq."
At Pope Benedict XVI in his first Easter message expressed hope that peace would "finally prevail" in Iraq, where violence "continues mercilessly to claim victims."
However, as prayers meetings went on in churches, eight people were killed Sunday across Iraq, including four in a bomb blast in Baghdad.
the more i find out about other liberal arts schools, the more i have come to resent so many things about marietta that i never thought of before. sure there was physical plant and cps and some really dense administrators -- i would name them but there were way too many -- but there are things i am beginning to discover as i find out about other schools and other students whose paths are crossing mine. i think marietta dispensed with a lot of the work requirements from other schools. you could get by in quite a few majors with minimally creative bullshit alone. even in physics, i don't think i got the formal background that so many students from other schools receive. but somehow, i came out of it with a legitimate understanding of experimental physics. don't ask me how. i don't think i earned it.
at marietta, you could do dumb things and get away with it. you could steal $10,000 rugs from a dorm, be witnessed, and campus police would bumble the entire investigation. there were a lot of idiots at marietta, and the school made no attempt to improve them; just ship them off with their piece of paper that declared them finished. of course, that happens at every school. i just think marietta was worse than most liberal arts institutions.
so why did it work? it wasn't the school. it wasn't even most of the faculty, although my impression was that a very few faculty members kept it alive (radford, miller, steve rader, dhs to name a few). it was students that defined the school on their own terms and will go on to define the world as their playground that made the marietta experience actually work. out of the 2005 class, it was names like seth wolfson, casey trail, and melissa yusko that fit the description. no matter how soft and laid back marietta was, people like those three were going to excel anyway. the fantastic thing is that they pulled the rest of us up -- or at least pointed out how to do it.
and here i am. analyzing all of it. so i got something out of it right? and in theory, i get the rest of my classwork background in the next couple of years and can counteract everything marietta was deficient in and get the best of both worlds. of course i have to work harder in the mean time. damn.
a
ESTUDIANTES DE HAWAII CURSARAN UN SEMESTRE EN LA UVM
Los días 4, 5 y 6 de agosto arribarán a Viña del Mar los estudiantes de la Universidad de Hawaii que cursarán un semestre en las distintas carreras y los programas especiales de lengua y cultura que ofrece la UVM.
Los jóvenes estadounidenses participarán en una semana inicial de orientación, donde recibirán detallada información acerca de la oferta académica de la universidad y las actividades extracurriculares de carácter cultural.
La mayor parte de los estudiantes foráneos procede de la Universidad de Manoa, integrante de la red que conforma la Universidad de Hawaii.
Con respecto a otras iniciativas de intercambio y movilidad estudiantil, la Oficina Internacional de Intercambio, OIIE-UVM, informó que desde el próximo año tomarán cursos semestrales estudiantes de la Universidad de Arizona, que seleccionaron a la UVM para desarrollar intercambios con Chile.
Para enero de 2006 está prevista la llegada de un contingente de estudiantes de la Universidad de San Diego, California
Being around the undergrads may be curse or blessing because I am having a true longing for the halcyon days of no worries undergrad life. As I recollect my undergrad experience, I realize that I spent a ton of energy getting to graduate school. Now I'm having the letdown of being here. The other incoming grad students take everything seriously, for the most part. This has been a semester of triage for me, and while busy, I think it's been good. There's essentially no purely qualitative difference between grad classes and undergrad classes. There's more irksome "professionalization" concerns--such a thing would be absurd for an undergrad English class--more pretentiousness, to be sure, and the profs are more willing to spout off and risk noncommunication/not being clear.
And I think it's absurd to really consider myself a "scholar" at this point. The difference now is that I actually think about starting the term paper early. Of course I don't do that. In undergrad it was a given that I'd put it off.
But it's cool to be an English major at the University of Arizona. Totally different from where I was. The English majors, at least some of them, are freaky looking. I guess I also was once, and my proportions have taken to the anomalous even now. But there've been two undergrad English majors with long long hair dyed jet black, and each with skin white as snow, not unlike Meg White of the White Stripes. Now that's just sweet.
I have the pathetic urge to want to hang out with these young people, like a lonely ingratiating professor at a tiny outpost small college (isn't that where I came from?). I want the ability to redefine myself on a moment's notice, to say the unexpected. Now I'm responsible; I've got students. I know that they want Stability.
But those are green first-years. Some of the undergrad English folks no doubt dig the slightly off kilter profs. The question for me: Who was I and what have I become?
I know at the very least that I drank a lot more and didn't feel it afterwards. I made more three pointers than I ever have in midnight basketball. What I thought about Hemingway seemed important, not throwaway, not stupid, not insipid. In a way I was closer to death, hurtling a white Lexus across Iowa plains, instead of this cruising yawl of a Schwinn road bike that I now travel on.
The question really is: Who are my drinking friends? Who will go out with me to the Long-View concert tomorrow night? I put out an e-mail to some folks I know telling them about it. But I don't have any close friends. I should have encouraged my friend Tim to apply to the U of A art department--that dude needs a change. 23-24 years of fricking Iowa will do that to a brother.
That's why I fetishize the undergraduates. If I could be like I was then, with the new additions of a dog and a cat, I would be home free, like an electric Herman Hesse hero mythologized in a Jimi Hendrix song. --ADAM
