Chemical engineering professor Daniel Lacks and assistant professor of classics Paul Iversen will lead the March 1 UCITE on international learning experiences for students.
Lacks and Iversen both have used UCITE’s Nord grants to provide opportunities for Case Western Reserve University students to have enriching international learning experiences.
Lacks will describe how he used his grant to partially fund the development of programs that in 2011 took 21 engineering students to the University of Botswana for an intensive core course that intertwined engineering content with regional issues specific to sub-Saharan Africa; took three students to Botswana and five students to Senegal as part of their capstone design projects for chemical engineering students; and enabled a sabbatical visitor from the University of Botswana to co-teach a SAGES seminar here on “Education in Sub-Saharan Africa.”
Iversen will discuss how, as part of his “Landscape Archaeology and Epigraphy” course, he and his students spent five weeks in the summer of 2010 on site in the region of Isparta, Turkey. There, they learned the mechanics, methodologies and theory of intensive landscape archaeology and epigraphy, how to read and understand cultural landscapes as well as complex written materials (both modern and historic), to hone research skills and methods and much more.
Incidentally, they are collaborating on a capstone design project for five engineering students in which they recreate a working prototype of the “Antikythera Mechanism,” an ancient Greek computing device. Fragments of the device were found in a shipwreck about 100 years ago, and a multinational team of researchers (including Iversen) has been investigating its purpose and operation through a combination of scientific methods and a deciphering of the Greek inscriptions.
The discussion will be held March 1 from noon to 1 p.m. in the Herrick Room on the ground floor of the Allen Memorial Library Building.
Pizza and sodas will be provided; RSVP to ucite@case.edu.