Spring 2002
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Spring 2002 |
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The vast majority of Rose-Hulman freshmen are satisfied with their college choice, according to the results of the annual Freshman Poll conducted by the Office of Student Affairs. Eighty-nine percent indicated they were extremely pleased or pleased to be attending Rose-Hulman. The survey is conducted at the end of the fall academic quarter. Among the areas and programs receiving all-time high rankings from the freshmen were: Classroom facilities, laboratories, Logan Library, campus parking, the bookstore and the graphics communication courses. Residence hall life and counseling services provided by the resident assistants and sophomore advisers also drew praise from new students. The poll results show that 87 percent of the freshmen used the Internet to find information about colleges and universities.
Counselors listed Rose-Hulman as one of the nation’s five best colleges or universities where students receive a high level of individual attention from faculty. The survey was conducted for the 2002 Kaplan/Newsweek College Catalog. Cited with Rose-Hulman were Stanford University, Pomona and Claremont McKenna colleges in California and Tr inity University in Texas. Rose-Hulman was also among 53 institutions on the counselor’s list of schools that are academically challenging. The list included CalTech, MIT and Northwestern University. The top five selected as the counselor’s favorites were Harvard, Stanford, Yale, Duke and Princeton universities. The catalog did not rank schools individually. The survey utilized a random sample obtained by Dun and Bradstreet of counselors at American public, private and Catholic high schools.
Rose-Hulman's Oakley Observatory has moved up to rank 20th out of 273 observatories worldwide in the number of asteroid observations submitted to the Minor Planet Center at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics last year. Rose-Hulman students discovered 30 asteroids last year, a substantial increase from the three found in the previous year. The observatory ranked 37th out of 285 sites last year. Most of the asteroids are 100 to 200 million miles away from Earth. Eighteen of the observations were made during a two-day period in August by Chris Wolfe, an electrical engineering graduate student. The Oakley Observatory was opened last year. A $500,000 gift from the Oakley Foundation of Terre Haute made it possible to construct the new facility, which replaced an observatory that was 40 years old. Physics and Applied Optics Professor Richard Ditteon is director of the observatory and advises Rose-Hulman's Astronomical Society. "Students can track asteroid movements for a longer period of time which provides more accurate data," Ditteon said about the advantages of the new observatory.
Senior
Robert Guratzsch has a Rose-Hulman alumnus to partially thank for his inclusion among the
nation's top civil engineering students in CE News magazine's Star Students
program. Guratzsch was among 10 students
singled out for special recognition in the December issue of the engineering publication,
which has a subscription base of 50,000 civil engineers who work for over 27,000 different
firms. This
marked the first time a Rose-Hulman student has been included in CE News' program,
an omission that was highlighted by a proud unnamed alumnus in a letter to the
publication's editor. Other
colleges having students on this year's Star Student list included Princeton,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Georgia Institute of Technology, Northwestern,
Stanford and Texas A&M. Guratzsch's
3.93 grade point (out of 4.0) ranks No. 1 among Rose-Hulman's 36 senior civil engineering
students.
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