July 2009

War Eagle and welcome to
eCommons, the
electronic version of
Auburn Commons.

Here's a look at what is happening this month:

Auburn University will receive $14.4 million in federal stimulus funds for construction of a science, technology and commerce research facility.

The competitive grant is from the U.S. Department of Commerce's National Institute of Standards and Technology. It will aid Auburn researchers working on standards, measurements and forecasting related to food safety, bioenergy technologies, aquaculture development and sustainability, and water and environmental quality.

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Students in Auburn University’s 2008-09 class of the Design-Build master’s program have recently graduated and are going their separate ways. However, their collective work outside the classroom while at Auburn will leave an indelible mark on one Macon County community.

The 12 students in the program, under the guidance of D. K. Ruth, director of the College of Architecture, Design and Construction’s Design-Build program, and Anthony Tindill, visiting assistant professor in the McWhorter School of Building Science, dedicated the past year to helping restore the Shiloh-Rosenwald School. Built in the 1920s, the three-room, wood frame building provided a place to educate African American children in Notasulga and the surrounding area for more than 40 years until federally mandated integration.

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U.S. News and World Report magazine has caught on to what Auburn residents have known for a long time--that it is a great place to live, attend school and raise a family. The magazine selected the city of Auburn as a top 10 choice among American cities. The rankings recognize Auburn University as a major contributor to the quality of life of city residents.

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Auburn University recently acquired a letter documenting one of the more dramatic moments in American history: Robert E. Lee’s surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia.

On April 9, 1865, Lee met with Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House. In a letter of the same date, Grant gave Lee the terms of surrender.

The following day Grant apparently made a handwritten copy of the April 9 letter for posterity’s sake, dating it April 10.

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A new Auburn University-designed, high-tech pharmacy in Meridian, Miss., is the first of its kind and is a model facility that could be built in communities across the United States.

Auburn pharmacy professors Kenneth Barker and Betsy Flynn led a multidisciplinary team in designing the recently opened facility for Vital Care Inc., which will help pharmacists offer complex medications for in-home use, ones that are normally administered only in hospitals.

The two-story, 16,000-square-foot building is used for preparing, dispensing and administering the medications, while, at the same time, serving as a demonstration and teaching model for potential franchisees wishing to open a similar facility. Pharmacists may choose to duplicate the entire design for home-infusion medications or individual function areas.

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Auburn-developed water-purification technology granted U.S. EPA registration

A water-purification technology developed at Auburn University has been granted United States Environmental Protection Agency registration. This technology, when used in appropriately designed drinking water devices, could save lives in remote areas or during natural disasters.

Professor Dave Worley, of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry in the College of Sciences and Mathematics, developed the technology that Seattle-based HaloSource Inc. is commercializing as "HaloPure Br." The company, which pays royalties to Auburn through a technology transfer agreement, markets the technology in a disinfecting cartridge to drinking water device manufacturers around the world.

"The EPA registration not only will benefit U.S. citizens, but also will help provide safe, clean drinking water to consumers in many other countries," said Worley. "Once the U.S. EPA grants registration to a new technology, many other countries will adopt the view that it is safe and proven."

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Auburn professor helps pen first-of-its-kind book on Space Shuttle Challenger

Twenty-three years after the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster, Auburn University Professor and author James Hansen has helped produce a compelling book recounting exactly why the U.S. space program's first fatal in-flight accident occurred.

Hansen, professor of history and director of Auburn's Honors College, teamed up to write the new 626-page book "Truth, Lies, and O-Rings: Inside the Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster" with Allan McDonald. McDonald was an engineer who warned NASA officials that Challenger's solid rocket motor could explode at ignition if launched that very cold morning on Jan. 28, 1986.

In the book, which was just released by the University Press of Florida, Hansen assists McDonald in telling how his words of warning were ignored and the fateful consequences of that decision.

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The National Science Foundation has selected a researcher in Auburn University's Samuel Ginn College of Engineering for the agency's award as one of America's top junior faculty members.

The NSF recently chose Virginia Davis, an assistant professor of chemical engineering at Auburn, to receive the agency's Faculty Early Development CAREER Award. Limited to a few individuals each year, the award recognizes outstanding college and university faculty members in the early stages of their careers and supports their research and outreach activities with funding for five years.

The award includes a grant of $400,000 to Davis for her work exploring how ultra-small materials, known as "nanomaterials," can be assembled into newer, more advanced materials, including macroelectronic devices, sensors, electro-optical devices and antimicrobial coatings.

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After more than 15 years of researching African-American spirituals, Auburn University music professor and professional singer Rosephanye Powell has released a CD titled "Motherless Child."

Powell, a professor in Auburn's College of Liberal Arts, said African-American spirituals, songs that enabled slaves to develop a sense of community, are considered by many anthropologists to be the first true American folksong. However, Powell's collection has been updated with a more contemporary sound. She has taken traditional spirituals and given them a mix of R&B, urban, gospel and jazz feel.

The project grew out of her concern that, because of its association with slavery, many African-Americans "do not embrace the spiritual or do not consider it relevant to the times in which they live; others are ashamed of it; and still others just see it as 'old music.'"

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