“I’ve always been conscious of how much money I’m spending,” he said. “I don’t want to have tons of debt I’ll have to pay back later, especially at high interest rates.”

And so for Vasquez, who works a part-time job at The Home Depot, financial aid from the Montgomery GI Bill, the Virginia Tuition Grant (VTAG), and a new National Science Foundation (NSF) S-STEM Scholarship has been a godsend in covering the full cost of his college education.

“Without the NSF S-STEM Scholarship, I would’ve struggled financially,” he said. “The scholarship really takes the pressure off my shoulders, because now I won’t have that debt looming over my head.”

Born and raised in Harrisonburg, Vasquez graduated from high school in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic and attended Blue Ridge Community College while enlisting in the military. After completing recruit training, taking time to reassess his academic goals, and changing majors from business to computer science, he transferred to EMU last fall. 

He is among an initial cohort of EMU students receiving the NSF S-STEM Scholarship, which provides:

• Up to $15,000 in unmet financial need annually for the length of the degree
• A paid one-week Bridge to College program
• A STEM mentorship program
• An eight-week paid internship
• Free conference attendance
• Forest restoration opportunities in Park Woods (EMU’s on-campus woodland)

The scholarship is open to high-achieving, income-eligible students who are majoring in Biochemistry, Biology, Computer Science, Engineering, Environmental Science, Math, or Psychology (research/STEM track).

Applications for the S-STEM Scholarship
are due by 11:59 p.m. on Sunday, Feb. 15, 2026.

For more information, visit .

‘A welcoming community’

Forming friendships at a new school can have its challenges.

Along with other initiatives provided by the scholarship, a Bridge to College program helps new EMU students adjust to life on campus by moving them in a week early, introducing them to STEM faculty and staff members, and engaging them in activities to build camaraderie and form connections with one another. Students participating in the weeklong program receive a generous stipend for their time.

Ani Koontz, a first-year biology and secondary education double major from Newton, Kansas, is a recipient of the S-STEM Scholarship. She recalled traveling to Shenandoah National Park with students and faculty the week before classes, surveying salamanders and hiking trails, before bicycling around Downtown Harrisonburg on a tour led by city officials.

“That first week showed me how friendly and approachable my professors are,” she said. “They’ve done a great job creating a welcoming community.”

Another S-STEM Scholarship recipient, Mara Carlson, is a first-year psychology major from Lancaster, Pennsylvania. “Many of us have become close friends,” she said. “I’ll see the other scholarship recipients around campus and we’ll say hello to each other.”

Through the scholarship, each student is paired with an academic advisor specific to their major, who can answer questions and help guide them forward. Carlson said she meets with Kathryn Howard-Ligas, assistant professor of psychology at EMU. “We discussed a four-year plan, and I was really grateful for that,” she said. Part of that plan includes gaining invaluable experience through internships and conferences, additional perks of the S-STEM Scholarship.

Carlson said she already knew she wanted to attend EMU, and that receiving the S-STEM Scholarship was “a nice surprise.”

For the Kansas-born Koontz, EMU had always been on her radar, but she also considered attending in-state schools that normally would’ve been cheaper. When she learned she had been offered the S-STEM Scholarship and that it would lower her college costs to “a very affordable amount,” her choice to attend EMU became an easy one.

“It’s 100% the reason I came,” she said. “When I got that, it meant I could completely afford to go here, and it honestly made EMU more affordable than any other college in my area. It’s my joy to share how grateful I am because this is truly just an amazing thing that EMU has.”

Members of the Class of 2025 Micaiah Landis, Adam Stoltzfus, Laura Benner, Hellena Gebremedhin, Lleyton Stutzman, and Rebecca Tezazu, guided by faculty mentor Stefano Colafranceschi, spent hundreds of hours during the past school year restoring and improving the Spitz A-4 planetarium projector at EMU’s Suter Science Center. The projector, originally installed in 1968 when the science center was built, has spent most of its time in storage since the M.T. Brackbill Planetarium closed in 2007. 

On Tuesday, April 29, the engineering team unveiled the product of their hard work with a planetarium show—the first in more than 15 years, according to Stutzman—attended by about two-dozen guests. Titled “Stars for a Night in Spring,” the show was adapted from a program first performed by former planetarium director John Horst ’60 and featured synthesizer music he composed. As the lights cut off inside the Discovery Room, the domed ceiling transformed into a sea of stars, while members of the team pointed out constellations and shared the legends behind them.

Guests included past and present STEM faculty, staff, and alumni with ties to the planetarium. Joan Horst ’66, who recalled watching shows there as a student, said she hadn’t seen one since her late husband, Professor Emeritus John Horst, retired nearly 20 years ago. “I’m amazed they were able to convert it from electronic to computer controls,” she said of the restoration project.

For Joe Mast ’64, longtime professor and planetarium director from 1986-2005, watching the stars and galaxies drift across the dome brought back memories of leading Sunday afternoon programs and teaching astronomy classes at EMU. “It was a very popular class,” he said. “We had 65 seats in here, and it ran every semester, with rarely more than four or five empty seats.”

A trio of alumni at the show had spent a semester in an engineering design class disassembling the projector to understand how it worked. One of those alumni, Andrew Troyer ’19, said, “It was cool to see someone take something you’ve done to the next level like this.”

History of the planetarium

In 1968, the Suter Science Center at EMU was completed, featuring the M.T. Brackbill Planetarium and a then-state-of-the-art Spitz A-4 star projector. At the time, the projector cost about $25,000, equivalent to roughly $230,000 today when adjusted for inflation.

The projector replaced the university’s Spitz A-1 model, which had been used at the Vesper Heights planetarium atop the EMU Hill since 1946. The original A-1 model is still on display in the Discovery Room. Both planetariums are said to have attracted annual crowds of up to 4,000 visitors, from astronomy students to local residents to nearby grade school students

When John Horst retired in 2007, EMU was left with no prospective astronomers on the faculty to continue the planetarium’s programming. And, the 40-year-old projector had mechanical problems that would have been costly to fix or replace. As a result, the planetarium closed and the projector was lowered into storage beneath the floor. The space was converted into a classroom for workshops and a display area for large specimens, such as the giant Kodiak brown bear that stood guard above the projector in the center of the room. After renovations to the science center, the projector was brought back out and placed on a pair of tables.

Resurrecting the projector

The six students on the team installed new motors, sensors, and a Raspberry Pi mini-computer to control the movement of the projector. The large panel of switches and dials that once operated the machine has been replaced with a web application that can be accessed wirelessly from any internet-connected device. Enter a location, date, and time into the app, and the projector can simulate the night sky as it would have appeared then and there. “We had some friends in here who were checking out the sky at the time they were born,” Benner said.

The students also designed, welded, and built a custom steel-and-wood base to support the projector and allow it to be stowed away when not in use. To darken the room, they sewed heavy-duty blackout curtains to cover the many surrounding windows.

During the restoration, the xenon bulb inside the projector’s star ball broke, and students scrambled to find a replacement, eventually swapping it out for an LED bulb. In total, the team spent about $2,400 on the project.

Members of the team said their goal for the project was not only to bring the projector back to life but also to make it more accessible and user-friendly. “It’s very easy to use,” Stutzman said during a presentation at EMU’s ACE Festival on April 17. “You don’t have to know anything about astronomy.”

By documenting their work, they said future students will have a clear understanding of the projector’s inner workings and will be able to perform additional upgrades. For instance, a future engineering capstone project could focus on restoring the planet orrery, which projects five planets, the sun and Earth’s moon but is currently inoperable.

Professor Daniel King, director of EMU’s engineering program, said he had long kept the idea of revitalizing the planetarium in the back of his mind. When he saw the team of engineering students searching for a project, he proposed they take it on. He said there’s potential for future planetarium shows, open to community members of all ages. “I would love for that to happen,” King said.

Read more about the history of the EMU planetarium below:

The grant, awarded through the NSF’s , will fund up to $15,000 annually for each scholarship recipient throughout the length of their degree. Overall, the S-STEM Scholarship will fund a quality undergraduate education for 23 EMU students among three cohorts over the next six years, beginning with first-year students entering the Fall 2025 semester.

The scholarship is open to academically talented students with financial need who are majoring in the following fields: Biochemistry, Biology, Chemistry, Computer Science, Engineering, Environmental Science, Math, and Psychology (research/STEM track).

Applicants for the S-STEM Scholarship must submit their application and reference forms by 11:59 p.m. Eastern Time on Sunday, Feb. 9, 2025. For more information about the program and how to apply, visit: emu.edu/stem/scholarship

In addition to scholarships, the program offers students a paid one-week Bridge to College experience, where they can meet professors, learn material from their discipline, acquire study skills, and become better prepared for college.

EMU Biology Professor Dr. Kristopher Schmidt said that some first-year students can struggle to adjust to life on campus, and that the grant aims to ease that adjustment.

“We want to create a sense of belonging,” said Schmidt, who is principal investigator for the grant program.

The program also provides funding for embedded tutoring services and paid tutoring opportunities for students, specialized advising, and guidance from professional STEM mentors.

“This would be a person outside the university in their field of interest who can encourage them, help them, and connect with them along their four-year program,” Schmidt said about the mentors. 

The S-STEM Scholarship program offers innovative opportunities for place-based learning and funding for an eight-week paid internship. Students can use grant-funded resources to conduct research on forest restoration in the Park Woods space, which serves as a key learning lab for STEM students.

This latest grant builds on the success of a similar STEM grant that wrapped up in 2023.

By leveraging grants like these, EMU lives into its mission and vision, outlined in its 2023-28 strategic plan Pathways of Promise of opening new pathways of access and achievement, and can help the NSF achieve its goal of diversifying the STEM workforce.

“We were thrilled to receive this,” Schmidt said. “We’re excited and grateful the NSF has chosen to invest in our students at EMU.”

Faculty members Kristopher Schmidt, Jim Yoder, Daniel Showalter, Stefano Colafranceschi and Dean Tara Kishbaugh wrote the S-STEM grant proposal.

“The trees were a lot smaller when I went there,” said Hertzler, explaining that a had ripped through the small Kansas town shortly before he began his studies there. “Now, there’s all these large trees. But, I guess, 28 years of growth will do that.”

Hertzler, who also graduated from EMU with a degree in biochemistry in 1999, visited Hesston in October with three other EMU engineering students — Jacob Hess, Benjamin Friesen Guhr and Sean Swartley — and program director Daniel King as part of a collaboration between the two schools. The partnership was sponsored by the , which provides grants to foster relationships and strengthen ties between Mennonite institutions.

“��ݮ���� and Hesston College have a long history of collaboration in various areas,” Johann Reimer, engineering program director for Hesston College, said in a from the school. “I am so excited that we were able to forge ahead with a totally new engineering-related collaboration that provided real benefits for faculty and students alike.”

Picking a project

The partnership started this spring, when EMU hosted a group of Hesston College engineering students and faculty members. The group from Hesston reviewed two projects that 11 EMU students in the Engineering Design II class presented and chose one to improve. They chose to redesign a trivision board the EMU students created.

Trivision boards, often used for , are made from vertical triangular prisms aligned together in a frame. The boards can show up to three ads, with the display depending on which of the prism’s sides are facing the viewer. 

“We wanted something fun to do that isn’t super common anymore, but we wanted to add a flair to it,” said Hertzler, a student in the spring semester course. Unlike traditional trivision boards, which use a single gear to rotate all the panels at the same time, students in the class attached a motor to each prism so they could control them individually.  

King said the project was one that students from both engineering schools could equally contribute to.

“Hesston’s program is a mechatronics program — a combination of mechanical and electronics — and we have mechanical and computer engineering,” he said. “So, we came up with a project that had components of both.”

The trivision board could be used to display advertising for events or clubs on campus.

“It could show artwork,” King said. “As our students mentioned, it could also show facts about environmental sustainability.”

EMU students in the class answered questions from Hesston College students about their design decisions, and the two groups bounced ideas off each other. In addition to their collaborative work on the project, students from Hesston College toured the Harrisonburg, Virginia, campus, sat in on engineering courses and hiked in the nearby Shenandoah National Park.

Returning the favor

During their fall break in October, the EMU engineering group traveled about 1,200 miles westward to Hesston College in south central Kansas. There, they toured the campus, attended engineering classes and were presented with a redesign of the trivision board.

Hesston students added a motion sensor to the board that could trigger the panels to rotate with a wave. They also changed the type of motor used.

“It was neat to see them tackle the problem differently,” Hertzler said, “and it was fun engaging with their questions.”

Hess, an EMU senior who transferred from Hesston in 2021, was not part of the class that designed the trivision board in the spring, but used the trip as an opportunity to meet former professors and attend a robotics class. He said the long-distance collaboration helps simulate what it’s like to work on projects in the workforce. 

“You might have a group in one part of the country working on a project with a group in another part of the country, with completely different time zones,” Hess said.

King said the collaboration helped students focus on documenting the design process and communicating it to others. The partnership helped build relationships between faculty at both schools and showed students “that engineering is a bigger world than at just one institution,” he said.

Looking back, he said that one highlight of their trip was seeing the rockets and spacecraft at the Cosmosphere museum in Hutchinson, Kansas.

“The hiking was also fun,” he said, “but we joked that we have better hiking in Shenandoah than out in Kansas.” 

Grove grew up in Poolesville, Maryland, loving legos and “building stuff” with his hands. In high school, he excelled in math and the sciences, particularly physics. Both of his parents went to EMU, and Grove decided to follow in their footsteps because he liked the Mennonite community and the size of the school, and was “curious and interested” in EMU’s brand-new engineering program.

Longenecker also learned about EMU from his parents, who raised him living across the street from the school in Harrisonburg. “Always good at math and science,” Longenecker considered pursuing architecture, but was ultimately swayed by EMU’s close-knit community, small size, and new engineering program.

While at EMU, Longenecker and Grove participated in the Engineers for a Sustainable World (ESW) club, collaborating on a stationary bike project that took top honors in an American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) poster design contest in 2017. Grove was a primary designer. The two also served as STEM Student Mentors through EMU’s Academic Success Center, tutoring freshmen students in specific engineering classes.

Apart from their shared experiences, Longenecker worked as part of a team of 10 students to design and build an eco-marathon-bound supermileage car his senior year. “It was a lot of fun to dive headfirst into this massive new project that was spearheaded by a number of freshmen,” said Longenecker. Grove built a wind tunnel at EMU for his senior capstone project as an educational tool for the engineering department to teach fluid mechanics principles. “It was a fun, collaborative project with help from engineering faculty, STEM students, and Facilities Management,” shared Grove.

The wind tunnel project was sponsored by Ventrac, a tractor company out of Orrville, Ohio, where Grove interned the summer before his senior year and developed an interest in the manufacturing world. After graduation, however, Grove opted to stay local and accepted a job in the construction world as a mechanical engineer at Suter Engineering, a company specializing in HVAC (Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning) and plumbing design for commercial buildings in Bridgewater, Virginia. Grove worked on piping, plumbing and duct design that involved doing drawings and field inspections.

After three years, Grove was ready for a change. He called his friend and fellow engineer Longenecker, who had spent the last three years working as a project engineer at Classic Distribution. Longenecker had transitioned from a yearlong internship with Classic Distribution starting the summer of his junior year, where he “did mostly technical drawings,” to a full-time position at the company after graduation working on ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) implementation. In November 2022, Grove became a project engineer at Classic Distribution, where he occasionally works with Longenecker on ERP system projects, but primarily focuses on finding improvements for physical material handling and processing.

Both Longenecker and Grove appreciate their time at EMU. Longenecker says the engineering program taught him how to learn quickly, to teach, to work with people, and to schedule and execute a project. Grove says the program taught him how to think and problem-solve, and exposed him to a variety of different areas to draw on for professional success. Both cite the small class sizes with a personal approach to learning as valuable in helping to build relationships with professors and classmates—relationships they have been able to maintain to this day.

Tara Kishbaugh, chemistry professor and dean of the School of School of Sciences, Engineering, Art and Nursing—along with math professor Owen Byer, engineering professor Esther Tian and biology professor Jim Yoder—modeled the program off of one in the engineering program at Ohio State University. The four leveraged personal connections and LinkedIn to find mentors.

“It’s a mutually beneficial relationship that gives students a safe space to practice their networking skills, learn to ask good questions and listen well, hear professional perspectives, and develop long-term mentoring relationships,” said Kishbaugh. “It also gives mentors the opportunity to impart their skills and knowledge for students’ personal and professional growth.”

Luke Wheeler is a mechanical engineering major from Hudson, Michigan, whose mentor is Ashley Driver, president and owner of AD Engineering LLC based out of Timberville, Virginia. Wheeler is working part-time for Kawneer in Harrisonburg while finishing up his classes and will begin as an associate process engineer with Merck in Elton, Virginia, after graduation. Wheeler says it has been nice to have a resource to reach out to for advice and that he sees the STEM Mentorship Program as a gateway for internships and jobs for students in the years to come.

Ethan Spicher is a mechanical engineering major from Colorado Springs, Colorado, whose mentor is Gil Colman, civil engineer, owner and principal at Colman Engineering, PLC in Harrisonburg. Spicher says he and Colman have talked at length about his resume, engineering projects, and what it’s like to own a firm. Upon graduating, Spicher will work for JZ Engineering, a structural engineering company based in Harrisonburg.

Ben Bontrager-Singer is a mechanical engineering major from Goshen, Indiana, whose mentor is Kevin Nufer, an aerospace structural engineer at Leidos in Manassas, Virginia. Bontrager-Singer says Nufer looked at this resume and helped him to prepare for his job interview with Seattle-based Blue Origin, where Bontrager-Singer landed a job as a propulsion engineer starting after graduation. “It’s valuable to provide connections between students and the workforce and also a good opportunity for engineers to see what education looks like these days,” said Bontrager-Singer.

Interested in participating as an EMU student or community-based mentor in the STEM Mentorship Program? Email Tara Kishbaugh at tara.kishbaugh@emu.edu.

Read more about Bontrager-Singer’s internship at Tesla and all three seniors’ work with Engineers in Action.

Stoltzfus, a graduate of EMU’s business administration program, made so many significant contributions to his field that he was the recipient of the Virginia Department of Aviation’s 2015 Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2006, he was inducted into the Virginia Aviation Hall of Fame and earned the Businessman of the Year honor from the Harrisonburg-Rockingham Chamber of Commerce. He also received the 2018 President’s Award from People to People International, an organization dedicated to peace-building through international partnerships. 

Among other generous ties to EMU, Stoltzfus was especially helpful in providing counsel, connections and information in spring 2020 as university administrators worked to bring home the Guatemala cross-cultural group, trapped when the country’s major airport suddenly closed, according to President Susan Schultz Huxman.

Dynamic Aviation, founded in 1967, provides “special-mission aviation solutions for government and commercial organizations worldwide,” according to their website. It employs more than 750, owns over 140 aircraft, and operates from 18 locations in 11 countries across five continents.

Dynamic Aviation, founded in 1967, provides “special-mission aviation solutions for government and commercial organizations worldwide,” according to their website. It employs more than 750, owns over 140 aircraft, and operates from 18 locations in 11 countries across five continents. 

In a Nov. 19 joint press event with the Governor’s Office, the company announced plans to to expand its operation in Rockingham County, in partnership with Virginia Economic Development Partnership and the Virginia Jobs Investment Program.

His son and the company’s current president and CEO, Michael Stoltzfus, released a statement Saturday on the company’s .

“His body fought vigorously, to the end, just as anyone who knew him would fully expect. And, just as we would imagine, he was fully prepared weeks ago in both mind and spirit to make his journey to join his Heavenly Father. Dad’s example throughout these last weeks was a beautiful testament to his ability to fight the good fight while simultaneously fully accepting God’s unexpected change of plans.”

Would it fly? Where would it go? Would the data collection devices work and the transponders transmit? How would they find it?

Despite the uncertainty, the class emailed invitations to the community and shared about the project on . And on Launch Day, with about 100 onlookers watching, they breathed a collective sigh of relief as the helium-filled balloon ascended into the sky and drifted away.

The balloon carried a styrofoam box packed with equipment to take atmospheric measurements, including an ozone meter and thermometer, as well as a camera and multiple transponders. The students lost track of the balloon for a period of time because of freezing temperatures at altitude, but communication resumed later in time to find out where it landed.

It wasn’t quite where they thought it would be. The students had plugged NOAA data into a simulation that predicted the balloon would travel northwest and land near Parkersburg, West Virginia. Instead, it travelled approximately 165 miles to Vienna, Maryland, dropping into an Eastern Shore cornfield where it was recovered by the local police department.

“We think we may have missed a negative somewhere in the simulation, because it ended up being almost exactly opposite to where it was expected to land,” said Karissa Sauder, who along with classmate Douglas Nester acted as spokespersons for the project.

Their colleagues on the project included Aaron Zimmerman, Ethan Beiler, Blake Sargent, Josh Schlabach and Professor Stefano Colafranceschi.

Inspired by a visit to a NASA research facility three years ago, ��ݮ���� engineering student Dylan Grove ’19 dedicated his senior engineering capstone project to building a wind tunnel for his alma mater.

Grove, who is from Dickerson, Maryland, began research for the tunnel last August, and designed and constructed it this spring and summer. The 14 feet-long structure includes a series of component systems – intake manifold, test chamber, diffuser, blower – that are precisely designed and mounted on a black metal frame to create 100 mile-per-hour winds.

The EMU engineering department will use the tunnel in its fluid mechanics class to model air flow and study lift, drag and other forces on models such as an airplane with an eight-inch wingspan. 

The project’s roots go back to 2016, when then-sophomore Grove and classmates in EMU’s newly christened engineering program saw large-scale wind tunnels during a visit to NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia.

EMU, Grove learned, was planning to buy a wind tunnel for its own use. “Why?” he recalls asking. “We can probably just build one. That sounds like a great senior project.”

(Engineering professor Esther Tian, in a subsequent broadcast on the Shenandoah Valley’s NPR station, commented that the visit had inspired students to brainstorm about this.)

In pursuing that goal, Grove was supported by Venture Products in Orrville, Ohio, where as an engineering intern last summer he learned a lot that he put to hands-on use in this project.

The company donated sheet metal, some of which they cut and bent for creating the intake. Grove was proud and appreciative of the finished product, which he designed and made with help from Venture Product’s Roscoe Lehman: a complex work of engineering art whose “variable radius curve” required that they “build the fabrication process into the design,” he said.

He also found many collaborators right on campus. Professors Tian and Stefano Colafranceschi advised him on the project, and engineering classmates helped with design plans; computer science students with programming the control system; mathematical sciences lab tech Buddy Wilkins with processing ideas; and Facilities Management fleet and equipment coordinator Henry Bowser with welding the frame.

“It’s not just out of my brain, that’s for sure,” Grove said.

Donated materials greatly reduced the cost of the potentially expensive project. In addition to Venture Products’ contributions, the New York Blower Company in Willowbrook, Illinois, donated the blower, and Glass and Metals in Harrisonburg donated the plexiglass.

Throughout, Grove maintained a healthy skepticism, on at least one occasion this summer looking at the various components spread across his workspace and commenting, “If it works, I’ll be really pleased.”

But then two parts would fit together really well, such as when the 450-pound blower was lowered by tractor onto the frame and the six holes for the anchor bolts aligned perfectly. “Oh! Wow!” he remembers thinking. “This is incredible!”

The wind tunnel, stationed in Suter Science Center Room 003, works like this: From the tail end of the tunnel, the blower draws air into a wide-mouthed, fifth-order polynomial-shaped funnel fronted with a honeycomb mesh that breaks up incoming turbulence and straightens the air flow. As air enters the narrowing funnel, it is compressed, accelerating until it reaches and travels through the test chamber, which is walled with plexiglass to allow observation from any direction. On its exit from the chamber, the air is then pulled through the diffuser, a slowly expanding cone, which allows it to decelerate smoothly into the blower.

Dylan Grove and James Paetkau, students and members of the Engineers for a Sustainable World (ESW) club, were the primary poster designers. They traveled to the March 2-5 conference in San Juan, Puerto Rico, with engineering faculty members and .

“This ASEE conference was comprised of engineering programs at large and small universities from over 15 states, so we were quite happy to see our students receive this external validation and encouragement about the quality of their project and presentation,” said King.

The win is especially significant considering the competition included large engineering programs from University of Florida, Virginia Commonwealth University, West Michigan University, West Virginia University and Mercer University.

The chapter, which was established in 2013, has also won other accolades for their projects, says Tian, club advisor, who praised the students’ dedication to their work. “Our won second place at the ASEE Southeastern Section conference in 2014, and our solar-powered chicken coop project competed at the ASEE national conference in 2015. I am very pleased with the work of our students.”

Like all ESW projects, the bike and the poster were team efforts. Club members Ben Zook, Collin Longenecker, Austin Engle, Ben Stutzman and Andrew Troyer also contributed to the poster, which was designed during the fall 2016 semester.

At the poster session, Grove and Paetkau said professors and judges showed considerable interest in the project itself.

The goal of the bike was to contribute to EMU’s variety of on campus by channeling “the waste of mechanical energy generated by exercise machines,” the researchers said. “To reduce the unnecessary waste, the club saw the opportunity to add an alternative form of energy created by gym goers on campus … The stationary bicycle would serve as a way to promote sustainability and give an opportunity for individuals to generate clean energy while exercising.”

Fundings from an helped start the project, which drew on skills, time and labor of several club members, as well as welding provided by physical plant employee Henry Bowser. A 350-watt gear reduction electric motor replaced the back wheel, a chain connected pedals and motor crankshaft, and a grid tie inverter used to convert direct current to alternating current compatible with EMU’s grid.

Several attendees at the poster session suggested that storage of the energy was the next step. “More than asking us questions about the project, they gave us suggestions about what to do with the project in the future,” Grove said.

“They really pushed us to think about how we could use this project to create change,” Paetkau added.

He said being at the conference among engineers and other engineering students was worth the trip itself. “It really made me excited about what we can do in the future, especially seeing some of the junior/senior projects.”

Grove was pleased to see that EMU “stacks up” to other programs. “We’re a smaller university, and there were some big ones there, so it’s great to see we are competitive.”

In addition to attending conference activities, the group also did some sight-seeing, including a visit to Arecibo Observatory, a rainforest, one of the island’s three bioluminescent bays, seaside cliffs, and of course, the beach.

Though a special treat for all, these excursions were especially interesting to Paetkau, who hopes to focus his engineering studies on biomimicry, an emerging field that seeks to develop innovation based on nature’s models and systems to solve complex challenges.

Engineers for a Sustainable World, referred to by its members as ESW, is only a year old, and though it has already achieved significant results, still has not been heard of by the majority of the EMU population.

ESW is a national organization with chapters at approximately 40 universities across the country, with the only Virginia chapter located here at EMU.

Esther Tian, assistant professor of engineering, started the organization her first year here in hopes of stimulating sustainable projects on campus.

“I thought [ESW] was a really good fit with the mission of the university,” said Tian, who is excited with the inaugural successes of ESW.

Last winter, the club drew up plans for its first project ever: a new greenhouse for EMU’s Sustainable Food Initiative.

“We wanted to build a low-budget greenhouse with the materials we had on hand,” said junior Jordan Leaman, student president of ESW and a computer science major. “To make it more sustainable, we designed it to be completely solar-powered.”

In a continued collaboration of EMU initiatives, EarthKeepers helped to fund the building of the greenhouse, which cost about $600.

Leaman, along with five other students, completed the building project in one impressive eight-hour workday in March.

In addition, ESW used the greenhouse project design to win second place in the undergraduate division of the American Society for Engineering Education regional competition last spring.

Leaman and a team of three others designed an informative poster detailing the structure and aerodynamics of the project.

Under the guidance of Tian and Leaman, ESW has several projects in the works for their second year, including a solar panel canopy to assist in charging the physical plant’s golf carts.

“There are so many possibilities with solar,” said Leaman, “but right now, we’re doing what we can with the limited resources we have.”

In defining ESW, both Tian and Leaman emphasized the discovery of workable solutions to everyday problems.

“Our projects benefit the university and the community,” said Tian proudly. “Our club is a little different because we plan projects instead of activities.”

First-year student Isaiah Williams enjoys the practicality and project-based orientation of the club. “It allows me to utilize what I learned in engineering class and apply it to real life scenarios,” he said.

Like Williams, most members of ESW are students in the pre-engineering program. Others, like Leaman, found their interests sparked by Tian’s “Introduction to Engineering” class.

Leaman remarked, “Engineering has always been my passion, but [Esther] really drew me into the club. I’m excited for the upcoming years; we have some cool projects planned.”

A poster describing the project – a solar-powered greenhouse – also won second place in the first- and second-year Engineering Design Team Division at a of the , held in Georgia at Mercer University from March 30 to April 1, 2014.

Three members of EMU’s chapter of Engineers for a Sustainable World () (the first chapter in Virginia) traveled to the conference along with faculty advisor , assistant professor of .

“Our poster was unique because it described something tangible that we had built,” says ESW club president Jordan Leaman. “Many of the other projects were research-based and not very practical.”

Earlier this winter, the seed of the greenhouse project germinated in a brainstorming session between first-year roommates Leaman and major Jonathan Nisly. Building a greenhouse for was Nisly’s idea. Funding for the project came from Earthkeepers.

“A lot of people build these structures with 20-foot lengths of PVC pipe, adding as many hoops as you want for the length of the greenhouse,” says Leaman.

Two weeks prior to the conference, six ESW club members assembled the 12 x 50-foot skeleton of the greenhouse, sealing it with a 6 mil plastic sheet the following week. The interior was 20 degrees warmer than outside temperatures the next day.

To complete the project, the club will apply for a grant from Engineers for a Sustainable World for fans and supplemental solar heat to further extend the growing season through the winter months.

The aerodynamic shape of the curved tunnel helps with wind resistance. Without fittings on the pipes, the structure can bend and flex with high winds. (The students admit they called back to campus to confirm the greenhouse withstood the 50-mph gusts that blew through Harrisonburg while they were at the conference.)

That weekend, the students from EMU had the opportunity to mix with young engineers from other schools who presented a range of projects, and learned about humanitarian engineering projects sponsored by Mercer University.

“The conference was kind of a whirlwind of new ideas and information being thrown at us,” says Nisly.

A presentation on prosthetics design and testing – part of a Mercer project working with amputees in Vietnam – gave the students insights into practical applications of engineering principles, says Tian.

“Engineers working to promote environmental, economic and social sustainability is very important to me,” she says. One of Tian’s first initiatives after joining EMU’s and faculty in the fall of 2013 was to start an ESW chapter. She is pleased that the club’s first project received regional recognition.

In the poster’s conclusion, the ESW students describe the greenhouse as “a valuable asset to the university, as well as an opportunity for the ESW club to put our skills to work. It is a project that can be used as a model for other academic institutions, and we hope its impact will reach beyond our campus.”

Pre-engineering students at EMU have successfully moved from a strong foundation in math, physics and engineering classes to excel in specialized engineering schools at universities such as Penn State, Virginia Tech, and the University of Virginia, says Tian.

The new faculty, announced by provost Fred Kniss, are:

Amy Gillespie, EdD, assistant professor of the practice of nursing

Gillespie earned a BS in nursing from Duke University and an MSN from the University of Virginia. She holds an EdD from the University of Phoenix and has over 30 years of floor and administrative nursing experience. Gillespie also brings collegiate adjunct faculty experience in teaching acute care medical-surgical nursing.

Jennifer Holsinger, PhD, associate professor of sociology

Holsinger earned a BA in sociology at Seattle Pacific University. She holds an MA and a PhD from the University of Washington. Holsinger has collegiate experience teaching as an associate professor at Whitworth University and served as interim director of the U.S. cultural studies minor in 2012-13. Her areas of scholarly interest are race and ethnic relations, urban sociology, environmental sociology, demography, applied sociology and African and Middle Eastern studies.

Daniel King, PhD, assistant professor of physics

King earned a BA in physics and music at Goshen College. He holds an MA and a PhD from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. King served as a teaching assistant providing laboratory instruction at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His research interests include ultrasound, microbubble dynamics, acoustics, biomechanics and fluid mechanics.

Kristen Kirwan, assistant professor of the practice of nursing

Kirwan earned a BS in nursing at the University of Virginia and an MSN from Vanderbilt University School of Nursing. Kirwan brings a variety of nursing experience both in hospitals and family nurse practitioner settings. Her most recent professional experience has been at James Madison University as a family nurse practitioner.

Nate Koser, PhD, assistant professor of counseling

Koser earned a BS in psychology and an MA in counseling from EMU. He completed his PhD at Saybrook University in summer 2013. Koser has collegiate experience as an instructor in the MA in counseling program at EMU. His interests are in assisting and accompanying individuals to move towards an authentic life.

Jessica Kraybill, PhD, assistant professor of psychology

Kraybill earned a BA in psychology at Earlham College. She holds an MS and PhD from Virginia Tech. Kraybill has collegiate teaching experience as an instructor at Virginia Tech. Her specialty is in developmental and biological psychology and shares that teaching is her passion.

Justin Poole, PhD, assistant professor of theater

Poole earned a BA in communications with a theater emphasis at Eastern University. He holds an MA from Villanova University and a PhD from the University of Maryland. Poole spent two years studying with the Austrian Academic Exchange Program, one year in Vienna and one year in Salzburg, Austria. His research interests are devised theater/ensemble play development, contemporary European experimental performance, and contemporary performances of classical texts.

Andrea Dalton Saner, assistant professor of Old Testament and Hebrew Language

Dalton Saner earned a BA in Bible at Messiah College and an MA at Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary. She completed her PhD at Durham University in the United Kingdom in 2013. Dalton Saner’s faculty appointment will be a joint one with Eastern Mennonite Seminary and the undergraduate Bible and religion department. She has previous collegiate teaching experience at Goshen College. Her areas of interest include Old Testament theological interpretation.

Maria Esther Showalter, lecturer in the language and literature department

Showalter earned a BA in foreign languages from Gabriel R. Morena University in Bolivia and an MA from George Mason University. She has prior collegiate experience at EMU, having taught as an instructor in both the Intensive English Program and the language and literature department.

Debora Snarr, assistant professor of the practice of nursing

Snarr earned a BS in nursing and an MSN at the University of Maryland. She is a certified adult nurse practitioner and brings years of nursing experience in a variety of settings. Her nursing experience has focused on diverse populations in different settings. Snarr is passionate about the voice of the nurse and evidence-based practice.

Jianghong (Esther) Tian, PhD, assistant professor of engineering

Tian earned a BS in mechanical engineering and a MS at Changsha Institute of Technology. She holds a PhD from the University of Virginia. Tian recently taught statistics and calculus at The Miller School of Albemarle in Charlottesville, Va. Her research interests include robotics.

Anne Waltner, DMA, assistant professor of music

Waltner earned a BA in piano performance and biology at Goshen College. She holds an MM from the Chicago College of Performing Arts and a DMA from the Cleveland Institute of Music. Waltner has collegiate teaching experience at West Virginia State University, where she directed keyboard studies. She maintains an active solo and collaborative performing schedule.

“We envision the dual degree program as one that will allow students to embrace the Anabaptist mission and vision that EMU espouses while also obtaining the training needed to put their skills to work as an engineer,” said Deirdre Smeltzer, PhD, chair of mathematical sciences.

The program commences in the fall of 2012.

Students will spend two years at EMU, immersed in calculus, physics and introductory science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) courses.

In the fall of the third year, students will transition to EMU’s Washington Community Scholars’ Center in Washington, D.C., fulfilling their cross-cultural requirement and gaining internship experience and valuable STEM training, according to Smeltzer.

“Then, in the spring of the third year, students will transfer to CUA and spend two years completing additional requirements,” Smeltzer said.

Nancy Heisey, academic dean at EMU, said she is excited about bringing together “the best gifts of EMU’s liberal arts curriculum with the high quality engineering training offered by CUA.”

Upon completion, students will emerge with bachelor’s degrees from both EMU and CUA.

Jake Bontrager-Singer, a first-year mathematics major from Goshen, Ind., said the pre-engineering classes he’s taken have given him “a level of understanding the material you cannot get from a large lecture. In addition, all my classes are interconnected and build on each other giving me the essentials in math, physics and chemistry that I need to advance.”

More information

More information on the engineering program can be found at emu.edu/math/engineering. Interested students can download a sample two-year curriculum (PDF) for review.