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any one item
at regular price
One coupon per customer per day. Offer is not valid
with any other coupon, discount or previous purchase.
Valid only June 1 • June 8.2011.
■ f ^ art supplies
IWM■ ■
706-548-5334
Half-pints^ Summer Camps
“Half-pints can
become artists
at Pints and
Paints.”
Created for
artists of
all ages and
skill levels
Half-pints Summer Camps in June & July.
Ages 5-8 and 9-13
www.pintsandpaints.com
675 Pulaski St. • Leathers Building
Do You Want to Stop Drinking Alcohol?
• We are conducting a study on a medication for treating alcohol
problems.
• Participation will include five in-person assessments, including four
sessions of individual outpatient treatment for alcohol problems.
• There is no cost for the treatment.
• You will be asked to take a medication or placebo on two occasions.
Call 706-542-8350 for more information.
The University of Georgia
r\
foundation, m.
ream
M Sian Bali Jan
Benefits the Jordan Ellis Memorial
Saturday, June 4
9am untll~.
at Norm Grayson's Farm 1061 Grayson Lane
Bogart, Georgia (off Hodges Mill Rd.)
BAND UNE-UP
10am Chris Hampton
Ham Emily MeCannon and
The Smokin' Hot Band
1pm Tempted Vibe
3pm Bobby Compton
5pm Live Auction
6pm Grains Of Sand
9pm Saint Francis
4 $IE at the gate
LIVE & SILENT AUCTIONS
KIDS* ACTIVITIES!
LAWN CHAIRS WELCOME!
FOOD & SOFT BRINKS
AVAILABLE FOR SALE!
For more Information cal
706-206-1824
Engineering Students Address
Campus Bike Infrastructure
W hen Chris Young and Matt Bland
walked into Dr. David Gattie's senior
engineering class for the first
time, they did not know what was in store.
The course required that the students split
into groups to collaborate on a final design
project—an "exit show" incorporating years
of accumulated knowledge in their fields.
According to the guidelines of the project,
the final producOvould have to be an imple-
mentable engineering-based solution to a
specific problem on the University of Georgia's
campus.
With such a broad charge, many students
did not know where to begin or how to iden
tify a challenge that would be worthwhile and
practical to solve, says Young, a bio-chemical
engineering student from upstate New York.
Young had difficulty thinking of a project
that would incorporate his specific major into
a feasible solution, so he decided he would
focus on a different area of interest: alterna
tive transportation.
Bland, originally from Sylvania, GA, had a
similar idea. Drawing from his personal expe
rience as a cyclist on
campus, Bland came up
with a problem state
ment. "I ride my bike
on campus," he says,
"and there are lots of
areas where it's danger
ous for cyclists. My idea
was to reduce the num
ber of bikes on the road
by providing alternative
routes."
After speaking with
one another regard
ing their ideas, Bland
and Young, along with
five other engineering
students, teamed up
to tackle the problem.
With Bland acting as
the design team leader,
the group began to col
laborate on a solution.
The first step in crafting a solution was to
identify stakeholders in the project. The group
knew that student cyclists like Bland would
be interested, but they gradually realized
their project could affect more people than
they anticipated. 'There were the bikers, non
bikers, architects, police. We interviewed all
the stakeholders and thought about what they
needed on campus and how they were affected
by bike traffic," he says.
Once they had interviewed members of
each group, the team agreed the primary
stakeholders in implementation of a bicycle
network were the university architects. "We
wanted to address concerns of the students,
the users of our designs, but all concept
solutions would ultimately be decided by the
university architects," Young says. "We did
studies of what the students wanted—both
cyclists and non-cyclists—to develop our
problem statement, but we considered the
primary stakeholders as the ones we needed
to design for in order to address the problem
statement."
The group initially agreed that a bicycle
greenway running through campus would be
the best way to address bike traffic. But once
the group began researching the idea, they
realized their solution would have to be less
ambitious, as they were thwarted by lack of
space on campus to accommodate such a
design.
Rather than a greenway specifically for
bikers, the team went with a more general
plan. They drafted a design for a trail run
ning through Myers Quad off Lumpkin Street,
and a path that would ease traffic flow for
cyclists at the intersection of Sanford Drive
and Baldwin Street, which is both notoriously
dangerous for cyclists and suffers from a one
way traffic design that interrupts southbound
riders on a major route through the heart of
campus—a situation sometimes referred to as
the "Sanford snafu."
Using their individual areas of expertise to
enhance their design, the group came up with
a finished blueprint after 15 weeks of brain
storming, interviewing and collaborating with
one another. The viability of the design, Young
says, is attributable to the nature of engineer
ing as a discipline. "The greatest help of being
an engineering major was the learned skill of
parsing down a large problem into its simplest
components and then generating and evaluat
ing solutions to each sub-set in the light of
the big picture of the problem statement,"
he says. "The intense grounding in scientific
principles that engineering requires helped us
to create solutions that will work in the real
world."
The students have not yet taken the steps
to implement their plan in "the real world,"
but Kevin Kirsche, director of the UGA Office
of Sustainability, feels hopeful about their
solution. "(Their project) underscores both the
need for improvement and the student interest
in developing viable transportation options,"
he says. "Their work will help to form the
foundation from which a comprehensive cam
pus bike plan will be crafted."
Though Kirsche admits it is not in the bud
get to implement the plan right now, Young
and Bland, who both graduated on May 13,
hope to see their solution take effect in the
coming years, even if they are not able to
enjoy the benefits themselves. "If any part
of our suggestions and designs are put into
effect over the next few years, then we will
get that affirmation of the work we did. I
don't need to be there to appreciate that,"
Young says. "Besides, it's always good to leave
a place better than you found it. You never
know when you might be back."
Bryan Barks
— ... .
Cyclists entering Sanford Drive from Baldwin Street must dismount and walk
their bikes to Hooper Street, where two-way traffic begins. A bike path around
this "snafu” is one of the elements of the engineering students’ plan.
8 FLAGPOLE.COM JUNE 1,2011
