About Flagpole. (Athens, Ga.) 1987-current | View Entire Issue (June 1, 2011)
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
