Hands on New Orleans: Getting More Than You Give
05/27/2008 17:24
Hands on New Orleans: Getting More Than You Give
Posted on: Tuesday, 27 May 2008, 03:00 CDT
By Byko, Maureen
On a sunny Saturday in New Orleans, Joy Hines-just in from the snowy Midwest-spent the better part of her day on the floor of an elementary school building, surrounded by paper, paints, and brushes (Figure 1). In fact, some 55 attendees of the TMS 2008 Annual Meeting in March started their trip to Louisiana, not with dining or shopping or socializing, but working to beautify the campus of the flood-ravaged Mary D. Coghill Elementary School. The project was organized by Hands on New Orleans, a nonprofit group that coordinates the efforts of volunteers who want to help in Katrina recovery efforts. All day, TMS members such as Hines, who is chair of the Materials Processing & Manufacturing Division, worked alongside Material Advantage members and other volunteers to paint, build, and plant some life into the drab school campus. When the work was done, TMS had left its mark on the school and the event left its mark on the volunteers. (And, as can be seen on the cover, the students of the school left their mark on JOM.)
Like Hines, Garry Warren, TMS financial planning officer, spent hours on the floor of the school, painting a mural with painstaking precision (Figure 2). A professor at the University of Alabama, he said his students particularly enjoyed the chance to volunteer. "I was frankly surprised at the enthusiasm with which students embraced the service project with Hands on New Orleans," Warren said. "All three of them wanted to participate and want to repeat next year.
"These activities not only raise the profile of TMS but also benefit our member participants and those on the receiving end. I am a firm believer that the role of an engineer is to apply science to benefit society but we need specific examples, and we need to encourage our young members to do so by giving these activities a high profile and by setting an example for them to follow."
In another outreach effort at the annual meeting, 2007 TMS President Robert D. Shull announced that the society had signed an agreement to partner with the 4-H, a national youth organization, in providing science, technology, and engineering programming.
That program, along with the kind of community involvement initiated with the Hands on New Orleans project, stands to benefit TMS, the profession, and society in general, Hines said.
"Doing these types of projects provides inspiration to those of us in the engineering community to find further meaning in our own work," Hines said. "Many of the world's problems require engineering solutions. For example, in the Hands on New Orleans project, we went to an area that was still visibly recovering from the effects of the flooding after Hurricane Katrina. Regardless of the political discussion, at the end of the day, to avoid another disaster like this, the levies in New Orleans will have to withstand another storm of this magnitude. That means the models will have to be accurate, the design robust, and the materials up to the task. Those are the types of engineering challenges that every member of TMS faces every day in their own work."
Maureen Byko is managing editor of JOM.
Copyright Minerals, Metals & Materials Society May 2008
(c) 2008 JOM. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.
Posted on: Tuesday, 27 May 2008, 03:00 CDT
By Byko, Maureen
On a sunny Saturday in New Orleans, Joy Hines-just in from the snowy Midwest-spent the better part of her day on the floor of an elementary school building, surrounded by paper, paints, and brushes (Figure 1). In fact, some 55 attendees of the TMS 2008 Annual Meeting in March started their trip to Louisiana, not with dining or shopping or socializing, but working to beautify the campus of the flood-ravaged Mary D. Coghill Elementary School. The project was organized by Hands on New Orleans, a nonprofit group that coordinates the efforts of volunteers who want to help in Katrina recovery efforts. All day, TMS members such as Hines, who is chair of the Materials Processing & Manufacturing Division, worked alongside Material Advantage members and other volunteers to paint, build, and plant some life into the drab school campus. When the work was done, TMS had left its mark on the school and the event left its mark on the volunteers. (And, as can be seen on the cover, the students of the school left their mark on JOM.)
Like Hines, Garry Warren, TMS financial planning officer, spent hours on the floor of the school, painting a mural with painstaking precision (Figure 2). A professor at the University of Alabama, he said his students particularly enjoyed the chance to volunteer. "I was frankly surprised at the enthusiasm with which students embraced the service project with Hands on New Orleans," Warren said. "All three of them wanted to participate and want to repeat next year.
"These activities not only raise the profile of TMS but also benefit our member participants and those on the receiving end. I am a firm believer that the role of an engineer is to apply science to benefit society but we need specific examples, and we need to encourage our young members to do so by giving these activities a high profile and by setting an example for them to follow."
In another outreach effort at the annual meeting, 2007 TMS President Robert D. Shull announced that the society had signed an agreement to partner with the 4-H, a national youth organization, in providing science, technology, and engineering programming.
That program, along with the kind of community involvement initiated with the Hands on New Orleans project, stands to benefit TMS, the profession, and society in general, Hines said.
"Doing these types of projects provides inspiration to those of us in the engineering community to find further meaning in our own work," Hines said. "Many of the world's problems require engineering solutions. For example, in the Hands on New Orleans project, we went to an area that was still visibly recovering from the effects of the flooding after Hurricane Katrina. Regardless of the political discussion, at the end of the day, to avoid another disaster like this, the levies in New Orleans will have to withstand another storm of this magnitude. That means the models will have to be accurate, the design robust, and the materials up to the task. Those are the types of engineering challenges that every member of TMS faces every day in their own work."
Maureen Byko is managing editor of JOM.
Copyright Minerals, Metals & Materials Society May 2008
(c) 2008 JOM. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.