Copters in the classroom
The $500 hobby-shop helicopter whirling through a laboratory in the basement of Homewood's Barton Hall is not there to amuse the undergraduates. The copter is a key teaching tool in a demanding electrical engineering course aimed at preparing students for high-tech jobs in the aviation and automotive industries. Students in this class must program a computer to guide the aircraft safely through various maneuvers without help from a human "pilot." They cannot use the remote control box that normally steers such helicopters.
   This aerial challenge has become part of a long-standing course called Control Systems Design, or Electrical and Computer Engineering 454. This spring, students for the first time will use model helicopters to see if the commands they've devised for a computer mockup will run a real-life flying machine. Full story...

Students explore South America's biological treasures
Students and faculty from Johns Hopkins this past January initiated what they hope will become a tradition with the first offering of an intersession course called Tropical Biology and Ecology in Ecuador and the Galapagos.
   The course took faculty and students on an adventurous 13-day odyssey of learning through the volcanic Galapagos Islands, off the coast of Ecuador; Quito, the capital city of Ecuador; and the remote tropical rain forest in eastern Ecuador.
   While there, the group also initiated the tentative beginnings of a relationship between Hopkins and ESPE, a university in Ecuador that played a key role in facilitating the trip. Full story...

The Gazette The Johns Hopkins University
Suite 100 3003 N. Charles St. Baltimore, MD 21218
410-516-8514 gazette@jhu.edu.