04.23.19

Page 1

WWW.REFLECTOR-ONLINE.COM

@REFLECTORONLINE

TUESDAY APRIL 23, 2019

134th YEAR ISSUE 47

THE STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF MISSISSIPPI STATE UNIVERSITY SINCE 1884

Boeing, NASA, MSU open Marvin Students sleep on Drill B. Dow Stitched Composites Center Field to sympathize with plight of homeless

DREW GARDNER STAFF WRITER

SAVANNAH MUNN

On April 12, Mississippi State University held its grand opening for the Marvin B. Dow Stitched Composites Center at the Raspet Flight Research Laboratory. The center was awarded to MSU for excellence in aerospace engineering from the largest aerospace company in the world, Boeing. According to NASA’s website, the Marvin B. Dow Center consists of equipment from Boeing to further streamline the process of creating a faster and more efficient means of transportation for aircraft and cargo ships. The stitched composites themselves are an industry game changer not only because they make aircraft, cargo ships and other similar modes of transportation faster and lighter, but the production costs are also reduced drastically. According to Danny Drake, an MSU graduate student studying aerospace engineering, the current composites have a very weak thickness factor, and that is where the stitched composites come into play. Composites that are not stitched can suffer from delamination, where the top layer comes undone due to the layers not being sealed together tightly enough. Stitched composites, on the other hand, allow reinforcement of the layers at a cost-efficient price

Justin Truss | The Reflector

MSU was selected by NASA and Boeing to house the new Marvin B. Dow Stitched Composites Center, where MSU engineering professors and students are able to participate in the development of stitched composites. Pictured is a state-of-the-art stitching machine.

while adding a new level of efficiency. The Marvin B. Dow Stitched Composites Center, currently housed at the Raspet Flight Research Center, was previously housed in Huntington Beach, California at The Boeing Company. The laboratory was a gift from Boeing to MSU for winning a nationwide competition, said Dennis Smith, head of the department of chemistry at MSU and director of the MSU Advanced Composites Institutes. The Marvin B. Dow Center consists of state-ofthe-art equipment, access to Boeing engineers and an autoclave. The autoclave, which looks like a giant pressure cooker, functions

Engineering student with public policy dreams named MSU’s 19th Truman Scholar

TORI BOATNER STAFF WRITER

With a passion for energy conservation and public service, Mississippi State University senior Alicia Brown of Petal, Mississippi was announced MSU’s 19th recipient of the highly respected Harry S. Truman Scholarship April 11th .

The award offers recipients $30,000 for graduate school in exchange for their work in public service. Initially, Brown said she was not planning to apply for the scholarship. “I figured that since I was an engineering major, I wasn’t the ideal candidate,” Brown said. TRUMAN, 2

Alicia Brown| Courtesy Photo

Senior Chemical Engineering major Alicia Brown is the universityʼs 19th Truman Scholar.

TUESDAY HI: 78 LO: 56 SKY: Partly Cloudy POP: 0%

Hopkins introduced the event by expressing his hope that students would leave with a better understanding of hunger and homelessness. Before the event began, the campaign organizers placed cardboard signs, similar to the signs homeless people use, along the paths across the Drill Field. The signs displayed statistics concerning homelessness written in black marker, along with messages like “Who are we as human beings if we ignore the suffering of others?” The statistics stated homeless children are twice as likely to be sick and starving, and one in three homeless children suffer from a major mental disorder by the time they are eight. Two guest speakers spoke to the attendees about their personal experience with homelessness.

STAFF WRITER

WEDNESDAY HI: 80 LO: 59 SKY: Sunny POP: 20%

THURSDAY HI: 75 LO: 60 SKY: Stormy POP: 80%

as an oven used to heat and shape the polymers, according to a press release. “What’s really interesting about the robotic stitching system is that the parameters associated with the stitching process greatly influence the in-plane and out-of-plane composite properties,” Drake said. According to a press release, Marvin B. Dow was a scientist at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia who created the stitched composites with the McDonnell Douglas company, which eventually merged with Boeing in 1997. David Bowles, director of the NASA Langley Research Center, said Dow’s ideas have revolutionized

the use of composites in the aerospace industry. “Marvin Dow’s ideas have been a game-changer,” Bowles said. “When you look at composites today, they really have transformed the aerospace industry.” Smith provided the opening speech for the Stitched Composite Center grand opening, emphasizing how the new center will serve as a unifying factor across colleges. “The driver behind all of this is the cross-college collaboration,” Smith said. Through the help of MSU engineers, Boeing’s engineers and cross-college cooperation, the Marvin B. Dow Center is an important expansion to Mississippi State’s legacy.

Last Tuesday, Mississippi State University’s Holmes Cultural Diversity Center hosted the inaugural Sleep Out for the Homeless campaign in recognition of Unity Month, a series of events designed to explore diversity and inclusion. In addition to raising awareness about the plight of the homeless, the event accepted donations of canned or non-perishable food items to donate to MSU’s Thrive Program, an organization committed to assisting students who are or were part of the foster care system, have lost both parents or have dealt with homelessness. The campaign was organized by the HCDC’s Assistant Director Timothy Hopkins, who was inspired by similar events at other colleges.

SLEEP, 2

Jailand Williams | Courtesy Photo

MSU students participate in various activities to increase awareness of homelessness.

MSU Libraries adds digitized Citizens’ Council Radio Forum to collection

EMMA MOFFETT

encountered the Citizens’ Council Forum materials in special collections when working on his article analyzing the relationship between the Citizens’ Council and the right-wing media. Though he was at first only analyzing the Citizens’ Council newspaper, the members of the department directed him to Stephanie Rolph’s transcriptions of the Forum, which helped him analyze a later and different phase of the Council. Davis said it is vital for university archivists to exist and continue to know, expand and digitize their collections in order for historians and other researchers to work effectively. “The relationship between historians and library archivists is really critical because without them, without their knowledge of the archives, we can’t really do our jobs properly,” Davis said. COUNCIL, 2

STAFF WRITER

After years of grant application processes, file reconstruction and website organization, the Mississippi State University Libraries now house 269 of the Citizens’ Council Radio Forum as a part of their digitized recordings collection. The Citizens’ Council, a political group founded on the basis of white supremacy, began in Mississippi following the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court ruling, which declared segregation in public schools unconstitutional. The Citizens’ Council Radio Forum ran from 1957 to 1966 and covered topics including civil rights, communism and segregation. The Citizens’ Council broadcasted their forums all around the country, and despite being difficult to

Rosalind Hutton

study, the material played an important role in shaping the nation’s current social and political climate. Ian Davis, an MSU doctoral student studying history, is among many historians who advocate the importance of researching such provocative groups for the purpose of understanding today’s political climate. “In the case of the 1960s, the Citizens’ Council was actually a very big entity

FORECAST: Temperatures will remain in the high 70s during the day, with clear skies being predicted for Wednesday. However, beginning Wednesday night, the chance of precipitation will increase. Thunderstorms are likely Thursday afternoon going into the eve Courtesy of National Weather Service

at the time. It wasn’t just a Southern group. It wasn’t just a white supremacist group,” Davis said. “Their ambitions were national, and they actually had an office in D.C. For understanding why integration takes as long as it does and why there is a legacy of stiff resistance to it, one has to look at a group like the Citizens’ Council because they were at the forefront of things.” Davis previously

Readerʼs Guide: Bulletin Board Puzzles Classifieds Bad Dawgs

3 3&4 3 2

Opinion Contact Info Life&Entertainment Sports

4 4 5 6

Policy: Any person may pick up a single copy of The Reflector for free. Additional copies may be obtained from the Henry Meyer Student Media Center for 25 cents per copy.


Turn static files into dynamic content formats.

Create a flipbook
Issuu converts static files into: digital portfolios, online yearbooks, online catalogs, digital photo albums and more. Sign up and create your flipbook.
04.23.19 by Reflector Editor - Issuu