The student newspaper of Stevens Institute of Technology, and creator of Attila the Duck.
Is anyone else still jetlagged from daylight savings??
We write Stevens history VOLUME CXIX No. 19
HOBOKEN, NJ | MARCH 25, 2022
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Town hall illustrates Strategic Plan progress BY BENJAMIN KNOBLOCH, STAFF WRITER On March 21, the Strategic Plan Steering Committee held a virtual town hall open to faculty, staff, and students. The Committee is in charge of the development of Stevens’ 2022-2023 strategic plan, with the meeting focusing on the presentation of draft goals for each of the University’s seven areas of focus. Planning events for the plan have been held periodically since Spring of 2021. Dr. Jianmin Qu, Chair of the Committee and Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs, gave the presentation and led the subsequent question and answer segment. Before beginning, he stressed that all parts of the current draft plan are subject to change and that the Committee will be highly responsive to feedback from all corners of the campus community. The University also touted its progress from 2011 to 2021, when the administration was guided by its last strategic plan. Although falling short in some areas, like international enrollment, Stevens saw dramatic growth in overall undergraduate enrollment, research funding, and infrastructure development. Dr. Qu said that the University will be driven by a
guiding vision to be a “premier student-centric technological research university.” Its values, he said, will be excellence, creativity and innovation, student-centricity, community, respect, responsibility and accountability, and sustainability. Stevens’ overarching goal will be to improve its reputation and prestige, as well as to expand the horizons of human knowledge. It will accomplish this, Dr. Qu said, by pursuing the dual objectives of enhancing the experience and success of students and amplifying the impact of University research and education, in a strategy called “Excellence in All We Do.” “Our motto should be ‘Once a duck, always a duck,’” he emphasized. Other overarching strategies were outlined. One of these was the pursuit of “modest” growth and selective increases in academic and research offerings, perhaps indicating that the University desires total enrollment to climb at a more modest pace than it did over the previous ten years. This year, many courses had difficulty finding regular open classrooms, while the previous location of Colonel Johns is currently being converted into two new classrooms. The other strategies centered around the University’s efforts to in-
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UKRAINE BEFORE AND AFTER BOMBINGS, COURTESY OF BUZZFEED NEWS
Ukraine-Russia war: Stevens alumna’s personal story of resilience and hope BY ROSHNI REVANKAR, OPINION EDITOR Too often, we choose to become desensitized to the human side of wars—seeking facts and statistics—unaware of the historic changes battle brings in our education and culture decades down the line. Especially in the current environment with the Ukraine-Russia war, for those of us who have not lived through such events in
Using AI for good: Conversations with Professor Dunn BY ROSHNI REVANKAR, OPINION EDITOR Earlier this year, Professor Jason Corso and Professor Enrique Dunn in the Department of Computer Science were awarded a DARPA grant of nearly $5.9 million dollars to research and develop the first Multi-Directional Loosely-Linked Archetype Models for Perceptually-Enabled Task Guidance program—or in short, MILLY. This project is a collaboration between multiple institutions, with co-investigators in the University of Rochester, University of Michigan, and Purdue University. The program’s goal is to help any individual easily complete a task in a new environment by having the program “continuously learn through a variety of sources…and practice ‘active learning’ in order to adapt on the fly.” Among the 15 research centers and labs across multiple disciplines on campus, the MILLY team received the grant through Stevens Institute for Artificial Intelligence (SIAI). The Stute had the chance to interview Professor Dunn to learn more about MILLY, and what he is most excited about in this project to broaden the horizons of artificial intelligence
(AI). In Dunn’s words, MILLY will be a program that is a “tutor, assistant, and guide.” MILLY takes in those wide ranges of data inputs or resources to automatically learn how to internally present a task. The program will come up with a sequence of instructions for the individual to complete a task and will use machine learning to learn the sequence. Dunn further emphasized that there will be two important ways that MILLY will be different from other alternative programs available today. First, through its learning capabilities, it will be fully automated modeling of tasks. Second, the automated analysis that interprets the users’ and the sequences’ actions based on observations. Current alternative designs and programs require the continuous addition of new data points and a programmer in the back finding the inefficiencies in the program — MILLY takes care of that. Ultimately, MILLY will be a program that can remove the programmer from the automation task, and make task automation and task learning more efficient. Working with different co-investigators across institutions across the U.S. reinforces the diverse backgrounds and capabilities that
NEWS (2-3)
SCIENCE (6)
Read more about changes to campus through the River Street planting project, new art murals on campus, and changes to Colonel John’s
Learn about COVID medical garbage and AI deepfakes
FEATURES (4-5)
Read more about women at Stevens through the years in the Women’s history month feature
OPINION (7-9)
Editorial Mind of a Freshman Senioritis Lifestyle HACKs Not Financial Times (NFT) Off The Press Passion for Fashion
can really set MILLY apart from others. The DARPA award intends to support the multiple Ph.D. students across various institutions and provides the resources necessary to advance MILLY’s developments. More importantly, Dunn is excited about how this project can make AI and augmented reality (AR) opportunities more practical in the future. As MILLY is developed more over the years, and people become more appreciative of AI and AR opportunities in the future, he is hopeful that AI can help carry out many more daily tasks in a very practical manner. While it is difficult to determine the exact users of MILLY early in its development, Dunn intends for MILLY’s predominant use to be education. He hopes for MILLY to help educate individuals in tasks across various industries— whether it be working on fixing and building something manufacturing or performing surgery in hospitals— hands-on, eliminating the need for aids and manuals. That’s where Dunn’s knowledge and background in computer vision and 3D imaging come into play. As mentioned before, the beauty of the MILLY project is the diversity in the investigators’
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our lifetime, it can be difficult to understand the fear, concern, and resilience of those on the ground. The Stute had the opportunity to share the personal story of Stevens alumna Natalia Sawka (Malantchouk) ‘08, who immigrated to the U.S. when she was a freshman in high school, her family’s history with Ukraine, and how our community can get involved in aiding Ukrainian refugees. Sawka was born into the
Soviet Union (USSR) and witnessed the Soviet Union break up when she was six years old. When the USSR fell apart, Ukraine was independent and her family was able to celebrate holidays without the fear of retaliation from the USSR government. She grew up in the city of Chervonohrad, which was about 30 miles away from the Polish border. Sawka has very fond memories of growing up in Chervonohrad, and when educating the gravity
of the current Ukraine-Russia war to friends and colleagues, Sawka shares the personal story of her grandfather’s journey to freedom during World War II. During World War II, Ukraine was engaged in conflict against the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany (19421949). Ukraine was a strategic location for surrounding countries and a resistance army rose up to reclaim the
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THE ATHLETICS CORNER Brett Kaliner becomes first Bowling Alley reopens wrestling national champion in BY CHRISTA RUIZ, CONTRIBUTING REPORTER The Bowling Alley, located in the basement of Howe, has reopened after being closed for two years. The hours that students are able to use the alley are approximately 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. from Monday through Thursday, 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. on Friday, 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, and 3 p.m. to 12 p.m. Sunday, as long as staff is present. The bowling alley can now be reserved for events via filling out a form available on DuckLink.
JORDYN RAMELLI FOR THE STUTE
Stevens’ history, wrestling season comes to a close BY CHRISTA RUIZ, CONTRIBUTING REPORTER
On March 12, graduate student Brett Kaliner won the 2022 NCAA Division III 149-pound national title, making him the first wrestler in Stevens’ history to be named a national champion. With his 4-2 victory over Central Region champion Michael Petrella of Baldwin Wallace, five-time all-American and Middle Atlantic Conference (MAC) Wrestler of the Year, Kaliner closed off an undefeated season, attaining a record of 290. Throughout the season, Kaliner was ranked as the number one wrestler by the National Wrestling Coaches Association (NWCA) in the 149-pound class. Stevens Wrestling ended the championships placing fifth as a team overall with 46.5 points. In an email interview with The Stute, Kaliner talked about his experiences leading up to and after the championships. Kaliner stated that he had a “pretty relaxed” mindset heading into the championships. He continu-
ously reminded himself that this would be his last time competing and that the most important part would be “enjoying [his] last go.” “I have respect for every opponent that steps across the line,” Kaliner stated when asked about the opposing wrestlers he faced. “However my goal is the same for each opponent, and that is to score as many points as I can until the final whistle blows.” In the semifinals, Kaliner beat The University of Chicago’s two-time University Athletic Association champion Ryan Fleck and opened with an 8-2 lead. He scored a takedown and two four-point near-falls within 48 seconds and claimed a 19-3 victory. In the championship match, Kaliner scored the first points of the match in the opening minute with a takedown. He had a 2-1 lead to begin the second period, and with a little over a minute left in the frame, Petrella earned an escape point which evened the score. Kaliner earned an escape point shortly into the third and last period. With a minute
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