[The Stute] May 20, 2022 (Issue 25, Volume CXIX)

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The student newspaper of Stevens Institute of Technology, and creator of Attila the Duck.

Special congrats to Aleks, Caroline, Grace, Julia, Leigha, Matthew, Melissa, Natalie, and Roshni! The Stute fam will miss you <3

VOLUME CXIX No. 25

We write Stevens history HOBOKEN, NJ | MAY 20, 2022

www.thestute.com Instagram @thestute facebook.com/stevensthestute NEW STUTE EVERY FRIDAY • EST. 1904

CONGRATS CLASS OF 2022 Speakers at 2022 commencement

Seniors at Wittpenn Walk on their last day of classes

BY CHRISTA RUIZ, STAFF WRITER

BY KEENAN YATES, MANAGING EDITOR

For the 150th Commencement Ceremonies for the Class of 2022, Stevens has invited two distinguished figures to serve as the commencement speakers. Cal Ripken Jr. will serve as the undergraduate speaker, and Dean Kamen will serve as the graduate speaker. “Both individuals exemplify determination, commitment and excellence. In different ways, the long and extraordinary careers of both honorees have improved lives and created opportunity for future generations. The Stevens community looks forward to celebrating their contributions and to hearing their inspirational messages,” said Stevens President Nariman Farvardin when discussing the speakers. Ripken is a philanthropist, best-selling author, and baseball Hall-of-Famer who played 21 seasons with the Baltimore Orioles. He was nicknamed “The Iron Man” after playing in a record 2,632 consecutive Major League

On Friday, April 29, 2022, the annual Innovation Expo was held on campus from 10 a.m. to 6:15 p.m., the first in-person Expo in two years. This showcase for student design, innovation, and entrepreneurship brought together Senior Projects from the College of Arts and Letters (CAL), the School of Business (SB), the School of Engineering and Science (SES), and the School of Systems and Enterprises (SSE), of which the teams competed in the Ansary Entrepreneurship Competition — a contest with the purpose of persuading prospective investors to help students turn their projects into effective businesses. The prizes for the Ansary Entrepreneurship Competition totaled $17,500, as provided by the Cy and Jan Ansary Foundation, which supports education, entrepreneurship, and other philanthropic causes. Established in 1983, the Cy and Jan Ansary

SEE SPEAKERS PAGE 2

OLOF PERSSON FOR THE STUTE

New fitness SIGN - the winning team classes at of the Ansary Entrepreneurship the UCC Competition BY KAYDEN CANNILLA, STAFF WRITER In an email sent out on May 2, Stevens announced the removal of physical education as a degree requirement. This applies to all incoming students, as well as waiving any remaining classes for current students. The Stute reached out to Dr. Sara Klein, Assistant Vice President for Student Affairs, and Russell Rogers, Athletics Director, for more information. Previously, many students reported struggling to register for PE classes, as section times and capacity were limited. In Fall 2020, Stevens announced that the PE requirement would be waived for just the current graduating class, as COVID-19 had impacted the ability to hold PE classes. More pressing, however, was the “limitations of both space and instructors,” and Dr. Klein stated that “COVID played a minimal role” in the decision. This removal is a welcome change for the students who struggled to find available sections for PE classes in previous semesters. Stevens will continue to offer PE classes in upcoming semesters and plans to send SEE FITNESS PAGE 2

BY STEPHANIE SEARING, NEWS EDITOR

Each year, multiple Senior Design Projects are entered into the Ansary Entrepreneurship Competition to win up to $10,000. Entrants must make an elevator pitch showcasing their project to prospective investors and endure three rounds of judging, at the end of which the top three teams are then announced and celebrated at the Innovation Expo. This year’s winning title went to SIGN, a real-time American Sign Language transcriptor created by a team of computer engineering seniors: Brianna Garland, Jayden Pereira, and Chloe Sharpe. The project idea was something that Garland came up with her junior year of high school, and she was excited to finally be able to see it through. Garland explained, “Being a peer leader on campus has taught me how to have in sight into the experiences of each individual’s life and how different and how challenging different obstacles can be.” After speaking with another fellow peer leader, Pereira, and then Sharpe, they decided to move forward with this project. Pereira also shared, “I was just excited to work on something that was seeming-

NEWS (1-3)

SENIOR SPOTLIGHTS (8-9)

Read more on the Innovation Expo, speakers at commencement, and Techfest. Meet First in Class for the Class of 2022

Honoring the Class of 2022 Read the names of the graduating seniors and exceptional seniors who won awards! SHOUTOUTS (10)

FEATURES (5-7)

Read about UCC Opening and Senior Essays Read essays from graduating seniors reflecting on their time at Stevens

Innovation Expo showcases inventive senior projects

Congrats on another semester in the books, Ducks! Read shoutouts to the Stevens community from friends and family!

ly not solved yet or had implementations that really did not provide enough to individuals that had to communicate through sign language.” In the words of Sharpe, “SIGN is a revolutionary software application that will change the lives of Deaf persons across the U.S. This application was designed to use Computer Vision and Machine Learning algorithms to display ASL-to-English translated captions in real-time.” Additionally, Pereira emphasized that the software “tracks over 1600 points on the human body in order to translate someone doing American Sign Language all in real-time and without any special equipment – it works right on a standard desktop/ laptop webcam or a phone’s camera.” If you are interested in learning more, check out their website, pitch video, and MVP. When asked about how they feel knowing that all their hard work paid off, Pereira exclaimed, “Incredible. I was actually on a Roving Reporter asking what my New Year’s Resolution would be and I said that I wanted to win the Expo – so definitely great feelings when I was actually able to accomplish that goal. It has been an incredibly bumpy 9 months working on all of the

machine learning models, with many sleepless nights and failed ideas; but, having so many people acknowledge and appreciate the work put in gives me the energy needed to keep this momentum going and work on SIGN more!” Garland found it to be, “so rewarding to see the project start to finish with how much work we have put into it […] It showed that we could accomplish anything we put our minds to and gave us so much experience along the way.” Sharpe also stated, “It feels amazing knowing that our hard work has paid off, but more importantly we are beyond excited that we have the opportunity to assist thousands of Deaf persons across the U.S. to communicate with others. We plan on continuing the development of SIGN over the summer and hope to release it to the market within six months.” The winning team also had a few words of advice for future Senior Design teams — they all said to choose a project that you are passionate about. Pereira said, “even if your project doesn’t win or there’s not executives rushing with open checkbooks to acquire your ideas, as long as you care about the ‘why’ behind the project everything else will fall into place.”

SEE EXPO PAGE 2

A recap of Techfest 2022 BY ERIN MCGEE, SCIENCE WRITER After hosting almost 30 events this semester in total, the Entertainment Committee (EC) celebrated the end of the semester with their biggest on-campus event of the year: Techfest. This year’s Techfest featured a wide variety of different activities, including student performances, student involvement, games, and giveaways. For the first time, the event featured The Duck Market, which featured student businesses selling food, jewelry, clothing, and much more. Festivities Co-Chair and main planner of Techfest, Olivia Scott commented that: “Diversity is something that we’ve always tried to push forward […] I think that we were able to kind of get a diverse range of artists […] not just musicians but we had the Duck Market where students could kind of showcase their own local

CAROLINE MONTANA FOR THE STUTE

businesses […] and that’s an art form in itself.” On the music side, Techfest featured openers Chris Nitti, Earl Gray, and Beekeeper, the student groups who won Battle of the Bands, also hosted by EC, this past March. The bands opened for the headliner: A R I Z O N A. Techfest took a massive amount of planning and organizing from the Committee and specifically the Festivities subcommittee that made it possible. On top of the event itself, the EC had several large initiatives for the event, including aiming to make Techfest as sustainable as possible and promoting a huge amount of student involvement, including volunteering and photography. As many of the EC seniors pass the torch to a new E-board, they hoped to set a precedent for how Techfest SEE TECHFEST PAGE 2


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