Fall semester is suddenly here. Parking is not. Returning classmates are excited to see each other. Some seniors are a little sad that it's their last year, and others can't wait to get out. Lost freshmen roam the halls.

In a way it's not much different, but in a way it is. We are looking at our largest freshman class in my decade plus as dean, and they are some of the best students we've ever had. Preliminary figures indicate that we have 54 national merit finalists, 21 national Hispanic scholars, and 11 national achievement finalists, which represent about a third of the university’s entering honors class.

About a quarter of all entering freshman – more than 1,100 – have designated engineering as their field of study, and they bring with them overall ACT scores just above 28. Their hopes and dream are on the line, and I wish the best for every one of them. This year will be as special to them as yours was to you – whenever that might have been.

I hope that your plans this year include a trip back to Auburn and the memories it holds for you. If you have been gone for some time now . . . you may not recognize your old campus. But you'll still be able to spot the freshmen, and I hope, stop to tell them what a wonderful journey awaits them.

Larry Benefield
Dean of Engineering

Feature Story

The Big Lesson

This op-ed ran in the Mobile Press Register on Sunday July, 4.

The continuing manmade catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico is the latest event in a long-established pattern of systemic "disconnects" between the way that nature works and the way our society perceives and utilizes natural resources.

Our history is replete with crises that have arisen from overextended efforts to generate power, extract nonrenewable resources, indiscriminately harvest renewable resources, synthesize toxic chemicals, and transform the landscape for the purpose of social and economic development.

The Three Mile Island accident, the Bhopal gas tragedy, destruction of tropical rainforests, New Orleans levee breaches and the draining of the Aral Sea are a few examples of manmade nature-vs.-society conflicts. In each case, there is sufficient evidence that we think and act in ways that eventually violate nature's laws and limits, and some of us inevitably and inequitably suffer the consequences.

As a society, we still have not recognized this pattern of anthropogenic overreach and nature's kickback.

On April 20, a drilling platform in the Gulf of Mexico exploded, resulting in the discharge of millions of barrels of crude oil. Its aftermath presents urgent social, economic, ecological, biological and technological problems that require immediate and extensive remediation.

President Obama has since created a National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling. The commission is tasked with determining the root causes of this disaster, developing options for guarding against and mitigating the impact of offshore drilling-related oil spills, and recommending reforms of federal agencies and processes.

No doubt, these are issues of great consequence. But we must not lose sight of the larger lessons that ought to be learned from this technological disaster.

While the commission must address immediate harm to nature and society, it must also put this event into a broader context and look at a larger, more systemic picture. A fragmented, piecemeal approach to resolving the immediate economic and environmental issues, without serious consideration of the intimately interconnected cultural, political, ecological and technological systems, is doomed to fail.

Without the courage to think and act beyond the immediate concerns, we will be repeatedly blindsided by a continuous cycle of overreach and kickback that will be increasingly destructive to both nature and society.

So, what should be learned from the Deepwater Horizon and its aftermath?

For one thing, we must take stock of our propensity to think and act sub-optimally to solve these problems.

Depending on our perspective and our programmatic and operational priorities, we make isolated and narrow decisions to maximize outcomes, without sufficient consideration for other highly interdependent natural and human factors.

T. Prabhakar Clement

In economic terms, we habitually maximize benefits and certainty for some, and externalize costs and risks to nature and other people, regardless of the consequences. What is missing is a sufficiently powerful framework that gives us a more holistic context for decision-making so that we better understand the broader consequences of our actions.

With this in mind, our recommendation to the president's commission is to take a two-track approach.

First, tackle the immediate and urgent issues as mandated. And second, the commission can start a process for creating a long-term, holistic framework for decision-making that breaks the cycle of sector-specific overreach and the unintended systemic consequences that inevitably result.

This means resolving nature-society conflicts by bringing human behavior in line with the laws and limits of nature.

We must make decisions which allow the Gulf ecosystem to provide the greatest benefit ecologically, economically, socially and culturally, to the greatest number of people over the course of many generations.

We recommend that the commission work with a team of experts, scholars, citizens and other Gulf stakeholders to create a vision of what a sustainable and healthy Gulf of Mexico would look like and develop a comprehensive multistate rehabilitation plan that reflects a broader vision.

Then it will be up to citizens and local, state and federal leaders to debate and codify the vision and bring it to fruition.

Until a plan is in place, extreme caution should be exercised when considering any environmentally sensitive activities in the Gulf.

The laws and limits of a healthy, functioning Gulf ecosystem set the context and define the boundaries within which we can sustainably operate. Understanding this ecological context and designing human uses accordingly will bring us closer to resolving nature-society conflicts and ensuring we do not repeat the disaster that confronts us today.

In our view, this is the lesson we most need to learn.

T. Prabhakar Clement is the Arthur H. Feagin professor of civil engineering at Auburn University; Michael Kensler is an administrator at the Water Resources Center at Auburn University; and Michelle R. Worosz is an assistant professor of rural sociology at Auburn University. More of their analysis can be found here.

To read the Press-Register article online visit this link.

Student Stories

Livingston Named Third Team Academic All-American

Auburn senior Jager Livingston has been named to the ESPN The Magazine Academic All-America Men's Track and Field and Cross Country Third Team.

Livingston, a native of Scottsboro, Ala., graduated from Auburn in May with a degree in chemical engineering and a 3.83 grade-point average. He was named Auburn's Male Student-Athlete of the Year at the Tiger Torch Banquet in April and to the SEC Spring Academic Honor Roll in each of the past three years. Read more>>

More student stories>>

Development Story

ExxonMobil Foundation and Employees donate more than $429,000 to three Alabama Universities

The ExxonMobil Foundation recently provided Auburn University’s College of Engineering with a grant check in the amount of $209,690. The gift represents the company’s three-to-one match of donations made to the University by ExxonMobil employees, retirees and surviving spouses under the Foundation’s 2010 Educational Matching Gift Program. Read more>>

Faculty Stories

Engineering Receives NSF Scholarship Funds

Sanjeev Baskiyar, associate professor in Auburn University’s Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering, recently received nearly $600,000 from the National Science Foundation. The funds will be used to award more than 55 scholarships over four years to outstanding undergraduate students studying computer science and software engineering and graduate students studying computer systems and embedded computing. Read more>>

More faculty stories>>

Academic Stories

Auburn Offers Doctorate in Polymer and Fiber Engineering

A new doctoral program at Auburn University has been approved by the Alabama Commission on Higher Education. The doctorate in polymer and fiber engineering is the first of its kind in the state, offering graduate students courses and research opportunities in biopolymers, nanomaterials, polymer physics and smart fibers. The department is accepting students for the program. Read more>>

More academic stories>>

Outreach Stories

Robotics Campers Build Robots and Video Games

This summer, on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons in Shelby Center, students ages 10 through 18 made robotic tanks out of Lego pieces, programed their own versions of Pacman and created computer software that calculates mathematical equations, among other things. Read more>>

More outreach stories>>

Research Stories

Auburn Signs Agreement with Masada to Advance Alternative Fuel Technologies

A sponsored research agreement between Auburn University and an Alabama company has spawned patent-pending technologies for the production of alternative fuels from waste streams.

Under an agreement with Masada Resource Group, researchers in Auburn's Department of Chemical Engineering have developed a series of technologies that utilize waste streams from pulp and paper mills and convert them into high-value products. Professors Harry Cullinan, Gopal Krishnagopalan, Y.Y. Lee and senior research fellow Sung-Hoon Yoon, along with several graduate students, developed methodologies to extract fermentable elements of current waste streams for possible conversion into ethanol. Read more>>

More research stories>>