James Madison University - Index

James Madison University - Madison Magazine - Summer 2009 - Index

PICTURETHIS
Education on wheels
By Michelle Hite (’88)
Promoting STEM education and sustainable transportation
in one project — should be as easy as riding
a bike, right? Five enterprising students have
made it nearly that simple. As part of Earth Week
activities on the National
Mall, Margaret Beckom (statistics), Tripp
Loflin (ISAT), Paul Crisman (ISAT), Sam
Sweet (ISAT) and Ari Giller-Leinwohl
(ISAT) presented a project with a twofold
mission: to promote STEM education
in the high-school population and to
promote sustainable transportation in the
community. The team represented JMU
at the fifth National Sustainable Design
Expo April 18–20 in Washington, D.C.
They showed off results of their project,
The JMU team presents their project to judges
from the American Association for the Advancement
of Science in front of the U.S. Capitol.
Above, left to right:
Margaret Beckom
(statistics), Tripp
Loflin (ISAT), Paul
Crisman (ISAT),
Sam Sweet (ISAT)
and Ari Giller-
Leinwohl (ISAT).
“Promoting Sustainability on Campuses: A
College Student-Run, Electric-Assisted Bicycle
Competition for High Schools.”
The group created a competition for highschool
students to design and build electricassisted
bicycles to meet the needs of commuters
on college campuses. The competition promotes science,
technology, engineering and mathematics education. Although the
JMU team didn’t win an award to fund
the competition for 2009-10, the experience
has inspired team members to continue
to work with electric vehicles for
their senior research projects.
Two JMU professors advised the team
— Samantha Bates Prins (mathematics
and statistics) and Rob Prins (engineering).
While in D.C., the student team
offered demo rides on three electricassisted
bicycles, which they built in the
JMU Alternative Fuel Vehicle lab. M
64 MADISON MAGAZINE
PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY OF ROB PRINS