 |
|
|
 |
| |
Last Issue:
Tuesday,
December
18
2007
|
|
|
|
|
Honor Society Celebrates 75 Years
 |
The founding charter of the Maryland chapter of Sigma Xi hangs in Timothy Ng´s office in the Lee Building.
|
This March a venerable university institution will celebrate its 75th anniversary. The Maryland chapter of Sigma Xi, an international honor society for science and engineering, was founded on March 2, 1928. The original charter hangs in a non-descript frame in the office of Timothy Ng, the society's secretary and historian.
"You'll see some familiar names on it," Ng says.
The names on the charter were some of the leading American scientists of the early 1900s. Two of these names--H.J. Patterson and A.L. Woods--found their way onto campus buildings. Another one, N.E. Gordon, later had the famous conferences of vanguard researchers in the physical sciences he convened named in his honor.
The Maryland chapter, the 49th of Sigma Xi, currently has 389 members, including Rita Colwell, head of the National Science Foundation, and William Destler, the university's senior vice president for academic affairs and provost. Members of the Maryland chapter have won many awards and work at the Food and Drug Administration, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and all the major federal labs.
"You look at all the people doing major research today and they're in Sigma Xi," says Ng.
Membership--open to undergraduates, graduate students and faculty--is by invitation. Nominees must be nominated by a full member of Sigma Xi. There are two types of members: associate, graduates or undergraduates who don't necessarily have a publication history; and full, researchers with a significant publication history. "An aptitude for research and a desire for publication are the most important criteria," Ng says.
Ng, associate vice president for research in the division of research and graduate studies, says the chapter is interested in getting more people signed up earlier. He also mentions the survival of Sigma Xi. The organization's original goal was to provide researchers the oppurtunity to share their work with each other and encourage cooperation among disciplines. Ng says due in part to Sigma Xi's efforts, research since then has become increasigly interdisciplinary, necessesitating a change in the organization's focus.
Changes have included becoming more involved with ethics issues dealing with best practices for animal and human testing, says Ng. At Maryland, making sure federal regulations on testing are followed on campus is a big part of that.
Since Sept. 11, 2001, Sigma Xi has also dealt with homeland security issues. Ng says that Sigma Xi researchers have had their work labeled sensitive by the government and faced restrictions when trying to publish the results. This creates conflict, says Ng, because "of course, any researcher's goal is to disseminate new information as widely as possible." Many times, he says, the researchers enter sensitive areas unintentionally, having been led there while investigating something else.
The Maryland chapter itself conducts educational outreach by funding the Prince George's Community College Engineering Education Day. It has also supported the Graduate Research Interaction Day (GRID), an interdisciplinary symposium acknowledging the variety of research at Maryland, from its inception. Sigma Xi also runs the Grants in Aid of Research Program, which provides $1,000 research grants to science or engineering students. Grantees can use the money to pay for research related travel expenses or buy specialized equipment needed to complete their research.
Recognizing individual achievement, the chapter also gives out the Pelczar Award for Excellence in Graduate Study and the Sigma Xi Contribution to Science Award. In the interdisciplinary spirit, the Pelczar Award is not limited to science and engineering majors. Ng says that one of the most memorable recipients was Guy Klinton McElroy, a disabled art history major who died a few years after receiving the award.
Ng says that in additon to the chapter's activities "there's always the pedestrian goal of getting more research funding." To that end, he says communicating the importance of scientific research to the tax payers who fund much of the research in this country has become vital in recent years.
A horiticulturalist, Ng studied at the University of California, Berkeley in the 1960s, where, he jokes, "I got teargassed more than I studied." He earned his master's and doctoral degrees at Purdue University before coming to the University of Maryland in 1977.
Sigma Xi is seeking nominations of students and faculty for membership as it is every spring. For nomination forms and more information about Sigma Xi, visit http://www.atmos.umd.edu/~sigmaxi/homepage.html.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
