Nick Thomas

Weekday Warrior: Quick Canoe Trip Close to Campus

10/20/2017 by Nick Thomas Leave a Comment

EWU EPIC equips you with outdoor gear for insanely cheap prices so everyone can be an explorer any day of the week. Have an afternoon free? At EWU you can grab a canoe for $11, lash it onto your car roof, paddle a nearby lake and stream, and be back by dinner.

Bonnie Lake is just one of half a dozen narrow lakes tucked in the ancient flood-carved canyons south of EWU. The only way to enter the lake is by paddling up a mile long stream through lush grasses teeming with wildlife.

Above the stream we spotted an amazing, rare basalt arch. A half-mile later a beaver dam marked the entrance to the lake. Even steeper cliffs rose up on all sides. An island in the middle of the lake is a great lunch spot.Besides a few kayaks and little fishing boat we were utterly alone and engulfed in complete silence. I live near the freeway and a train track, so I appreciate true silence, as rare as that basalt arch.

Red Winged Blackbird guards entrance to Bonnie Lake near EWU (Photo: Nick Thomas)

We ate lunch on the island, and took a nap, only to realize that time had gotten away from us. It was four in the afternoon already. How had four hours passed already? We were astonished. We loaded our gear and headed back. This time it was cooler, the shadows deeper, the beams of light brighter and the cliffs awash in intense slanted evening light glowed like the walls of some ancient fortress. More wildlife was out, too.

Spring cascade adorns the water route to Bonnie Lake (Photo: Nick Thomas) — Spring cascade borders the paddle route to Bonnie Lake (Photo: Nick Thomas)

Red winged blackbirds, unperturbed by our presence, sang from perches six feet from our canoe. A great Blue Heron rose startled from the marsh and flew in a wide circle down the canyon and back up toward the lake. Osprey hunted for fish to feed their fledglings, and ducks and geese browsed the riparian grassland for insects. From deep within side canyons past the thick marsh the sound of waterfalls echoed, taunting us with their mysterious and brief spring time existence.

Geek Out! CSTEM Students Demo Senior Projects

06/03/2016 by Nick Thomas Leave a Comment

Its like a Maker Fair gone wild. A giant wood wind turbine takes up the south wall. A Gesture-Controlled Vehicle zooms around the floor between peoples legs. David Covillo explains how his team’s wireless Smart Sprinkler Head (which team member Andrew Decker 3-D printed) wastes far less water than conventional sprinklers. As opposed to just spraying everywhere in a circle, overlapping other sprinklers, or pointlessly spraying the sides of buildings, its range and path can be fine-tuned via Google Earth. Using a laptop and their user-interface, simply draw over a Google Earth view of your lawn; that data is transmitted to the sprinkler head.

Walking into the atrium was like a Maker Fair gone wild. A giant wood wind turbine takes up the south wall. A Gesture-Controlled Vehicle zooms around the floor between peoples legs. David Covillo explains how their 3-D printed (3D modeling and printing by senior Mechanical Engineer Andrew Decker), wireless, battery powered Smart Sprinkler head wastes less water than conventional sprinklers. Its nozzle can be fine-tuned for range and ultra-precise Google-Earth-mapped spray path as opposed to just spraying everywhere in a circle, overlapping other sprinklers, or pointlessly spraying the sides of buildings. Using a laptop and a user-interface, you simply draw a path over a Google Earth view of your lawn, and that data is transmitted to the sprinkler head via Bluetooth. The other benefit is their sprinkler head is hot-swappable, meaning you can easily adapt an old system without digging the lines up. Just replace traditional head with their model, everything else is controlled remotely, (though a sustainable power system is still in the works). Outside on the lawn an autonomous, auto-charging quadcopter is humming and lifting off the ground, (though tethered today for safety purposes.) Puneet Janda and Rudolph Hulse designed the MC charging station, which allows the drone to sense when it is running low on power and automatically return, dock and recharge, and then take off again. Janda says her biggest challenge was coding, and she taught herself a lot on the internet, and from her classmates, too. Suzanne Rieseberg, senior Electrical Engineer, designed the GPS features. She explained the purpose of their camera equipped quadcopter is to examine replace helicopters and pilots used to inspect rural power lines. She formerly worked as a Navy aviation technician on H60 helicopters before coming to EWU to study engineering. She describes her experience at Eastern as overwhelmingly positive, and praised the professors. Rieseberg has already secured a job at Garmin. The Rocket team conducted a test burn of a small rocket, and wisely advised the spectators to cover their ears (see video). In two weeks they will be returning with the EWU Rocket Team to Utah to compete at IREC for their second time. They placed third last year, just behind MIT and Brazil. They are bringing down their biggest rocket ever, hoping to double their altitude over last year. This year the group has fabricated and test-fired half a dozen hand-mixed propellant motors, and have settled on five daisy-chained proprietary motors to hopefully reach 22,000 feet. — Self Charging Autonomous Quadcopter and the proud engineering team

A dozen other projects too large to fit inside are out on the lawn: an autonomous, auto-charging quadcopter is hovering (though tethered today for safety purposes.)

Quadcopter team-members Puneet Janda and Rudolph Hulse designed the MC charging station, which allows the drone to sense when its running low on power, automatically dock and recharge, then take off again.

Puneet Janda with the MC charge station she engineered.

Suzanne Rieseberg, senior Electrical Engineer, designed the GPS features. She explained the purpose of their HD camera equipped quadcopter is to replace expensive helicopters used to inspect rural power lines. Rieseberg formerly worked as a Navy aviation technician on H60 helicopters before coming to EWU to study engineering. She describes her experience at Eastern as overwhelmingly positive, and praised the professors. She has already secured a job at Garmin, and will start just two weeks after graduation.

Rocket Team's display their smaller rocket housings — Rocket Team’s display their small-scale rocket housings, with the propellant “motor” at far left.

The EWU Rocket Team conducted a test burn of a small rocket, and wisely advised the spectators to cover their ears (see video). In two weeks they will be returning with the EWU Rocket Team to Utah to compete at IREC for their second time. Last year they placed third out of over 30 teams, just behind MIT and Brazil. This year they are and beat the most prestigious engineering school in the US. The team has fabricated and test-fired a number of custom propellant motors, and have settled on five proprietary motors to launch their rocket above 20,000 feet, this would effectively double their altitude from 2015.

Electric Motorcycle Team (with stunt doubles)

Other Senior Capstone team projects included 100% custom-built Li-Ion electric go-kart; an electric motorcycle; Smart Outlets; Automated Hydraulic Pressure Brake; Silica Dust Pressure Sensing System; a rocket launch tower; and a full scale support frame for a tear-drop style camper, among many others. It was an impressive display of the many talents of EWU’s Science and Engineering Majors.

A "Homestead Wind-Turbine" Capstone project — A “Homestead Wind-Turbine” Capstone project

Brain (not) at Rest: Olin Anderson’s Circuitous Path to EWU Computer Science

05/27/2016 by Nick Thomas Leave a Comment

Ten years after starting college as a running start student, Olin Anderson, 28, is ready to graduate with his Masters in Computer Science. He recently took a break from his thesis to share his story, one filled with a passion for knowledge, for challenges, and picking up new skill sets.
Growing up in the wheat fields of Spangle, just 15 miles from EWU, led Anderson to enroll in running start classes at EWU his senior year of high school. He continued at EWU, earning a Bachelor of Science in Chemistry in 2011. He decided to take a year off from books and work full time on the family farm where he did a lot of maintenance, stuff like painting and construction. After a year of manual labor he found himself back at EWU, this time studying Pre-Med.

Anderson taking a break from his thesis on the EWU campus (Nick Thomas photo) — Anderson taking a break from his thesis on EWU Cheney campus (Nick Thomas photo)

Anderson wanted to mix in some other classes, “for fun,” he says, and to balance out the tedium of Biology classes, so he started taking a programming class on top of the Biology series. He had dabbled in computer programming since high school, and taught himself PicBasic Pro, the industry standard BASIC programming language to control microchips.
“I took a quarter of Python, then two quarters of Java.” The next fall he enrolled in an advanced programming class with Prof. Stu Steiner. “One day he asked me why I was majoring in Pre-Med if I was taking his programming courses. He suggested that I consider switching to a Masters in Computer Science.” So he thought about it, and then he decided to make the leap. But he didn’t abandon biology entirely; instead he has combined his fascination with brain science and computer science.
Anderson’s Masters thesis project uses off-the-shelf EEG headset to determine relaxed brain state. “Determining relaxed brain activity is usually done through analyzing recorded data,” he says. “But the advantage of this headset is that we are getting real-time data with the Emotiv Epoc, a $400 dollar off-the-shelf EEG headset.”

If Anderson put on the EEG Headset it would surely detect a brain never at rest, always on the lookout for the next challenge.
“This was new to me,” he says, referring to EEG signal processing. His thesis challenged him to learn yet more skill sets. But Anderson is not complaining. “My EWU professors are very approachable,” he says. “I never had to feel bad about asking questions. They would stay and explain concepts to me until I really understood them.”
Friendly, knowledgeable professors, and reliable student partners are essential to any student’s success, but ultimately, personal drive is most important. It is clear that challenges are what Anderson lives for. In fact, his first full-time programming job will have him stationed on projects all over the world. He landed the position after applying for it at the Spokane regional Computer and Engineering job fair.
“The Computer Science department is really good about encouraging us to go to job fairs,” he says. “At the first one I was just checking it out. But at the next fair I handed out resumes,” he says, “and I got a call back.”
He will be working as a database programmer for Fast Enterprises, will potentially take him all over the world. “One of the job requirements was that you have to be able to periodically relocate.” In fact, Anderson says, “They won’t even tell me where I’m going until June.”
Most would scoff at such a job offer, but after staying close to home his whole life, after nearly a decade of hitting the books, and two science degrees from EWU, Anderson finds the lure of world travel impossible to resist.

19th Annual Creative Works Symposium Shows what EWU can do for You

05/20/2016 by Nick Thomas Leave a Comment

EWU undergrads and grad students show off their final projects and give presentations at the 2016 EWU Research and Creative Symposium. It is the culmination of countless hours of research, and critical thinking, data analysis, and presentation design. The event encompasses all majors, from STEM to the Humanities. For a complete list of the more than 500 presentations, check out the PDF here.

The Hargreaves Hall reading room was packed with undergrads and grad students showing off their research and colorful poster presentations, everything from green infrastructure, to geological research, biology and robotics.
Not only college students presented: High School students from North Central High School in Spokane presented their own scientific research, too.
Chris Golden, an incoming EWU Freshman, and his classmates David Song, and Oliver Miller, discussed their findings after sampling for the presence of metal reducing bacteria Geobacter sulfurreductens’s in Spokane regions contaminated with metals from industries like mining and smelting. The hope is a certain bacteria when released into the polluted water will actually eat the heavy metals.

NC HS Students Chris, David and Oliver — NC High School students Chris, David and Oliver (Nick Thomas:photo)

They took their samples back to the lab and successfully incubated them in low-oxygen petri dishes filled with iron oxide and salt, the bacteria’s preferred environment. They pointed out that more information is needed to make sure that releasing the bacteria in the environment will not backfire and get out of control in the environment.
Zoe Zywiak and Nadina Mrkaljevic, both from North Central High School, presented their findings confirming a fish called the Montana Big Hole River Arctic Grayling, found in Montana streams and rivers and suffering from genetic mutations and health problems is originally from Asia, and that the current species is too genetically isolated causing it to inbreed, with the hypothesis that a low genetic variance of ATP-6 loci would be detected.

NC high school students Zoe and Nadina explain research on isolated Arctic fish species found in the northwest — NC high school students Nadina and Zoe explain their research on genetically isolated fish species (Nick Thomas:photo)

Current efforts to boost the dying population by simply reproducing the local species in hatcheries are not working, they said. “Compare it to what would happen if people were only marrying their cousins,” they said. The Arctic Graylings need a wider genetic pool to draw from.
Miranda Street, also a North Central HS senior, tested fish guts, specifically sturgeon guts. More specifically, she tested their frozen fecal matter for the presence of certain bacteria to confirm whether hatchery sturgeon lack the correct gut flora to flourish when released in the wild.

North Central High School senior Miranda Street presents research at EWU (Nick Thomas: photo) — North Central High School senior Miranda Street presents research on fish gut flora (Nick Thomas: photo)

While research is still ongoing, the death rate of hatchery sturgeon is alarming, and Miranda is proud to help biologists in their quest to solve this problem.
EWU freshman Jessica Blackwood presented on geology research conducted as part of the “Cataclysms of the Columbia,” taught by professors of Geology, History and English. Students in the First Year Experience (FYE) pilot-course tested basalt formations at dramatic Rock Lake, located south of EWU.

EWU Freshman Jessica Blackwood explains her classes geology research — EWU Freshman Jessica Blackwood explains her Rock Lake geology research (nick thomas: photo)

They used a Brucker Tracer 3 portable X-ray fluorescence gun to confirm boundaries of basalt flows, and examine regional basalt layers eroded by waterfalls, such as above spectacular Palouse Falls. The 2 credit introductory class led by Prof. Chad Pritchard combined English and History with Science. She found that studying with Eco-Poet Prof. Paul Lindholdt helped inspire her passion for a broad range of learning.

EWU Admissions intern Afaria McKinney spoke with Beanca Thai about her presentation “Not Going to write you a love song.” Beanca found that multicultural relationships are viewed as comedic relief, whereas white couples are seen as either serious, dramatic, or comedic, meaning that some cultures are not allowed the privilege of emotions in media.

Kolod Aljohani Finds Strength at EWU

05/12/2016 by Nick Thomas Leave a Comment

Kolod Aljohani is an International Student from Saudi Arabia. She and her husband Tariq Alrefai came to EWU three years ago after he researched midsized colleges with reputable engineering programs. He liked that EWU’s main campus was in a small town as this would keep distractions to a minimum during the week, but with Spokane close enough for weekend fun.

When her husband graduated with his Mechanical Engineering BS degree 7 months ago, he returned home to start his career, and Aljohani was forced to make a difficult choice: should she go home and finish her degree in Saudi, and perhaps never finish? Or should she stay on alone at EWU and keep her eyes on the prize?

She had invested too much in her US education to give up—two years of classes toward a Technical Communication major, plus a double minor in Visual Communication Design and German. She decided to stay.

Kolod chillin' on EWU's campus — Kolod Aljohani on EWU’s main campus (photo:Nick Thomas)

Her family, however, was nervous about her staying in the US, and some family members even tried to convince her it was wrong to stay. “Some Saudi’s have old-fashioned ideas about women,” she says, but there is also open-mindedness, she points out, “otherwise, they wouldn’t send us here.”

To make things even harder, new funding restrictions have created more hardships for Aljohani and others who are midway through their American degrees. Under the new Saudi Minister of Education, and shrinking oil revenue, rules for scholarships for Saudi’s decade-old 6 billion dollar per year study abroad program have changed. “Many Saudi students had to return home,” she says. The new rules said she had to be 70% of the way towards her degree to qualify for a tuition scholarship, so she enrolled in 24 credits, almost double the normal full-time credit load, in addition to working part time.

“I needed to adapt to the situation,” she says, “not give up.” Aljohani is confident she made the right choice, though she emphasizes that a huge part of her strength comes from her parents, husband and siblings.

While her tuition is funded, living expenses are no longer be covered. She could have asked her family for assistance, but she wanted to prove that she could support herself. She has worked hard to establish a new sense of independence, something she says she never had back home. “While my family is not wealthy, I never had to work to support myself. Everything was provided for me. But here I pay for rent, and for food. I just paid a power bill for the first time!”

Being an International Student has given her a love of travel and languages. This summer will find her studying abroad in Germany. It will be her first time in Europe.

Since her second quarter at EWU, she has worked as a EWU Global Ambassador for the Office of Global Initiatives. She helps new International Students interpret, find their way around campus, and visit Spokane, as well as other cities like Portland and Seattle. Seattle is her favorite city; she’s visited about twenty times. She takes friends and students and they stay with an American host family in West Seattle. “I love Alki Beach, and Seattle has a lot of Middle Eastern restaurants.”

Aljohani has also become a real road warrior; besides Seattle, she’s driven to Los Angeles three times, and even cruised down to Las Vegas on a mad dash weekend trip. “I’m afraid of heights,” she explains. “I hate flying, but I love driving! It never gets old.”

Her fear of heights is yet another challenge she’s committed to conquering—three days a week you can find her climbing at the EWU EPIC Climbing Wall. “EWU made me believe I don’t have limits for my dreams,” she says. “I’m thankful that my husband made the right choice and brought me to this school. GO EAGLES!”

And You Thought College Was Confusing

05/06/2016 by Nick Thomas Leave a Comment

“It’s easier if career exploration and development begins during the first year, not the last.” ~ Ryan Weldon

Most freshman arrive at college undecided as to what they want to major in, and many mistakenly put off getting their resume together until senior year. EWU Career Advisor Ryan Weldon gets it.
“[It’s] a lot for any student to think about,”he admits. “But it’s ineffective to start thinking about it halfway through your education. We encourage freshman to come meet with us early because we help you start thinking about this.”

moon-walk-60616_960_720 — Like landing on the moon, landing your first job is all in the preparation. Start early.

“Career planning works best when planning backward from the intended career,” he says, “rather than forward from the major.” While certain majors still lead straight to a specific career, (such as nursing, engineering, accounting, or social work), many tend cross-pollinate, especially those in the humanities. “Students have some very linear ideas about majors and careers and how they hook together,” says Weldon. “It’s hard to make decisions about your future if you’re working with an artificially limited set of options.”
College is a whirlwind of classes, studies and social activities. A career search years down the road seems a long way off. But starting to plan your career search and resume your freshman year allows you to make the most of your college experience and get a start in a career “with as little post-graduation angst as possible,”as Weldon puts it.
“We can help you clarify their own thinking and support you in making decisions about your future. The process is much less stressful when you aren’t trying to take it all on at once. You’ll be much more confident as graduation approaches.”

Click here to learn about Career Options or to schedule a meeting, or email a question.