E-Lumine

November 11, 2005

Articles in this issue:

Visitors keeping admissions office hopping - [ Article Below ]

Cross Country fifth in region - [ Article Below ]

Student presentation wins praise at conference - [ Article Below ]

Visitors keeping admissions office hopping

 

A steady stream of campus visitors is keeping the Admissions Office hopping, and Kim Tuttle and the entire admissions team couldn’t be happier.

Ms. Tuttle, special events coordinator, makes arrangements for prospective students and their parents who want to check out Bryan as they consider college alternatives. She also directs formal visitation events such as the recently concluded Illuminate.

“Since August, we’ve had 288 visits, including 56 at Illuminate,” Ms. Tuttle said. “Students are really interested in getting to know Bryan College, to see if this would be a good match for them, and a campus visit is the best way to do that.”

The visitors at Illuminate must have seen something they liked because about a third of them turned in applications before they left campus. “I feel like we’ll pick up some more from that group after they have time to think about what they learned,” she said.

Illuminate offers prospective students and their parents a chance to meet current students, attend classes, and learn about financial aid and admissions procedures.

The November Illuminate included a Worldview Team presentation, a coffee house social time, a scavenger hunt which required the hunters to ask current students questions about the college and a tour of the Dayton area.

“Our whole purpose is to give prospective students information so they can make a good college choice. We’re working to turn prospects and visitors into applicants and eventually into students,” Ms. Tuttle said.

For more information about a campus visit or future Illuminate events, contact Ms. Tuttle at 423-775-7211 or by email at ktuttle5397@bryan.edu.

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Cross Country fifth in region

The Cross Country Lions finished in a tie for fifth in the NAIA Region XII Championships at Louisville, Ky., Nov. 5.

goetz.jpgLeading the way for Bryan was freshman Daniel Goetz, who finished 10th. This finish qualified him for the NAIA national championships. Freshmen Steven Chambers and Guillermo Loaiza helped the cause with finishes of 21st and 26th.

“Daniel ran well enough to qualify for nationals, and that was our goal this morning,” Coach Rodney Stoker said. “He got out fast and after five kilometers we knew he had a spot, so he just kept that position and cruised in. Steven and Guillermo had super races and have improved tremendously throughout the season. They will be much stronger after another year of training. I was happy to finish so high in the team standings in our first year of competition. Things are headed in the right direction for our young program.”

Virginia Intermont, ranked second in the country, swept the first five positions and looked ready to defend their national title from a year ago. Steeve Gabart took the individual title for the Cobras in 25:24 over the eight-kilometer course.

The NAIA National Cross Country Championships also will be held in Louisville on Nov. 19.

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Student presentation wins praise at conference

henderson.jpgA Bryan student presented a new program for encrypting messages over the Internet that won positive reviews at a regional conference recently, Computer Science professor Earl Reed reported

Matt Henderson, a senior from Pinehurst, Texas, said he took what began as a group project in school and developed it further as his own summer project. Refinements came through other class projects. The result, he believes, may have a commercial application.

Mr. Reed said the audience at the Appalachian College Association Summit included five Ph.D.-level mathematicians who said Matt’s project has validity. In theory, his program uses the index of a novel or other work of literature to encode a message in such a way that it is virtually impossible to decode unless the recipient has the same index.

“This is designed for encoding text, but it could be adapted to encode any computer file,” Matt explained. “Encryption has to keep getting bigger and bigger, as computer resources grow. It’s sort of like the arms race. Where today’s standard is 128-bit encryption, this program could be a million times as big as 128-bit.”

He plans to write his senior thesis on this program, then hopes to develop a commercial application from it.

Matt was the first Bryan student to make a presentation at the ACA Summit, as this was the first year students have had that opportunity.

In addition to Matt’s, three other representatives from Bryan led workshops. Mr. Reed conducted a forum on why computer science enrollment is down while overall college enrollment is up. He noted that Bryan and two other schools at the conference had an increase in the number of students in their computer science programs while the other 17 schools reported declines. Dr. Ray Legg discussed how he uses computer technology in the classroom. Mr. Paul Johnson taught a workshop on Flash technology.

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