Summer Drives

Welcome back.

I don’t know if I have gotten used to it yet, even as I begin my 12th year on the Purdue campus.  Tomorrow is August 31, and we’re now finishing our second week of classes.  (My daughter, who is at the University of Wisconsin (where I was faculty before here), starts a week from today.  Just that difference in mentality regarding when the “Fall” semester starts seems to have a significant effect on cognitive, emotional, and social patterns of awareness and activity.  (In fact, this idea was one of the contributing elements at the foundation of our research on information alignment and information clutch factors affecting task coordination in organizations.)  The ramp up of demand may or may not match your increase in readiness for that demand, and if you’re not careful, that could cause falling into a task deficit “hole” that is extremely hard to climb out of later in the busy semester.  (Ah, yes, that would be my undergraduate controls course, talking about feedback systems and response dynamics to input functions.)

Every once in a while, my mind takes one of these enjoyable side trips, and it can lead to interesting research insights.  Members of the lab sometimes go along with me on these trips, which often involve discussions of mathematical definitions and relationships, as well as empirical or analytical planning and research designs.  For instance… let’s talk about what dispersion means, and how it applies to production systems.  Hey, does digital signal processing help us manipulate the timing and synchronization of entire files, rather than simple waveforms?  Can we link student advising questions to convolution functions that describe knowledge transfer?

A real advantage of the beginning of this academic year is that most of GROUPER is back intact.  Almost everyone was gone at some point: Natalie was in Germany (at Alcoa); Omar was in Egypt (finishing a Master’s at Alexandria and getting married); Jeremi was in Washington (at NSF); Kelly was in Cincinnati (at P&G) Jake was in San Diego (at SPAWAR); Liang even got to return to Xi’an China to see her family.  We’ve graduated two students since the Spring Equinox. Jeff Onken defended his dissertation (although he was already working at Northrup Grumman) and completed a final presentation to his committee.  Melvis Chafac completed her Hong Kong-based Master’s research writeups, and was off to MIT a few weeks ago after campus and conference presentations.   Now, we’re back in lab meetings, telling stories and sharing / renewing the culture of the lab.  (“Good idea / Bad idea” seems to be the best description of these culture shaping stories.)  Even though there’s no one new, the reasons for the stories still exist.

Things get much busier after this week.  I’ve taken on new responsibilities, both on campus and in the larger community.  (Yes, we’ll tell you; however, I’d like to wait for the official updates.)  I think I won’t be going much of anywhere this weekend—football season starts, but we’re also awaiting the arrival of a guest named Isaac.  Not great weather for a drive… unless of course you’re talking about a series of running plays from the Purdue offense.