Centralight

5 centralight winter'14 CMU Today Central's engineering program ranked in top 100 by U.S. News CMU's School of Engineering and Technology has been ranked 86th among the nation's universities offering bachelor's and master's degrees in engineering by U.S. News & World Report. "CMU's undergraduate engineering program recognition reflects the benefit of our small class sizes that allow for greater interaction with dedicated faculty," says Mohamad S. Qatu, director of the school. CMU faculty and its Engineering and Technology building, which features 30 specialized laboratories and classrooms, prepare students with a solid career foundation for working with electronics, robotics, manufacturing systems and more. In addition to the engineering school's recognition, CMU as a whole ranked No. 194 among national universities and No. 110 among top public schools. In 2014, U.S. News & World Report rated CMU No. 1 overall for undergraduate online programs, No. 1 nationally for its online bachelor's and master's in education programs for veterans, No. 3 in graduate education programs for teachers and administrators, and No. 17 for its online graduate business program. • 5 centralight winter'14 Researchers get a bird's-eye view Scientists could spend less time collecting data in the field because of a study by CMU researchers using a six-foot helicopter equipped with a high-resolution digital camera. CMU geography experts are using the aircraft to advance research imaging of Great Lakes coastal wetlands. Benjamin Heumann, director of Central's Center for Geographic Information Services, and a team of geography students spent a fall day at Wilderness State Park near Carp Lake flying the aircraft along the Lake Michigan shoreline. The helicopter's camera took thousands of aerial photos researchers will use to map every location of Pitcher's thistle, a threatened native plant that grows on beaches and grassland dunes along Great Lakes shores. "Right now, the EPA spends millions of dollars sending scientists out into the field to count species manually, but we don't have a lot of good spatial data," Heumann says. "We're hoping that by using this new technology, coupled with ground sampling efforts, we'll be able to cover larger areas and get a better understanding about the state of the ecosystems around the Great Lakes and how they're changing." •

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