Ferris State University Offers Technology Degrees

Story first appeared on CBSDetroit.com.
Ferris State University is one of those schools that isn’t afraid to let its nerd flag fly. Especially with their Michigan Honors Programs.
Its roots are in a private vocational school, and it’s still in the two-year associate’s degree business in some technologies that are important to society but rarely degreed — rubber engineering technology, for instance.
My visit to Bulldog Country started with a presentation from Carl Shangraw, professor of surveying engineering. He walked me through all the stuff people know surveyors do — establishing legal boundaries — to the stuff people have no clue surveyors do, from setting up a local geocache to position offshore oil rigs to manage sophisticated geographic Information systems to helping design everything from tall buildings to freeways to railroads. They offer a considerable amount of Michigan Honors Courses, as well.
Surveying can be used to remote-control farm and road building machinery — something that Shangraw said has not yet taken off in Michigan but apparently has elsewhere.
Of particular interest to Ferris is hydrographic mapping — surveying the bottom of bodies of water. Gone are the days of guys in small boats with weighted ropes measuring depths. These are the days of stereoscopic sonar. Ferris is working with Northwestern Michigan College in Traverse City to create a hydrographic surveying system out of NMC’s maritime academy boat.
Shangraw said he and a couple of Ferris students spent last summer for the National Park Service, mapping the bottomlands between Sleeping Bear Dunes and the Manitou Islands. Among their discoveries — what appears to be an ancient river bottom in Good Harbor Bay, marking a river that emptied into a smaller ancient Lake Michigan when the shoreline was several miles farther west than today’s lake. This can be a part of Michigan Honors Classes, as well.
Shangraw said the Ferris surveying engineering degree program now has 75 students, down from 125 a few years ago. He blamed the state’s poor economy. But even so, he said the program gets three offers for every graduate, with starting salaries all above $50,000. Most of them, though, have to leave Michigan.
The next presenter, Joel East, a senior in surveying engineering, related how he worked surveying a particle accelerator, the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility, in Newport News, Va.
East said he and his crew were brought in to make sure the accelerator’s huge racetrack still lined up as the atom smasher prepared for a power upgrade from six billion electron volts to 11.
My next presentation came from Brian Holton, a professor of heating, ventilation, air conditioning and refrigeration at Ferris. These days, he’s working on something called the Legacy HVAC Equipment Field Evaluation and Performance Testing research project. These projects can be part of Michigan Honors Programs.
This U.S. Department of Energy funded effort aims to bring scientific rigor to quantify just how quickly appliances and heating and cooling systems lose their efficiency. It’s such a new idea that Ferris had to develop its own testing equipment and methodology to do the work.
Holton said the effort should give the federal government an idea of how much efficiency a 10-year-old furnace originally rated at 90 percent efficiency has lost. That will guide the government’s recommendations on replacing old appliances.
There’s also a second federal contract that will test energy-saving retrofit measures for their cost-effectiveness.
They will take three test homes, one control and the other two experimental, install different retrofit measures, and test them, to determine their cost effectiveness.
And that means designing algorithms and new technologies to simulate human occupancy of a house — everything from lights going on and off to refrigerators opening and closing to ovens going on and off to thermostats going up and down. Interesting stuff for Michigan Honors Programs.

Septage Plant Investigation Proceeds

Traverse City Record-Eagle

TRAVERSE CITY -- A downstate engineering firm will probe questions surrounding design and construction of Grand Traverse County's troubled septage plant, an effort to determine whether its architects committed professional negligence.

The county's Board of Public Works voted 7 to 1 this week to hire Grand Rapids-based engineering firm Prein & Newhof for up to $19,500 to investigate septage plant design firm Gourdie-Fraser Inc. and project manager Michael Houlihan.

The county's septage treatment fund will foot the bill. The decision to tap that account nipped a possible squabble between county and township officials over who should pay for the probe, a fight that could have delayed an investigation for months.

"I didn't think I'd ever see it happen," said BPW chairman Pat Pahl. "Some people didn't want to see the investigation proceed and sometimes I think they used the money issue to try and stop it."

The plant has been beset by problems virtually since it opened in mid-2005. A wall collapsed a month after it opened and spewed thousands of gallons of septage about the plant grounds. But finances pose the biggest worry for local officials.

The $7.8 million plant was overbuilt because septage flow projection numbers submitted by Gourdie-Fraser turned out to be far overblown. The facility is projected to lose up to $2.4 million over the next five years, and some county officials want to institute an annual $40 tax on all septage tank owners to alleviate financial problems.

The BPW in May voted to conduct an investigation, but action stalled until July, when a divided county board agreed to provide $10,000 to help pay for a probe. Costs beyond that amount were to come from Acme, East Bay, Elmwood, Garfield and Peninsula townships.

Monday's BPW vote, however, allows the investigation to proceed even if the county board decides to pull its contribution.

"It's going to move forward regardless of whether the county flip-flops again and takes its $10,000 back," Pahl said.

County Commissioner Larry Inman said he's fine with the BPW decision.

"Let's just get it done. We need to move this thing forward," Inman said.

Prein & Newhof will determine if engineers at Gourdie-Fraser exercised reasonable care when they over-estimated septage flow. It also will review the actions of Houlihan, BPW's former attorney who resigned this year amid calls for the investigation. Other industry leaders may be called upon for professional opinions, including Michigan's leading septage plant construction company HTI Systems.

The engineering firm will investigate if Houlihan properly supervised Gourdie-Fraser's flow estimates and if he used reasonable professional care when he certified in May 2005 that the plant was substantially completed. That act freed Gourdie-Fraser and construction firm The Christman Company from fines of up to $500,000 for failing to complete the project on time.

The probe is expected to take up to 60 days. If the results indicate professional negligence occurred, the next step could involve litigation against Gourdie-Fraser and/or Houlihan.

Garfield Township Supervisor Chuck Korn said some local officials are concerned about suing Houlihan.

"Houlihan ran the Department of Public Works for years," Korn said. "There are people out there who do not want to get involved in any sort of action that would include Mr. Houlihan because they are afraid he is the great and powerful Oz, and if you look behind the curtain he will destroy you. They really are scared of him."