Mid-Atlantic Section AIAA
Council Meeting Minutes
August 11, 2010
Robin Vaughan, Secretary
August 11, 2010 APL Main Cafeteria 6:30 PM
Attendees: Carolyn Slivinski, Andrea Kodys, Jack Koletty, Marvine Hamner, Sarah
Haack, Surya Raghu, Jim Lesikar, Robin Vaughan, Xiaofeng Liu, Sarah McElman,
Alexander Englesbe (JHU student chapter)
Meeting minutes from the last council meeting on 4/15/10 were approved. Robin will try
to post the minutes for this meeting on our section SharePoint site along with sending
them to council members via e-mail.
The wife of former section chair Pramud Rawat passed away recently. The section sent
flowers and has also approved a donation of $100 to Grassroots Crisis Center in her
memory.
Sarah Haack presented the treasurer’s report and paper copies were circulated. The main
expenses since the last report were costs associated with the awards dinner on July 8. It
was suggested that Sarah include the budget categories for each expenditure in the
monthly reports. This will make the end-of-year audit process easier because the AIAA
form requires amounts to be totalled by category. Sarah was also asked to check on the
status of the section insurance and to have the annual payment made if it hasn’t already
been paid. Sarah is still waiting for information from Jack Koletty on how to set up the
education fund in memory of Victor Lougheed (former section treasurer). Jack said the
the NCS section treasurer hasn’t been available, but he will work with Sarah to contact
him before the next council meeting.
Jack Koletty discussed plans for programs for the NCS SSTC (National Capitol Section
Space Systems Technical Committee) for the coming year. The first event will be the
annual presentation by the winner of the Young Engineer of the Year award to be held at
Goddard in September; the date and time are not yet finalized. We asked that they try not
to hold this on September 16 since we have arranged for our own speaker on that
evening. The second event will be a program on UAVs at the Naval Academy in
Annapolis targeted for November. He has speakers available from the Pax River facility
who are in charge of the UAS program. One of the professors at the Academy works on
this program and will help coordinate the event. Jack is also going to work with the
faculty advisor for the AIAA student chapter. Jack would like to have a program at APL
in the spring, probably in February 2011. He suggested a joint presentation between APL
and JPL. He is working on getting the director of JPL (Charles Elachi) or his deputy to
participate. The town hall program is usually held in May. He wants to work the NASA
headquarters and administrator Bolden to arrange the program this year.
Three students from the JHU student chapter attended the meeting – Xiaofeng Liu, Sarah
McElman, and Alexander Englesbe. They discussed their plans for the coming year. They
would like help from the council in finding high-profile speakers for programs on
campus. In the past they’ve had talks by a White House science advisor, the Air Force
chief scientist, and a naval test pilot. One possible candidate is the head of NOAA.
Another possible topic is low thrust electric propulsion- Andrea may be able to find
someone at ATK who can talk about this. Marvine Hamner suggested a speaker from
Langley who does a program on lightening. It was also suggested that we work together
to get a professor or other speaker from JHU to do a presentation as one of the section
programs. Their work on underwater UAVs might be a topic of interest to general section
members.
Carolyn Slivinski presented information on the Young Professional rocket competition
that Will Marchant is trying to start up in region 1 in connection with the existing Battle
of the Rockets program run by EEE of Central Virginia. That program focuses on high
scholl and college students and he would like to extend that to YPs who have just entered
the work force. As a prelude to getting YPs teams started, he is looking for volunteers
from sections in the region to help with the main event which will be held in April in
Culpepper, Virginia. They need help in many categories including judges, a financial
coordinator, people to write rules and regulations for YP teams, and people to deal with
logistics like setting up equipment on the day of the event. This might be a good way to
get people from West Virginia, Pennsylvania, or other more remote areas of the section to
participate – they could help local teams. It was suggested that we could try to form a
team that would present the status of their work at the YPSE conference in November.
Sarah Haack and Andrea Kodys were interested in going to the event in April to help out.
Andrea also volunteered to be a recruiter for a potential team for students and YPs and to
try to get a presentation for YPSE.
Andrea Kodys and Sarah Haack gave a report on the RLC (Regional Leadership
Conference) that they both attended in Nashville. They enjoyed meeting the other section
leaders and got several good ideas for events and recruiting volunteers to participate in
section events. They suggested that a pirate cruise in Baltimore harbor might be a good
event for YPs. These run through early September but not over the fall and winter
months. It’s probably too late to organize one for this fall unless it can be done later in
September. Sarah will check to see if a late September date is a possibility; otherwise we
will wait for next spring to hold this event. They suggested that we dedicate the
September council meeting to identifying specific new candidates to help out with
particular tasks on section programs to try to expand participation among the general
membership. Marvine suggested organizing a game for YPs with technical clues that we
could run from our web site. We could offer a trip to the AIAA Aerospace Sciences
Conference as a prize. Marvine and Andrea agreed to work on developing this concept
and give a report at the next council meeting.
We deferred a discussion on planning for the YPSE conference because Tom Milnes,
chair for this year, was not present. He was working at another K-12 education program.
The first call for papers has been sent out for YPSE and the web site is available. Sarah
and Andrea will arrange a happy hour event after the first day of YPSE (Friday evening)
at a bar near to APL.
Surya Raghu gave a report on plans for speaker programs for this year. He has arranged
for Dr. Bill Pitts of NIST to speak on the investigation of the WTC fires on 9/11/01. The
talk will be in the Kossiakoff Center at APL on September 16. Advertising for the event
will start soon. He’s been contacted by people from NCS about arranging a program with
ESA, possibly featuring the ESA representative stationed in Washington, D.C. He’s
working on getting other speakers for future months.
Carolyn presented Marvine with her special citation award for leading the judging for the
student paper competitions at YPSE over the past several years. (Marvine was not able to
attend the Awards Dinner.)
Jim Lesikar asked about future programs at the embassies in Washington, D.C. Jack
Koletty reported that NCS is planning to revive these programs and is working on one to
be held at the German embassy in the spring of 2011.
The next council meeting is scheduled for September 9 at the home of Andrea Kodys.
Andrea gave her permission to announce this to the general membership via e-mail and
on the web site provided her address and phone number are not listed. We will advise
people to contact one of the council officers if they are interested in attending.