Campus News in Brief

Carnegie Mellon grad named to Order of Canada

James Gosling, the man credited with inventing the Java programming language and who received his Ph.D. in computer science from Carnegie Mellon in 1983, has been named officer of the Order of Canada, Canadian news source CBC News reported February 21.

Gosling, a vice-president of Sun Microsystems Inc. of Santa Clara, Calif., was one of 29 Canadians appointed, the office of Governor General Michaëlle Jean announced last Monday.

Gosling will receive his insignia later this year.

Society names Garrett Professor of the Year

Civil and environmental engineering professor and department head James H. Garrett Jr. was named Professor of the Year by the Pittsburgh chapter of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) in a ceremony on February 17.

Garrett was honored for his “outstanding teaching ability” and “significant contributions toward improving professional aspects of civil engineering education,” according to a February 20 university press release.

Garrett has been a professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering since 1990 and head of the department since 2006.

Garrett is the director of the Center for Sensed Critical Infrastructure Research (CenSCIR) in the Institute for Complex Engineered Systems at Carnegie Mellon and the vice chair of the Technical Committee of the International Association of Bridge and Structural Engineers (IABSE).

Heimann receives Elliott Dunlap Smith Award

The College of Humanities and Social Sciences (H&SS) has awarded associate teaching professor of information systems Larry Heimann the 2006–07 Elliott Dunlap Smith Award for Teaching and Educational Service, according to a February 20 university press release.

The award is presented annually to acknowlege faculty members for excellence in undergraduate teaching.

Heimann played a large role in creating the Information Systems major within the college of H&SS. He has also designed such popular courses as Organizational Intelligence in the Information Age, and led the program’s community outreach work with local nonprofit organizations.

Last administration of current GRE changed to July 31

The last day for students to sit for the Graduate Record Examination (GRE) before its format is changed will be July 31, a month earlier than expected, The Washington Post reported last week.

The revised test will be administered for the first time on September 10.

The new test has a more difficult format, according to a press release from Kaplan Test Prep and Admissions. The changes include extending the length of testing time to four hours from its current two and a half.

Approximately 500,000 students take the test annually, Kaplan stated.