Looking at Rankings and Project Brainstorming

I've had a nice week so far, easing back into the swing of things.  I got two boxes on Monday morning, before heading to campus.  One was from my mom, with more of my crocheting stuff, so I am going to get started on some project ideas (Mobius strip gloves!) The other was from my best friend, Melissa, and it was simply a giant box of Lucky Charms, which, despite being magically delicious are difficult to obtain over here.

My box from Melissa!  <3

I also had a decent Valentine's day yesterday.  Aurelie made me the most delicious dinner and re-introduced me to brussel sprouts.  I had never liked them before, but she baked them, instead of boiled them, then sautéed them a bit with a rump steak and potatoes.  They came out tasting a bit like a combination of artichokes and cabbage, two vegetables I absolutely love, so it was great.  :)

In other news, I've been catching up with the Formula student team today, and I've volunteered to help them keep the website organized and updated (I can write one blog, why not another?)  I written one news article so far this week.  This will help me to understand the project more fully, and it also helps the team maintain their online presence, which helps with a number of things for them, including sponsorships.  You can check out the team's website here:
Warwick Formula Student
I just added a short article about the space frame for the chassis, under news.

I've also been noticing some rankings for universities that have been published online.
For Warwick, there was this guide published: The Complete University Guide for UK Schools
Overall, Warwick ranks 8th this year over all UK universities.  In business, they rank 4th, in general engineering, they rank 15th, and in physics and astronomy, they rank 11th.  I thought it was a really interesting report on all the universities here in the UK.

To give a shout out to the folks back home, US News released this report on Up-And-Coming Schools in the US: Up-and-Coming US Universities.  This list was a list of universities "that are making the most promising and innovative changes in the areas of academics, faculty and student life."  Who ranked #3?!?  That would be IUPUI!  The article notes the ranked master's programs at IUPUI, the specialization in motorsports, the law school and the School of Public and Environmental Affairs (SPEA) as some of the strengths of IUPUI.  My undergrad university, Ball State was also ranked 8th on this list!

This morning, I also met with three other International EngD students, Nick, Claire and Matt, to discuss some group projects.  I think we had a lot of good initial ideas.  We are looking at doing two projects, one "big" project (with 300 hours of work per person) and one "small" project with about 50 hours of work per person.  We tossed around some interesting ideas, sort of converging on looking at various engineering competitions we could look into, with a focus on sustainability, open source hardware design, and/or third world country applications.  The ideas were very broad, but we will be meeting next week to discuss more and see if we can plan something more solid soon.

Well, that's about it for now!