11/24/2004		Blue Jays have stellar fall season
11/22/2004		Two alums named trustees
11/22/2004		Physics prof develops system to monitor cement curing
11/19/2004		E-town chosen by website as promoting student-athlete
11/11/2004		Men's soccer beats Drew in NCAA tournament
11/10/2004		Art prof chosen for sculpture reference
11/9/2004		Men's soccer captures conference title, tournament bid
11/2/2004		Cross country teams capture conference titles

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While the Blue Jay athletics program enjoy success every sports season, the achievements of this fall season are worth noting:

• 4 teams (men’s and women’s cross country, men’s soccer, women’s tennis) won conference championships.
• 2 teams that did not win the conference title (women’s soccer, women’s volleyball) reached the conference semi-finals
• 3 teams qualified for the NCAA national championships, with men’s cross country finishing 15th in the country (348 Division III schools sponsor the sport), women’s cross country finishing 19th in the country (377 schools sponsor the sport), and men’s soccer reaching the second round and narrowly missing the opportunity to go on to the Sweet Sixteen (381 schools sponsor soccer).
• 4 coaches (Mike Dager, Matt Helsel, Skip Roderick, Chris Straub) were named conference Coach of the Year.
• The women’s tennis team went undefeated for the first time since 1977.
• 38 percent of our fall sport athletes will be named to the conference Academic Honor Roll this fall, with a 3.2 or better cumulative GPA.

Elizabethtown College has elected two alumni to its board of trustees. Candace Abel of Elizabethtown, a 2002 graduate, and David Sykes, a 1970 graduate, will begin serving a three-year term in January.

Abel is founder and director of Brittany’s Hope, an Elizabethtown foundation that helps with financial grants for families seeking to adopt special-needs children and advocates on their behalf. Brittany’s Hope was founded in 1999 to honor the memory of Abel’s adopted daughter Brittany, who was killed in an automobile accident.

Abel is an officer in DAS Distributors, Inc., a family-owned business in Palmyra for which her husband, David Z. Abel, serves as CEO and treasurer. She graduated from Elizabethtown with a bachelor’s degree in social work, and two of her children are currently enrolled at the College.

Sykes is president and CEO of Prospec Electronics, Inc. of Mt. Pleasant, S.C., a company that assembles and distributes stereo systems for marine vessels. He is also the principal in a number of Prospec subsidiaries. Prior to founding Prospec Electronics in 1987, he worked for AudioVox in New York.

Sykes graduated with a bachelor’s degree in business administration, having served as class president and residence hall counselor. He established The David R. Sykes Scholarship Fund, which is awarded to an entering business major who expresses an active interest in marine activities and has entrepreneurial interests.

A resident of the Isle of Palms, S.C., Sykes is also active in the greater Charleston community. He is a past member of the board of Happy Days and Special Times, an organization providing ongoing programs for children with cancer and their families.

Check out international, national and local media coverage of Hager's research . . .

An Elizabethtown College professor has developed an embedded sensor that functions in cement much like a thermometer in the Thanksgiving turkey.

"The thermometer indicates if the turkey is done by measuring its internal temperature," said Nathaniel Hager III, an adjunct faculty member in Elizabethtown’s physics and engineering department. "The embedded sensor does the same thing in concrete by monitoring how quickly water involved in the curing process is chemically combining with portland cement."

Hager’s research, conducted with business partner and chemist Roman C. Domszy, involves embedding a disposable sensor in a concrete structure when the cement is poured. "A fast electrical pulse is bounced off the sensor, producing a reflected pulse that contains molecular signals due to unreacted water and water combining with portland cement," Hager said. "Tracking these two signals along with cure time provides a better understanding of the cure process and identifies irregularities that lead to improper cure. Essentially, we’re looking for the signals that correspond with cement strength. If we don’t get them, we have to trust the signals to tell us that something is wrong."

There are a number of applications in the construction industry for the system, which Hager and Domszy refer to as Time-Domain-Reflectometry (TDR) Concrete Cure Monitoring. The system could be used by companies that make cement and cement additives to determine how to optimize the curing process. It could also be used in the field to help test structures – "to see if cement is fully hard" -- or on multilevel structures, to determine when to pour the second layer. And it could help identify residual moisture in cement floors before surface coatings, like epoxy, are installed, minimizing moisture damage and reducing wait times.

"When the thermometer indicates that the turkey is getting done too quickly or too slowly, you take corrective action like turning the oven temperature up or back," Hager said. "This monitoring system allows those in construction to do the same thing with concrete."

An article on Hager and Domszy’s research, which was funded in part by National Science Foundation’s Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program, appeared in a recent issue of the Journal of Applied Physics. A patent for their concrete cure monitoring system has been issued.

For more E-town College news . . .

Elizabethtown College has been identified by high school counselors as one of 80 colleges nationwide that "excel in promoting the ‘student’ aspect of the student-athlete."

Elizabethtown was chosen as a "Counselors’ Pick" – a school that excels in academic engagement, teaching, community and outcomes – by a national group of high school counselors assembled by College Athletes, a website for students looking to combine athletics with academics at a NCAA Division III college.

Elizabethtown, which competes in the Middle Atlantic State College Athletic Conference, is one of just 11 Division III schools nationwide to send both its men’s and women’s teams to the national cross country championship this year. The men’s team is competing in the national championships for the fourth time in the last six years, while the women’s team is competing for the first time ever.

E-town’s 2002 men’s squad, while finishing 15th in the nation and winning its first regional and fourth consecutive conference championship, achieved the highest GPA of any NCAA Division III men’s cross country program in the nation. And the College’s lone Rhodes Scholar, John Leaman, was also a member of the cross country team.

In addition, Elizabethtown’s men’s soccer team recently advanced to the second round of the NCAA tournament before losing to Johns Hopkins. And the women’s basketball team, with three more wins in its upcoming season, will put head coach Yvonne Kauffman in the history books as just the second NCAA Division III women’s basketball coach to reach the 600 win plateau, as well as the first woman in Division III ever to do so.

"The great thing about working at a Division III college is that our student-athletes are students first and foremost and athletes second," said W. Kent Barnds, dean of admissions and enrollment management. "During the selection process we make sure that a recruited athlete is equally capable in the classroom. If a student can’t do the work in the classroom they don’t deserve a place at the College -- after all we are a place of higher learning."

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Elizabethtown College, playing in the NCAA Division III men's soccer tournament for the first time since 1999, defeated Drew University 2-0 at home on Wednesday (Nov. 10) to gain its first NCAA tournament win since 1996. Drew, which was the 2003 NCAA Division III national runner-up, concluded its season with a 14-6-1 overall record, while E-town improved to 15-3-3 overall and advanced to the second round of the tournament.

Elizabethtown will host Johns Hopkins University Saturday (Nov. 13) at 1 p.m.

More info is available at E-town SportsNet.

For more E-town College news . . .

Professor of Art Milt Friedly is one of less than 300 contemporary sculptors chosen for inclusion in a new illustrated sculpture reference.

Friedly is featured in "The Sculpture Reference," by Sculpture Books Publishing (www.SculptureBooks.com), which contains more than 1,000 color images selected from more than 16,000 submitted. He has been teaching in Elizabethtown’s Department of Fine and Performing Arts since 1987 and has served as coordinator of the art division and director of Hess Gallery since 1991. Friedly earned a bachelor of fine arts (with an emphasis on ceramics and printmaking) from Arizona State University and a master of fine arts in sculpture and printmaking from the University of Wyoming.

Friedly most recently exhibited his work at Penn State University’s Hub-Robeson Gallery, Elizabethtown’s Hess Gallery, The Community Gallery of Lancaster, Shippensburg University’s Kauffman Gallery and Lock Haven University’s Sloan Fine Arts Center. He also participated in Lebanon Valley College’s 33rd Annual Juried Exhibition, "Images 2003" at Penn State University’s Robeson Gallery, "Art in a Changing World: Northeast PA Regional Art 2002" at Marywood University’s Mahady Gallery and "In Response" at the Savannah (Ga.) College of Arts and Design.

Friedly has earned prizes at a number of shows, including an honorable mention at Fort Hays State University’s "3rd Great Plains National," a certificate of excellence at the Soho (N.Y.) International Art Competition, and the Juror’s Award at the 12th Annual All Wyoming Craft Show. He is also the past recipient of an Art in Public Places Award for the state of Wyoming.

Elizabethtown College won its first conference title and clinched its first NCAA Division III Tournament bid since 1999 with a 1-0 double overtime upset road win over nationally ranked Messiah College in the Commonwealth Conference championship game Saturday night (Nov. 6. The men's soccer team will host Drew University in the first round of the NCAA Division III tournament at 6 p.m., Nov. 10, at Ira R. Herr Field.

More information is available here.

E-town College's men's and women's cross country teams captured Middle Atlantic Conference (MAC) titles on Saturday, Oct. 30. This is the sixth consecutive conference championship for the men's team, tying the College's record for most consecutive conference titles, which was set by the men's soccer team from 1962-1967. The women's cross country team claimed its first championship ever, placing first out of 15 teams with a score of 46 points.

In addition, first-year student Ryan Mulcahy (Towanda, PA) has been named the Middle Atlantic Conference men's cross country Rookie of the Year for 2004, and E-town head men's coach Chris Straub and head women's coach Mike Dager have been named the MAC cross country Coaches of the Year.

More information is available at E-town SportsNet.