Professor Ramsdell
Dr. Michael Ramsdell
Current Clarkson DU Chapter Faculty Advisor
The Faculty Advisor serves as the primary advisor and mentor to the Chapter’s VP-Academic Excellence, and is committed to the academic and educational development of each Clarkson DU undergraduate member. Additional mentorship on specific leadership duties of the other officers will be provided by Lambda/DU alumni who have extensive management and leadership background in those areas.
Lambda/DU alumni are developing the procedures and policies that the undergraduates will use to manage the Chapter, and will work closely with the Advisor as recolonization on the Clarkson campus progresses.
Financial oversight of the organization is provided by the Alumni Board and alumni mentors, and will not be the responsibility of the Faculty Advisor.
A handbook available on the Clarkson DU website supplies extensive support for the Advisor by providing background on DU and information on topics such as the Chapter Excellence Plan, the Chapter Advisory Board, Best Practices and other subjects1. Included there is a summary of the job of Chapter Advisor, summarized here:
The most beneficial Campus/Faculty Advisor:
Strives to Build Better Men by focusing on our non-secret heritage and the Four Founding Principles.
Serves as the primary advisor and mentor to the VP-Academic Excellence.
Meets regularly with the VP-Academic Excellence regarding the academic standards and achievement of the chapter or colony.
Works with the VP-Academic Excellence to develop his position goals and potential budget.
Assists in the development of a written scholarship program which includes:
Academic Resource List
Study skills information
Chapter tutoring programs
Personal study hours schedule for members
Assists in the enforcement of the academic eligibility standards to be able to be initiated, attend chapter meetings, and vote.
Assists with chapter/officer retreats.
Attends at least two chapter meetings per semester.
Monitors progress and ensures the completion of the VP-Academic Excellence’s portion of the Chapter Excellence Plan (CEP).
Meets with associate members/pledges to discuss academics, expectations, and responsibilities.
Attends all Advisory Board meetings and reports on the academic standards and achievement of the chapter/colony.
Ensures the VP-Academic Excellence is held accountable to his responsibilities.
Participates in pertinent training and educational programs provided by IHQ and the college/university.
Professor Mike Ramsdell
Mike Ramsdell knows the difference between speed and velocity. All physicists do.Not all of them can explain it, though. And very few can make the core concepts of physics interesting and fun to learn. Ramsdell can. His physics lessons for first-year students include Matchbox® cars, race tracks and a series of challenges. His students have to figure out how to make their cars go faster, fly through the air and hit a target.
This means determining friction coefficients, drag constants and other elements of Newtonian mechanics that affect speed and velocity.
The challenges come at the end of the semester, when his students compete to see whose car goes faster, farther and more accurately.
“You see lots of students re-doing their lab work. Not to get a better grade, but to figure out how to make their matchbox car fly—and fly right.
“That’s rewarding,” he says. But there’s another aspect of teaching physics that might be even better.
“I see lots of students change. The way they think, the way they look at the world—there’s this big shift.
“The laws of physics explain things: why objects move, how and how that can change—from the molecular to galactic. And when someone understands the physics affecting one thing, that person starts to wonder about the physics behind everything else.”
It happens quickly, Ramsdell says, though its speed and velocity can’t be measured.
Maybe curiosity is the one thing throughout the known universe that’s faster than the speed of light. We’ll have to ask him about that.