Many at SCE have enjoyed watching A Day in the Office: A New Musical Parody written and directed by Ryan Beard, the son of Dr. Cory Beard, Associate Professor of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering. The musical is based off the hit TV show “The Office” and has been published to YouTube! Dr. Beard’s son Ryan starts off the musical and plays the irritating regional general manager, Michael Scott. Michael and his office mates welcome Susan, a new employee to the office which puts the wackiness of the office in full bloom as a talented group of teenagers light up the stage! The 2 hour show has all of the humor you can handle, plus amazing music and dancing. Dr. Beard’s wife, Michelle, served as the executive producer for the show, and Dr. Beard’s son Jonathan plays Mose, Dwight’s cousin. Congratulations to the Beard family and thanks for the sharing the fun with us!
Tag Archives: Cory Beard
SCE Undergraduate Student Wins Best Paper Award
SCE Computer Science senior Rebecca “Becca” May recently received the Best Paper award at an international telecommunications conference, an especially unique and prestigious honor for an undergraduate student. Continue reading
SCE Faculty and Students Central To Success of Computer Science 4 High School Summer Camp
The Computer Science 4 High School Summer Camp, CS4HS@UMKC, was developed and taught by SCE faculty Yugi Lee and Cory Beard, along with Alexis Petri from the UMKC Institute for Human Development and Liz Tascio, UMKC English Department faculty. Participants learned how to write computer code to tell their own creative stories using Scratch, a programming language developed by MIT Media Lab. View the students’ project pictures now posted on the web. The UMKC SCE CS4HS camp was sponsored through the Google Computer Science for High School initiative. It was one of dozens held across the world and sponsored by Google. Continue reading
SCE 2013 Summer Camps Support Students and Teachers
Summer time is always a busy time at SCE. Over the past several years our labs and classrooms have been filled with students coming to UMKC SCE to attend various summer programs for elementary, middle and high school students and 7-12 teachers. This summer 2013 we are proud to host six summer camps during June and July.
- Learn Science & Math Club’s Math Blast Camp will be held at SCE in early June, kicking off our summer program schedule. Using a completely interactive approach to math, the camp invites 8-12 year old students to get their “math on” through hands-on projects and group games. Continue reading
Partnership provides momentum for alternative energy workshop
Four SCE professors formed the UMKC E-Save through Automation and Education team which proposed and helped implement alternative-energy-focused projects envisioned by Paseo Academy high school students. According to the UMKC Today article, a partnership with KCP&L (Kansas City Power and Light) resulted in Paseo students having “access to the resources of the area’s major energy provider and the know-how of SCE professors and college students.” These were used by Paseo student teams when designing and creating the alternative energy projects which they presented at a day-long competition held on March 20.
SCE turns out to help with FIRST Tech Challenge regional competition at UMKC
Dozens of SCE’s faculty, staff, students and alumni volunteered at the FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) regional qualifier, RING IT UP, held Sunday, Feb. 3rd at the University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC) and hosted by SCE in partnership with the KC STEM Alliance. Pictures taken by the Kansas City Star captured the excitement and the many SCE volunteers serving on set-up, registration, safety, competition, judging, pit, queuing, refreshment, and traffic crews and as scorekeepers, announcers, and referees.
The event, organized and coordinated by SCE’s Whitney Molloy and Valeri Reynolds, attracted 23 teams from the Greater Kansas City area and beyond as teams traveled from Camdenton, St Louis, and Rolla in MO, Millington, TN and Lincoln, NE to participate. The following teams advanced to the state championship to be held in Rolla, MO on Feb. 23: iBot, Rolla Patriots, Cyberbotic Independence Alliance, Maniacal Mechanics, Camdenton 4-H Laser -5909, and TJ Titanium Titans.
SCE professors and students promote solar energy awareness
SCE professors Cory Beard, Vijay Kumar, Yugyung Lee and Praveen Rao teamed up with KCP&L and Kansas City Public Schools to host a solar energy workshop for high school students attending the Paseo Academy of Fine and Performing Arts. For more information see the UMKC Today article “Solar Energy Workshop Empowers Students.”
Outstanding Students & Teams honored at SCE’s Spring Awards
SCE honored our outstanding students and student teams at the UMKC SCE Spring Awards Reception held on April 26, 2012. Outstanding student awards were announced for a junior, senior, masters and I.Ph.D student in each of SCE’s degree programs. Outstanding students are selected by their department’s faculty. Selection is based on GPA and the student’s contributions in terms of participation and leadership in SCE student organizations and teams. Student competition teams receiving awards included the ASCE Steel Bridge Team who earned first place at the 2012 regional competition, the ACM Programming Team who won 3rd place at the 2012 Central Plains Conference Programming Competition, the IEEE Robotics Team who won 4th place in circuit design at their regional competition and the SAE Baja Buggy Team who qualified for the next competition level. Congratulations to the all our Spring Award recipients!
Also honored were Good Teaching Award Recipients Jerry Richardson of SCE’s Civil and Mechanical Engineering Department and Brian Hare of SCE’s Computer Science Electrical Engineering Department for their excellence in teaching.
Student/Faculty team (Todd Gardner & Cory Beard) win IEEE ComSoc Best Paper Award
Ph.D student Michael Todd Gardner and SCE faculty Dr. Cory Beard were awarded the “CQR Best Paper Award” at the International Communications Quality and Reliability (IEEE CQR) Workshop for their research paper, Evaluating Geographic Vulnerabilities in Networks. It was one of three papers chosen for this honor at the May 10-12, 2011 workshop held in Naples, Florida. The paper described their research into understanding geographic vulnerabilities in networks where events like floods, hurricanes, etc. can cause disruptions for network devices in a geographic area of impact. If particular combinations of network devices fail, entire parts of a network can become disconnected. In describing the aim of the research, Ph.D. student Mr. Gardner says, “the overall goal is to develop resilient networks for applications like emergency response in disasters and mission critical applications like air traffic control and military uses”.
The student/faculty team is continuing its work in collaboration with SCE Professor of Computer Science Dr. Deep Medhi, on a recent paper, Avoiding High Impacts of Geospatial Events in Mission Critical and Emergency Networks using Linear and Swarm Optimization, presented at the 2012 IEEE Second International Multi-Disciplinary Conference on Cognitive Methods in Situation Awareness and Decision Support (CogSIMA). The work extends the research described in the first paper by investigating optimization based approaches and methods to add new nodes to networks to reduce the vulnerability of networks to geographic events.
Paper Cititations:
Gardner, M.T.; Beard, C.; , “Evaluating Geographic Vulnerabilities in Networks,” Communications Quality and Reliability (CQR), 2011 IEEE International Workshop Technical Committee on , vol., no., pp.1-6, 10-12 May 2011.
M. T. Gardner, C. Beard, D. Medhi; , “Avoiding High Impacts of Geospatial Events in Mission Critical and Emergency Networks using Linear and Swarm Optimization”, Cognitive Methods in Situation Awareness and Decision Support (CogSIMA), 2012 IEEE Second International Multi-Disciplinary Conference on , 6-8 Mar. 2012
ECE student Jorge Colman creates Iphone/Ipad invention
Jorge Colman, an SCE Electrical Computer Engineering Student, has invented and developed a device that allows iPhone and iPad users to wirelessly watch and manipulate applications on their TV, monitor or projector. The invention would allow people to play games, video chat, surf the web, watch movies, browse pictures, display PowerPoint presentations and manipulate anything that exists on their iPhone or iPad. With a patent pending and a rough prototype, Colman is seeking assistance to finance the final prototype and accepting pre-orders. See the UMKC press release about Jorge and his invention for more details.