trojan
Southern California	Friday. February 11, 1983
Engineering school teams with Army
By Mark Lowe
Staff Writer
The school of engineering signed an agreement with the United States Army Thursday that will allow engineering faculty and graduate students to get job experience at Army testing facilities.
The agreement is the work of Major Gen. John Koehler Jr., commanding general of the U.S. Army Test and Evaluation Command in Aberdeen, who came to the conclusion last year that the armed forces simply did not have enough engineers and something had to be done about it.
“As it developed, we realized it did a lot of good for the universities, the Army but also for the country,” he said, adding that the program will let engineers “attain greater knowledge and impact on the development of certain pieces of hardware.”
The university’s involvement with the Army began about a year ago when Dawn Patterson, director of the professional development program of the college of continuing education, invited Koehler to speak about the program on campus.
Last October, Rosalind Loring, dean of the college of continuing education, and Melvin Gerstein, interim dean of the school of engineering, visited the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, one of the three Army facilities involved in the deal.
University officials, Koehler said, were “just amazed at what we're doing with technology,” and decided to join the operation.
“Its purpose is to cross-fertilize the academic and military technology, to take their experience and our experience and find ways to do things better,” an Army spokesman said.
Participants in the program spend six months over a two-year period at one of three military bases in Arizona and New Mexico, working on the development and testing of Army hardware and software technology.
This includes testing instrumentation, communications and laser technology, computer software and all “things under consideration for use by the Army, from boots to bullets, muskets to missiles." the spokesman said.
The program allows engineers to be part of a "one-of-a-kind facility” and to “better prepare themselves to work for industry', and make it easier for them to get a job,” Koehler said.
Koehler was also eager to point out the benefits that the Army offers to participants in the program.
“We pay for travel, both ways, for one-half of their transportation while they are there (at the facility), and for bachelor officer’s quarters or comparable quarters if they have to live off the post,” Koehler said.
He added that if the participant then decides to work for the Army after he is through with the program, he will be admitted at a higher level of pay than other civilians taking their first job with the military.
But engineers who take part in the program are not committed to working for the Army after completing their assignment, nor do they have to join the military, spokesmen for the Army said.
Though any university student may visit the White Sands facility to observe the operation, the job program itself is limited to engineering graduate students and faculty and is available immediately.
“We’re ready to sign on anybody on the dotted line who is interested right now.” Koehler said.
Army spokesmen added, though, that since applicants will have to get military' security clearance, non-citizens may have difficulty getting in.
But they encouraged any interested student or faculty member to contact John Marshall, director of the industrial associates office of the school of engineering, at 743-2502.
Rosalind Loring, dean of the college of continuing education, Maj. Gen. John Koehler Jr. and Melvin Gerstein, interim dean of the school of engineering, discuss the agreement signed Thursday that will allow those in the engineering school to gain experience at Army testing facilities.
Student-run news service to reopen on trial basis
By Melinda Smolin
Staff Writer
The student news service, an organization that distributes articles about university students, is in the final stages of preparation after over a 1 1/2-year absence from campus.
Marianne Baer, a senior majoring in public relations, has been selected as the new student director of the service. She is in charge of hiring editors and reporters and coordinating the service.
Baer said she sees the service as going through a “trial period.”
"It is up to us to make it work. If we don’t show it is a positive aspect to the university, they (a support group) will discontinue it,” she said.
Baer described the objectives of the service as getting out positive publicity on what the university is doing. “There is so much more to USC students than most people are aware of,” she said.
Another objective of the service is to concentrate, not only on news stories, but on in-depth feature stories about students at the university.
Most people hear about sports-related stories or crime-related stories, Baer said. “You don't hear about other people’s accomplishments.”
After stories are written, they are sent to the student’s hometown newspaper and are often published, she said.
The service was discontinued because of a
lack of funds, said William Faith, chairman of the public relations sequence in the school of journalism and adviser to the service.
When journalism faculty appealed for funding to the Trojan Fourth Estate, a journalism support group, the request was approved. Funds were given for one year and will run out in June.
Faith said he hopes the office of university relations, which used to pay for the service, will fund it again after this year.
Richard Ruffolo, president of the Trojan Fourth Estate, said that a decision about whether to fund the service next year had not been made.
“It is a worthwhile project,” he said. “I am very much in favor of it. I would recommend it (but) I can't say it would be approved again.”
Although funding was approved in September, the service was unable to operate last semester because of a lack of office space.
Office space was found and the student news service is now located in Stonier Hall.
Martha Harris, the director of the USC News Service, said that the student news service is a good way to gain practical experience and that it was very7 popular in the past, at times operating with a staff as large as 60.
“It is very popular,” she said. “It looked chaotic on the outside, but it had a. great core of organization actually. She (Baer) is going to have a smaller elite group."
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Volume XCIII, Number 23	University of
Veteran war correspondent defends Vietnam conference
GLORIA EMERSON
By Laura Castaneda
Assistant City Editor
“There's Robert White, the former ambassador to El Salvador,” whispered Gloria Emerson. “He’s spoken very critically of our policy (in Latin America).”
Emerson then turned to White and his wife Mary Ann, who were sitting next to her at the Trojan Barrel Coffee Shop.
“Mrs. White? I want you to know that your husband bears an uncanny resemblance to Joseph Cotten, the movie actor.”
“I don’t see it,” replied Mrs. White in a dubious tone.
“If his hair was curlier, we could make a million dollars— personal appearances every' time a movie is shown,” Emerson insisted. “We could send him to speech schools. Shoot him around the country for Joseph Cotten festivals.”
Playful
One student described Emerson as a “mother hen” to almost everyone who took part in the recent conference.
“Vietnam Reconsidered: Lessons from a War.” Her playful exchange with the Whites, and the number of veterans who continually tried to meet and talk with her, seems to substantiate that observation.
Emerson was one of the participating advisers for the conference and chaired the “The War and the Veterans” panel. She was a foreign correspondent for The New York Times, covering the Vietnam War from
1969	to 1972, and also the author of a book on the Vietnam (Continued on page 2)
Photo courtesy of Transcript