Computer Science Senior Projects: Real-World Opportunities from Oregon State University, Study Guides, Projects, Research of Software Engineering

Download Computer Science Senior Projects: Real-World Opportunities from Oregon State University and more Study Guides, Projects, Research Software Engineering in PDF only on Docsity! Can the project be a database problem? For example, I am the advisor for the OSU Dressage Team (an Equestrian team), and we host shows. We need to database the information regarding our riders, the tests that they wish to ride, their payment information, etc., and then we need to assign ride times based on rules, such as no rider can ride twice within a 45 minute period if it is a low level test, or within 1.25 hours if it is a higher level test. The output would have to be in several different formats. Anyway, it may be too simple of a problem, it just doesn't appear so to us. :-). Thanks. Deb Pence ME "Deborah Pence" pence@engr.orst.edu Hi Bruce, I saw your email about student projects, and while we dont need one of those, we are looking for 1 or 2 good student helpers in our computer support team in the Community Network, so I'm writing to ask if you know of any that are looking for work? We prefer that they have good people skills as well as technical ability, and since the vast majority of our customer base is Windows machines, that is a required strength. We have a requirement that students work a minimum of 10 hours, and we can give them more than that if they desire. Due to the training involved, we would prefer that they are planning to be here for at least the rest of this school year, preferably longer. Please have any interested students send email to Admin.Help@oregonstate.edu to ask about an interview. Thanks for any help, Marilyn Wallace Community Network 541-737-4510 Subject: Computer Science senior projects course From: "Gunadi, Haris" <Haris.Gunadi@oregonstate.edu> To: "D'Ambrosio, Bruce" <dambrosi@cs.orst.edu> Hello Professor Bruce, I graduated from CS department this year and I am currently working with Services for Students with Disabilities (SSD) as Faculty. When I was a student, I developed database for SSD to organize testing services (for my CS410 project). Testing database purpose is to organize testing requests from students and professors. The database has created a more effective way to communicate with students, professors, and proctors. Currently, I am developing web based application that will serve 500 students. Each term, SSD receives more than 1,500 requests from students. SSD decided to hire me this year to create a newly and improved database system to serve all students requests from testing services, note taking, book on tapes, and interpreting requests. This project will also involve Bookstore. Currently, I am using .NET, C#, and SQL Server. I am willing to work with students for their CS 462 project. All forms that I created are completely accessible by all students that we serve (these include blind students). This might be a good opportunity for me to promote website design that complies with Section 508. Let me know if this project sounds good to you. Our website is: http://ssd.oregonstate.edu and I also attach my presentation slides for my conference this coming Wednesday. <<SSDPresentation2B.ppt>> Haris Gunadi Services for Students with Disabilities Alternative Format / Technology Coordinator Phone: 737 - 8582 Subject: RE: Computer Science senior projects course From: "Moule, Jean" <moulej@orst.edu> To: "D'Ambrosio, Bruce" <dambrosi@cs.orst.edu> Hello, I was interested last year and never caught you in by phone. So I'll tell you what I have been wanting: I teach a course on the web with students all over. I've been wanting a way for them have a graphic of Oregon that they can input their name and town on, in the correct location, and then it would be displayed with all of the entries. Not sure how a program could be integrated with Blackboard, however, I think there are others that might be interested. For all I know, something like this already exists. Just another way to keep in contact when all are so scattered. Please let me know if this is a viable project. I have a feeling you are wanting something much more complex. Jean Moule 541 737-3529 School of Education From: "Dee Kaseberg" <dkaseber@ncesd.k12.or.us> To: <dambrosi@cs.orst.edu> Subject: Senior Projects Dear Mr. D'Ambrosio: The following e-mail was forwarded to me from Sandy Macnab with the Oregon State University Extension Office here in Sherman County. I work with the Sherman County Fair Board as their secretary in my spare time. Sandy and I were just discussing the need for a computer program that could help with our open class entries, placing and premium payments for the annual fair. I realize that there are programs out there for this - but they are very expensive and not set up for fairs as small as ours. Currently we do all of our entering and calculating premiums by hand, which is very time consuming and leaves a lot of room for errors. We would love it if we were selected to work with you and a group of students on setting up a program that would work for us (we would also be willing to share this program with Gilliam and Wheeler Counties who are similar in size to us). If this is a possibility, please contact me. Dee Lieuallen-Kaseberg Sherman County Fair Secretary Executive Director Sherman County Commission on Children and Families P.O. Box 425 Moro, OR 97039 541/565-3200 administrators. The final product would be modular so that you could plug new functionality in down the road." Central IS currently relays mail for almost everyone on campus. We do all of the anti-spam and anti-virus rejection for campus as we have some open source tools that make it easy for us to do that (and very, very cheap). I'd like the above tool to tie into the help desk that we have for use on campus (again, another help desk tool) so that help desk users can track mail. We actually have a set of libraries that the group could use and contribute to for doing authentication against LDAP, managing errors and making it easier to insert documentation in the web application. I would be more than happy to help get this started for the students and then at the end of the project we could open source the code and give it a home in the OSL so that (if it is a good tool) it can take on a life of its own. Subject: RE: Computer Science senior projects course From: "Hannaway, David" <david.hannaway@oregonstate.edu> To: "D'Ambrosio, Bruce" <dambrosi@cs.orst.edu> Cc: <songzh@engr.orst.edu>, <jiaji@cs.orst.edu> Bruce: Thanks for the note. I've participated in these projects before and would be willing to serve as a project mentor. Much of my work is web-based development; database design, development, maintenance, etc. Song and Jia Jin have been working with me recently and perhaps they can help me define a project that would be suitable (challenging and appropriate level). I'm traveling in SE Asia at the moment, but will be back the beginning of December and would be available in January when things get rolling. David david.hannaway@oregonstate.edu Department of Crop & Soil Science Forage Program Director URL: http://forages.oregonstate.edu/ addl info from followup conversation: Yes, I know some about GIS. There are two choices to implement a simple GIS system. Simpler one is to use ESRI Arcmap, ArcIMS etc which have been already installed on our Engineering machines. The harder one is to use totally free sources. Students need to install DM solution's Mapserver, Postgres, Postgis, PHP,etc by themselves then use these packages to build up a GIS system. The final GIS system could like a motel admin system. You can get some idea from: http://web.engr.oregonstate.edu/~songzh/ Song Subject: Senior projects class (CS461-462) project suggestion From: "Nafshun, Richard L." <Richard.Nafshun@oregonstate.edu> To: "D'Ambrosio, Bruce" <dambrosi@cs.orst.edu> Hi Bruce, I have a possible project (I have broken it up into two components) 1. I maintain a dynamic Excel spreadsheet containing student logins, students passwords, and course scores. Using a web browser, students login and view their individual course scores. 2. I maintain a dynamic Excel spreadsheet containing student logins, student passwords, quiz questions and answers. Using a web browser, students login, view several quiz questions, and enter answers. The answers are automatically evaluated and scores are posted in the dynamic spreadsheet. It would be desirable to have multiple choice questions as well as numerical answers with tolerances. Thank-you for your consideration, Richard ______________________ Dr. Richard L. Nafshun Department of Chemistry Oregon State University Corvallis, Oregon 97331-4003 Voice: (541) 737-6742 nafshunr@chem.orst.edu render a plan view of the buffer zone within X feet (or meters) of a given point, line, curve or polygon together with a composite set of user-selected features for a well-defined dataset. Standards and test suites that help students get and stay on the right technological track can be found at www.opengis.org. Let us know if this has potential and how we might help more clearly define a five-month project that fits your objectives. Kevin. To: dambrosi@cs.orst.edu Subject: Re: RFP: Computer Science senior projects course From: John Sechrest <sechrest@peak.org> Hello Bruce, I would like to suggest the following projects for your class: 1) Graphviz and more Collaboration. Graphviz (http://www.graphviz.org) is a way to dynamically look at graphs. Dia (http://www.lysator.liu.se/~alla/dia) is a diagraming tool. Wiki's are a way to encourage lite weight collaboration. http://www.c2.com/cgi/wiki?RunningYourOwnWikiFaq the goal of this project is to add Graphviz style dot file import and export into DIA, and to include Graphviz dot parsing and display into a wiki rendering engine (preferably twiki or purplewiki ) (http://www.blueoxen.org/tools/purplewiki/) 2) WIKI + Mail + IRC Build a gateway process that would allow mail that is sent to be interpreted as a conversation with a wiki. Wiki words defined in the email, would arrive in the wiki. Changes to the wiki would generate email. So that you could explore an idea and see that idea grow in the wiki. In addition, add a wiki rendering tool to an IRC client, so that it is possible to connect the IRC conversation to a wiki. This then needs to have a bot which will collect and post the IRC conversation into appropriate wiki words. So that an IRC conversation gets integrated into the wiki space. 3) Distributed event calendar - Provide a PHP Mysql driven tool set that will enable a distributed team of people to manage an event. An event may be something like: a blood drive, a conference, a workshop, a robotics tournament, a KSR race , any event where there will be many people coming, with sessions that need to be organized, with money changing hands, and with information needing to be collected. Make this a generic tool, so it can be used for all of these events. Provide a calendar view, a task view, a financial view, a attendee view, an admin view and a volunteer/employee view. Subject: Idea for computer science project From: "Heppell, Selina" <selina.heppell@oregonstate.edu> To: "D'Ambrosio, Bruce" <dambrosi@cs.orst.edu> Hi Bruce, I have been working with Eli Holmes of the NW Fisheries Science Center on extinction risk models for endangered species that utilize diffusion approximations from the mean trend and variance of a time series of abundance. She has a number of papers on the technique (which is quite simple, in its basic form) as well as some non-user friendly Matlab coade, which she is happy to share. What we are looking for is a user-friendly interface that biologists and resource managers could put their data into. There is a JavaScript program that was developed for salmon, but it is too specific - we need something that can run the model, do some resampling or other sensitivity analyses, etc. Let me know if students in the class would be interested. Cheers - Selina ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Dr. Selina Heppell, Assistant Professor Department of Fisheries and Wildlife 104 Nash Hall Oregon State University Corvallis, OR 97331 phone: 541-737-9039; fax: 541-737-3590 FALL TERM: Hatfield Marine Science Center, 541-867-0334 Subject: FW: Computer Science senior projects course From: "Clarke, Sharon" <sharon.clarke@oregonstate.edu> To: "D'Ambrosio, Bruce" <dambrosi@cs.orst.edu> Cc: <danmiller@earthsystems.net ...snip... kelly.burnett@oregonstate.edu> Hi Bruce, My co-workers and I would like to propose a senior class project. We have been involved in a project for the Coastal Province or Oregon to delineate streams, stream attributes, and identify relative landslide susceptibility and debris flow runout paths and deposition using digital elevation models (DEMs), precipitation, and vegetation. More information about this project and program documentation can be found at http://www.fsl.orst.edu/clams/prj_wtr_brd_indx.html. The program is written in FORTRAN and can be compiled for either a UNIX or PC environment. We need a user interface for these programs. The program has an extensive user defined parameters and instruction file (attached) that should be part of the user interface. If appropriate, students could also help in setting up a better data structure for recording metadata and user-specified parameters in the output data files. It would also be possible to write software that could be used for calibration of the model. Dan Miller does this now on a piecemeal basis whenever he wants to calibrate something, but there is no consistent and user-accessible set of programs developed. Dan Miller is located in Seattle and Kelly Burnett and I are located here. We are willing to give an overview of this project to the class and are available to meet with the students throughout the projects' timeframe. Let me know if you have any questions. Thank you, Sharon Clarke Forest Science Department Oregon State University PNW Research Station 3200 Jefferson Way Corvallis, OR 97333 (541) 750-7288 Sharon.Clarke@oregonstate.edu FAX (541) 750-7329 instructions.txt parameters.dat Subject: RE: Computer Science senior projects course From: "Koski, James" <James.Koski@orst.edu> To: "D'Ambrosio, Bruce" <dambrosi@cs.orst.edu> Bruce, At the OSU Student Health Services were are planning to send out RFP's for several new software systems- Practice Management System, Electronic Medical Record, and Laboratory Information System. We would like to perform a Return on Investment (ROI) Analysis. Ideally we would like to identify baseline costs or inefficiencies of using a manual or paper system. Then, estimate cost savings, improved efficiences, or improved quality after the software systems are implemented. Is this the type of project you are looking for with your "software consultancy". James R. Koski, MD, MPH, CHES Staff Physician Student Health Services Oregon State University 201 Plageman Building Corvallis, OR 97331-5801 Office Phone Number 541-737-7579 Clinic Phone Number 541-737-9355 Clinic Fax Number 541-737-4530 James.Koski@orst.edu It's A Great Day to Be A Doc! Subject: From: "Hackleman, David" <david.hackleman@oregonstate.edu> To: "D'Ambrosio, Bruce" <dambrosi@cs.orst.edu> Bruce: I read youre looking for projects for CS type students, and I dont know if these communications projects strike your (or their) fancy, but here are a couple: 1. We have a project on putting Fuel Cells at the local land fill to generate electricity. We have folks at CV HS, OSU, HP, CH2M Hill, and PCNG that are all involved. We need a web based tool to allow us to communicate effectively, keep track of who all is involved, retain history of tasks, and offer some place for others to learn status, apply to join, etc. Students at CVHS will probably be assembling a rudimentary web page, but making that have some longevity by integrating it into the OSU system would be helpful. 2. An OSU campus group is just now starting on the implementation of BioDiesel as well as possibly synthesis of it on campus for use. A similar web communications package would be great. 3. One group in ECE 44x is working on developing systems to telemeter data from the top of Marys peak down to Corvallis, but at that point, a good method to put the materials on the web for access as well as data retention processes will be needed, and likely your CS folks will have more expertise in this area. 4. I am running a science fair that is to happen in March. We could use an interactive web system to allow folks to register, retain information on the individuals and the status of their work, be confidential, and enable them to not need to enter redundant information. This fair is aimed at High and Middle School students as participants. Getting a way to confirm that information is getting to the students is also a great opportunity. In essence, the bottom line is that it would be really nice to have a product that you could launch that would create a web-package for a start-up organization, track stuff and enable effective communication without requiring folks in the organization to be as well versed in the system as someone with considerable computer science background. Hence, I see four possible projects, three are specific to current projects going on and a fourth is a more generic package generation opportunity. In another direction, our Computers and Facilities committee in ChE has an ad-hoc committee working out a way to allow us to decide which simulation packages to keep (and / or buy) for our students to utilize. Determining the criteria for selection and making the decisions could use some advice from CS folks that know some of the trade-offs or can help understand the demands the packages might offer on systems. So, I guess I found a fifth potential project, but it isnt quite as capstone oriented. (These people are very excited about the prospect of a student project…) From: CarolCoren@aol.com Subject: FIC client management system To: dambrosi@cs.orst.edu Cc: john.wells@oregonstate.edu, sarah.maroni@oregonstate.edu Hello: Sarah Masoni passed on her note to you about our client management system along with your response. I had placed a call to you and others in your department about this a few weeks ago and learned that there is a program near to Portland where people are working on OSU computer software programs. We are eager to have help from one of the seniors to put a robust CMS to work and to integrate the efforts of the two enterprises that are engaged in advancing food related enterprises here in Oregon: the OSU and the Oregon Department of Agriculture. Please cite me as the contact person for this project and indicate to me what you require from us in the way of work order or project description. Thank you. Carol Coren Community Programs Specialist FOOD INNOVATION CENTER COLLEGE OF AGRICULTURAL SCIENCES OREGON STATE UNIVERSITY 1207 NW Naito Pkwy, Suite 154 Portland, Oregon 97209-2834 Telephone 503-872-6657 Cell Phone 215-939-4094 FAX: 503-872-6648 carolcoren@aol.com carolcoren@oregonstate.edu Subject: Computer Science senior projects From: "Connor-Smith, Jennifer" <jennifer.connor-smith@orst.edu> To: "D'Ambrosio, Bruce" <dambrosi@cs.orst.edu> I have a potential suggestion for the CS senior project course, although being a non-programmer and years away from my last calculus class, I have no idea whether this project would be manageable or ridiculously complicated. For my stress and coping research, I collect data on heart rate (using EKG sensors) and skin conductance (essentially the sweatiness of peoples palms). The problem with the data is the presence of movement artifacts if the sensors are tugged when the participant moves their arms or legs, errors are introduced into the data. The errors are easy to see visually in the heart rate data, because the program shows the standard heart beat rhythm (essentially a graph of time on the X axis and mVolts on the Y axis). When the sensors are tugged, the orderly heart beat pattern will temporarily degenerate into chaos. Unfortunately, editing out the errors by hand is extraordinarily time-consuming (at least an hour of editing per participant), and not particularly accurate. By hand, it is possible to delete the problem data, but there is no good way to determine the correct interval between the beat preceding the problems and the beat following the problems. For simple heart rate analyses, this is not a problem, but for analyses of heart rate variability (the extent to which the timing between beats is consistent vs. irregular), it becomes highly problematic to space beats arbitrarily. Ideally, after problem data is removed, the beats on either side would be spaced according to something like an average of the interval between the five beats before and after the problem data. This has always struck me as the type of task at which computers excel and people do not. Essentially, I think Im looking for a program that would be able to: 1. Recognize when there has been a deviation from the expected EKG pattern 2. Either a) remove the problem data from that time interval and space the heart beats preceding and following the data based on average inter-beat intervals or b) replace the problem data with data matching the average heart beat data for that participant 3. Adjust the placement of time specific markers that indicate significant events in the study to account for any deletion of data along the time line. (e.g., If a marker is placed at the 90 second point in the study, and 2.5 seconds of data is deleted prior to the 90 second point, the marker should be adjusted to fall at 87.5 seconds the placement of the marker in relation to the data is important, the time at which the marker is placed is not). This data acquired by the psychophysiology software can be exported to a text file, so any changes to the data could happen outside the program. If there is any chance that this might be a viable type of project, I could forward copies of the manuals for the psychophysiology program, sample data, the demo version of the data acquisition software, or anything else that could be helpful. Best wishes, Jennifer ______________________ Jennifer Connor-Smith, Ph. D. Assistant Professor Oregon State University Department of Psychology 204 Moreland Hall Corvallis, OR 97331-5303 (541) 737-9235 fax: (541) 737-3547 Subject: Computer project From: jon luke <jon.luke@oregonstate.edu> To: <dambrosi@cs.orst.edu> Bruce, Would setting up a complex data base in file maker pro qualify with your student as a project? We are putting together a teaching and records keeping database for our aquarium program. I want to check before we write up and submit a project. Jon Luke Visitor Center Manager Oregon Sea Grant OSU Hatfield Marine Science Center 2030 South Marine Science Drive Newport, Oregon 97365-5296 Phone (541) 867-0357 Fax (541) 867-0320 CS461-462 PROPOSAL Proposer: Dr. James Funck Associate Professor Department of Wood Science and Engineering 134 Richardson Hall 737-4207 Jim.Funck@oregonstate.edu Topic: Develop a GUI program to input information into a log breakdown simulation model. The program will need to allow significant numbers of inputs and allow variable numbers of options. It should also serve as a shell and call the simulation model to run with the inputted data. (If the graphical display for logs and boards proposal is also chosen, the program will need to output to that program and call it). Example input pages are shown below. Subject: RE: Computer Science senior projects course From: "Wang, Susan" <susan.wang@oregonstate.edu> To: "D'Ambrosio, Bruce" <dambrosi@cs.orst.edu> Cc: "Beach, Gary L" <Gary.Beach@orst.edu> Dear Mr. DAmbrosio: Thanks for offering the software consultancy course. I see an opportunity for one project that will be beneficial to the Office of Institutional Research (IR) at OSU. The project is described as follows. Incorporating SAS Output in Microsoft Excel As an Institutional Research Analyst in the Office of Institutional Research (IR), I have been using SAS to prepare statistical reports for the IR Enrollment Summary, Fact Book, and Graduation Summary publications. As part of this process, I need to transfer SAS output to Excel. The basic method I use is to copy and paste. This method is not efficient and can create problems and even errors. I need to have some programs written that can automatically transfer SAS output into MS Excel tables in the format I want; i.e., development of templates. The Office of Institutional Research at Portland State University has been successfully using XML to automatically transfer data from SAS to Excel. SAS Institution Inc. is currently working on methods for importing SAS output into Excel workbooks or Word documents. I would like to have a program to specifically address IRs needs for statistical reporting. Our office director Gary Beach is very supportive of this project. I would enthusiastically welcome the opportunity to work with your brightest and best-trained students on this project. Sincerely, Susan Wang ______________________________________ Susan Wang Institutional Research Analyst Office of Institutional Research Oregon State University Phone: 541-737-9183 Email: Susan.Wang@orst.edu From: "SAUL,KEN (HP-Corvallis,ex1)" <ken.saul@hp.com> To: "'Bruce D'Ambrosio'" <dambrosi@cs.orst.edu> Subject: RE: CS project proposal Bruce, I have two projects in mind that the team could pick from (I am technically sponsoring one CS project and two EE projects). 1. A bore metrology project find edges of a circle on a magnified image of a printhead orifice layer and calculate diameter and circularity. Optimize for speed so measurement could be done on thousands of bores per hour. 2. A project on what I call Print Spot Memory -- essentially encoding binary data as tiny dots on paper. The data is read back via a scanner and software to locate the dot array and decode it back to binary data. It would be great to have both projects done -- if there is a chance that both could be done, I could provide more $$. Please let me know what you think. Thanks! Ken Saul Jeanne Silsby Director of External Relations College of Business 200C Bexell Hall Corvallis, OR 97331-2603 541-737-6020 www.bus.oregonstate.edu To: Bruce D'Ambrosio Associate Professor Computer Science Oregon State University 541-737-5563 dambrosi@cs.orst.edu Computer Science Senior Project Proposals Contact: Jeanne Silsby, College of Business Dir. of External Relations, 737-6020 Contact: Tony Saxman, College of Business Dir. of Information Services, 737-4330 E-Commerce Module The College of Business recently updated its web site and would like to add an e- commerce feature to handle program registrations and selling of COB paraphernalia. The application would need to conform to OSU standards and leverage the .net platform to integrate with our current infrastructure. If interested, we have space available for students to use our development tools (C# or VB.net) and MS infrastructure (SQL, Win Server 2003), as well as a place for code storage and hosting (visualstudio.net). Guidance, if students aren’t completely familiar with the tools, would also be provided if desired. On-line Alumni Directory We would like to enhance the alumni section of the College of Business web site with a searchable alumni directory. We’d like alumni to be able to sort by year and major, and to have an interface to enter, update and view their information, as well as view others info. There would also need to be a feature so that updates were automatically forwarded to the OSU Foundation. The application would need to leverage the .net platform to integrate with our current infrastructure. If interested, we have space available for students to use our development tools (C# or VB.net) and MS infrastructure (SQL, Win Server 2003), as well as a place for code storage and hosting (visualstudio.net). Guidance, if students aren’t completely familiar with the tools, would also be provided if desired. Automated Resume Posting System We would like to develop a resume posting feature for students. This would enable students to cut and paste their resume info into an application and have it viewed via a link on the web site. The application would also have a search feature so potential employers could sort by option, year and key words. An auto archive feature by school year would also be positive. The application would need to leverage the .net platform to integrate with our current infrastructure. If interested, we have space available for students to use our development tools (C# or VB.net) and MS infrastructure (SQL, Win Server 2003), as well as a place for code storage and hosting (visualstudio.net). Guidance, if students aren’t completely familiar with the tools, would also be provided if desired. Automated Attendance Reader This application would enable students to scan their ID cards and dump their data into a database. Professors would be able to see who attended a particular class or seminar, on which date, etc. This application would be used during the College of Business Spring Seminar Series or Dean’s Lecture Series when large numbers of students get credit for attending. This would enable faster tracking and less bottlenecking at the event. The application would need to interface with the card reader and leverage the .net platform to integrate with our current infrastructure. If interested, we have space available for students to use our development tools (C# or VB.net) and MS infrastructure (SQL, Win Server 2003), as well as a place for code storage and hosting (visualstudio.net). Guidance, if students aren’t completely familiar with the tools, would also be provided if desired. Discussion Group Module This application would enable students to share discussions on-line within the College of Business web site instead of going to something like Yahoo. This would involve setting up registration, an authentication system, and developing the application. If interested, we have space available for students to use our development tools (C# or VB.net) and MS infrastructure (SQL, Win Server 2003), as well as a place for code storage and hosting (visualstudio.net). Guidance, if students aren’t completely familiar with the tools, would also be provided if desired. Senior Project Proposal The Office of Sponsored Programs and Research Compliance is responsible for reviewing grant proposals that are submitted by the OSU faculty to federal, state, and private agencies/foundations. Overall at OSU, external support for our faculty research and scholarship activities is in excess of $124 million. Within this total, there are five federal agencies that amount for the majority of funds: National Science Foundation , U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Institutes of Health, National Aeronautics Space Administration, and Department of Energy amounted to over 75 million last year. These dollars were in support of faculty activities across most OSU colleges and departments. Preparing a proposal for external funding requires substantive effort. While the proposal narrative must necessarily be driven by the faculty involved in the project, there are some tools that could simplify and facilitate the creation of the proposal budget. Budgets all contain some similar information and often contain very similar problems that require correction. While the different sponsors have different budget forms that must be used with the proposal, core budget information could feed into those forms. What we are looking for is help in developing the following: • A user-friendly, budget spreadsheet template that will be downloadable from our website and have the following features: Must have the ability to expire. Because changes periodically occur with various university rates, we want the spreadsheet to automatically expire after a certain number of weeks so the user is forced to download the most current version. We have a prototype from Colorado State University, but have been unable to decode the macro used for the expire feature. Must be able to add years. The spreadsheet must be able to simply calculate out into up to five future years and the formulas and other formatting need to be able to transfer into new year. Step by Step instructions. Our faculty investigators have varying degrees of sophistication of familiarity with working with a spreadsheet. These instructions must be written at a basic user level. • We would like this spreadsheet to be able to “fold” into the specific budget forms of our top five federal agencies (listed earlier). Contact Information: Eric Anundson Grant Proposal Specialist Peggy S. Lowry Director Office of Sponsored Programs and Research Compliance (541) 737-3437 OSU Extended Campus | Oregon State University 4943 The Valley Library | Corvallis, Oregon 97330 541-737-9095 | <mailto:pam.vanlonden@oregonstate.edu> = pam.vanlonden@oregonstate.edu | = <http://faculty.ecampus.oregonstate.edu> faculty.ecampus.oregonstate.edu From: "Hoisington, Anne" <anne.hoisington@oregonstate.edu> Hi Bruce, Here is our proposal. Please let me know if you need anything else for your consideration of the project. Thanks very much. Oregon State University Extension Service - Oregon Family Nutrition Program (OFNP) is a federally funded nutrition education program reaching low-income families in Oregon. OFNP is in partnership with Oregon Food Bank to reach families within the emergency food network (pantries, shelters, hot meal sites). Emergency food use has been on the rise for several years in Oregon and other states. Oregon is among the hungriest states in the U.S. One method of reaching emergency food users with nutrition education is to provide recipes with food boxes. OSU Extension has developed hundreds of recipes using unusual, bulk, commodity, gleaned, and/or affordable foods. We are interested in developing a website where Regional Food Banks ("RFBs" - 20 sub-agencies to Oregon Food Bank) can access recipes that match foods that are going out to Local Participating Agencies ("LPAs" - the 800 + pantries and hot meal sites that directly serve the clients). Many LPAs do not have internet access - many are located in church basements - however, all of the RFBs are internet-ready. Senior Project Proposal: Web-Based Input, Search and Results Interfaces for the Bibliotherapy Project OSU Libraries Principal Investigators: Paula McMillen and Dale Pehrsson CS Advisor: Jon Herlocker The Bibliotherapy research project, housed on the OSU Libraries’ server, is looking for one or more students to design, refine, implement, evaluate, and deploy web-based interfaces for entering form-based information (categorical & free text) and for providing easy to use search and results interfaces to the resulting database of books evaluations. The Bibliotherapy Project emerged from the question, “How do practitioners choose therapeutic literature and how do they know what to look for in a book?” This research question led to the development of the Bibliotherapy Evaluation Tool (BET), a paper- based questionnaire that was guided by an extensive review of the mental health and education literature. The Bibliotherapy Project is in the process of transferring the BET to the web, enabling greater access and taking advantage of information search technologies. The result will be a highly-accessible tool that practitioners can use to formally evaluate books for use in therapy. These evaluations will be stored in a web accessible database that is searchable on a number of criteria. The goal is to have a continually growing, easily searchable database with potentially significant value to counselors, teachers and other helping professionals. The basic needs at this point are to complete the move of the BET to a web-based format, refine the underlying database structure for capturing the entered information, and providing basic search capabilities for the database. This functionality is to be completed in Winter quarter. Subsequent to initial deployment, user testing is expected to be part of refining the search interfaces and results displays. The possibilities for enhancing the functionality of the BET database and the project website are numerous and the project team is open to working with students’ interests. Some possibilities include (but are not limited to): • Helping to ensure a “clean” database by automatically searching a separate, web- based library catalog to capture authority records once an evaluator begins entering information describing a particular book. • Providing dynamic links within retrieved book evaluations that would tell the patron if a book was available at their local library(ies) or available for purchase through a nearby (geographically) bookstore. • Developing a dynamically generated report and/or display of site users’ demographic information (using information captured via a registration page). This in particular would support some of our research goals for the project. • Providing a means to analyze the type of evaluations entered based upon categorical data; again, this would support our current research goals for this project, specifically, to determine what kinds of child & adolescent literature are currently being used. • Ensuring that all pieces of the Bibliotherapy project web site are ADA compliant (i.e., accessible to readers, etc.) Subject: FW: Computer Science senior projects course From: "Clawson, Jeff" <Jeff.Clawson@orst.edu> To: "D'Ambrosio, Bruce" <dambrosi@cs.orst.edu> Bruce, Are you still looking for project suggestions? We have a great opportunity here in our pilot scale brewery. We are in the process of hooking up: data acquisition hardware to the brewhouse, developing programs within Labview (data acquisition and process control software), communications through our server via a wireless hub, and eventually developing a web site for monitoring process flow off site. There is plenty of work here to consume two quarters and the project is not so difficult that success is allusive. If any of this sounds like interesting, drop me a note and we can go into more detail. I'd be working closely with the students as this is my baby. Jeff Subject: Proposal: Computer Science senior projects course From: "Brown, Norm" <Norm.Brown@oregonstate.edu> To: "D'Ambrosio, Bruce" <dambrosi@cs.orst.edu> Bruce, I would like to submit the following proposal for your consideration: Project: Assess irrigation efficiency; assess and predict water usage. Design a program that will correlate water usage and efficiency for campus irrigation applications. This will require extraction and relating data from several sources including the OSU campus irrigation control program with water usage data from city meter readings. Data for water used comes from City meter readings and converted using MS Excel. Data for Water used by plants and lost to evaporation (Net evapotranspiration) comes from a local weather station and can be exported in MS Access format Data for Sq footage of area covered may come from either AutoCAD maps of individual irrigation system or from Arc view GIS campus maps. The Program to be developed will import the necessary data, convert water units to gallons, determine how many square feet are covered for each water meter area, calculate inches of water applied, and compare to ET. I will be available to attend a class meeting in January to discuss this project and to attend follow up meetings with the project team as necessary to assist in the program development. This program will very beneficial to the university and the community in helping to improve the efficiency of our water resource use. It also provides a real world environmental challenge for which skilled programmers can provide valuable solutions. I look forward to discussing this with you, Please feel free to contact me with any questions you may have, Norm Brown Facilities Services Landscape Management Oregon State University 100 Adams Hall Corvallis, OR 97331-2001 Norm.Brown@orst.edu Phone (541) 737-7639 RESEARCH PROPOSAL From: Dr. Ulrich Orth, OSU College of Business, Consumer Behavior and Psychology Dr. Ronald Metoyer, OSU College of Engineering, Computer Science Title: Developing efficient 3-D internet stores with desktop virtual reality Background: This proposal suggests to examine how virtual stores (accessible through the internet or CD) need to be designed for influencing buyer (purchase) behavior most favorably. The project ncludes the development and empirical evaluation of a model based on past research on consumer behavior and environmental psychology in real stores. Although the importance of the WWW as a marketing tool is growing rapidly, consumer needs and wants are still somewhat neglected. As a result, (not only) wineries report small percentages of sales online. Technical aspects dominate the conceptual development of internet shops and consumer behavioral and psychological aspects find little consideration. In particular, factors that make internet shopping a stimulating and fun experience remain largely unknown. While brick and mortar retailers have identified and make use of the large potential of hedonic shopping experiences, existing internet shops completely disregard this perspective. The research proposed here focuses on how to make visiting virtual wine stores a most stimulating and pleasing experience that leads to actual sales. At present, only very few three dimensional stores exist online. Generating knowledge about this type of outlets will thus provide most valuable insights for innovative marketers. Past research identified a number of variables suitable for creating (emotionally) stimulating retail environments. Most prominent among those are lighting (brightness, highlights), colors, decoration, and background music. Others include information options (retrieval of acoustic and visual information) and interactive features (e.g. the option for visitors to move through the store, to choose a _ body _ , to meet each other, salespeople interaction, and participation in store design). Objectives: "_ To identify what and how store characteristics affect consumer cognition, affect, store and product evaluation, and finally purchase behavior. "_ To determine the interaction effects between consumer characteristics and store characteristics in the relations described above. "_ To establish guidelines for developing efficient 3-D stores with desktop virtual reality. Methodology: Object of the study is a 3-D store with desktop virtual reality (i.e. a virtual winery with tasting room, cellar, and vineyard). An experiment will be designed to study a consumer sample of approximately 300 respondents. The sample will be split in several cells, each cell corresponding to one type of store manipulation. Manipulation variables include color, decoration, music, lighting, salespeople, background, and visitor movement. Incentives will be offered to consumers (50% male, 50% female) to visit one store manipulation and to complete a questionnaire on independent (optimum stimulation level, lifestyle, product category involvement) and dependent variables (information rate, ease of orientation, arousal, pleasure, store perception, product quality perception, purchase intention). Data will be analyzed using a structural equations modeling approach (AMOS4.0). Appropriate store characteristics manipulations will be determined in a series of pretests prior to data collection. Outcomes: