A Message from Keith Buffinton, Dean of Engineering

In this newsletter we turn the spotlight on the third of our five strategic themes, “Integrate across Boundaries.” This theme represents integration across boundaries in the broadest sense possible, including geographic and national boundaries, cultural boundaries, disciplinary boundaries and generational boundaries. Our three highlighted articles below give great examples of some of the many types of integration our students experience and pursue. “Navigating Poetry” describes the work of computer engineering students in crossing the boundaries between engineering and the humanities through greater access to poetry with an app that guides people through the Bucknell Poetry Path and offers readings of each poem along the way. “Engineering Child’s Play” bridges the boundary between Bucknell and the Borough of Lewisburg as well as the generational boundaries between college students and young children in designing original concept toys for a Lewisburg business. And “Burma Books” cuts across educational, societal and economic boundaries in describing the work of one of our engineering students to provide books and educational opportunities to children in her native Myanmar (formerly Burma), with which Bucknell has had ties dating all the way back to the arrival of the very first international student at Bucknell in 1858. Clearly, the ways in which our students, and faculty, reach across the many types of boundaries that might otherwise constrain their learning are many!