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Newsletter
Updated: January 14
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Contents: HFES Home Overview Current Newsletter Next Meeting Job Openings Membership Sites of Interest |
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NewsletterUpdated: January 14 |
| January '99 | Volume 34 Number 1 |
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http://www.erols.com/hfespoc |
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It’s the time of year when I need to say a few words about the chapter’s accomplishments for the past year, thank the many people who helped out, and welcome the new officers and chairs - our State-of-the-Union. As I do, I’m reminded of Will Rogers’ impersonation of President Hoover at a fictitious State-of-the-Union Address when he said: "Everyone I come in contact with is doing well. They have to be doing well or they don’t come in contact with me." Well, the State-of-the-Chapter is, we’re doing well. It’s been a great year for me as President, and I want to thank all of the members, officers, and chairs for their support.
As I review the accomplishments for the year, I see with some satisfaction a number of things we did. We had a number of very good meetings with varied formats, including a joint meeting with three other local society chapters, visits to local sites of interest to our members, and a number of distinguished speakers, including National HFES President Harold Van Cott and Congressman Tom Davis. We continued to build our web site and now include an area for members to have their names listed, links to a number of sites of interest, current and back issues of the newsletter, and the application form for the chapter. We have a special section for job announcements that has regular postings. We even deliver the newsletter on-line to about half of our members. We revitalized our Public Affairs/Corporate Membership position and made contacts with several companies to try to get the up-to-the-minute HFE job postings for our members. We even have a corporate membership. And we’re currently making contact with all of the local universities to provide information on the various HFE-related educational programs. One note of a more mixed nature, our membership has changed a bit. A number of members elected not to renew their membership with the chapter this year, but many new members have joined. The net result is that we have nearly the same number of members this year as last.
I would like to thank every one of the officers and committee chairs for their outstanding efforts this year. All of them did a professional job in their area of responsibility and then went beyond the call of duty to take on additional responsibilities as needed throughout the year. In two roles that are both vital and related, Dick Horst did an outstanding job in preparing a newsletter each month full of humor, items of interest, and news, and Penny Church continued to do an outstanding job of developing the web site and keeping everything up-to-date. Kris Knutson and Zack Koutsandreas, in their respective roles as Public Affairs/Corporate Membership chair and Programs chair, deserve special recognition since they were both new members and both accepted key committee responsibilities that lead, in no small part, to this year’s success.
And finally, although the new officers will be installed at the January meetings and will begin their actual year running the show at that time, I would like to thank each of them for their active support this year. As elected officers, it’s easy to lay low when there are responsibilities to be had, but each of them took on responsibilities and provided well-appreciated support throughout the year.
It has been my privilege serving as your President this year and a pleasure working with this group of people.
Meeting Date: Wednesday, January 27, 1999
DIRECTIONS TO GMU FAIRFAX CAMPUS FROM CAPITAL BELTWAY:
To reach George Mason University from the Capital Beltway, Route
495, take exit 5, Braddock Road West, Route 620. Follow Braddock Road West for
approximately 6 miles. Pass the first entrance to the University and turn right at the
stop light for Roanoke Lane. Bear right at the fork in the road. Take your first left onto
Mason Drive; parking is available in the Parking Deck, the last building on the right. An
information kiosk is located outside the third level of the deck to help navigate the
campus.
DIRECTIONS TO GMU FAIRFAX CAMPUS VIA I-66W FROM WASHINGTON, DC AND
ARLINGTON:
To reach George Mason University on I-66W from Washington DC and
Arlington, take exit 60 at Route 123 South, Chain Bridge Road. Follow Route 123 through
the city of Fairfax, and turn left at University Drive. Take your first right at Occoquan
Lane. Turn right at the stop sign onto Patriot Circle. At the pond, bear left to stay on
Patriot Circle. Take your first left on Mason Drive to the Parking Deck, the last building
on your right. An information kiosk is located outside the third level of the deck to help
navigate the campus.
DIRECTIONS TO GMU FAIRFAX CAMPUS FROM THE VIENNA METRO STATION
To reach George Mason University by public transportation from the
Vienna Metro, take the CUE Bus (any of the routes stop at GMU). The CUE Bus is free with a
valid GMU identification card and $.50 per person otherwise (note that the buses are not
frequent, though).
DIRECTIONS TO STUDENT UNION II FROM THE PARKING DECK:
Exit the parking deck at the third level. Walk towards the statue of
George Mason and continue past the George Johnson Center (on your right). The next
building will be David King Hall. Keeping King Hall on your right, follow the path down
the hill. The building on your left at the bottom of the hill is Student Union II. Carroll
Hall (where the ARCH Lab is located) is across the road from the back of Student Union II.
Overview of the ARCH Lab and Preview of the January Meeting Tour
The Applied Research in Cognition and Human Factors (ARCH) Lab was founded in the Spring of 1996 by Drs. Deborah A. Boehm-Davis and Wayne D. Gray. It resulted from the merger of Gray's C-A-T (cognition-artifact-task) Laboratory with Boehm-Davis' Human Factors Laboratory. The goal of the merger was to build a central laboratory to encourage collaboration and cross-fertilization of ideas among the students and faculty of the Human Factors and Applied Cognitive program.
In its short lifetime, the laboratory has grown to include Professors Robert W. Holt, Irvin R. Katz, and Christian D. Schunn of the Psychology Department and the Human Factors and Applied Cognitive Program, and Professor Leonard Adelman of the School of Information Technology and Engineering. The lab has also attracted several doctoral level research scientists, including Drs. Erik Altmann, Cathy Emery, Philip Ikomi, Karen Mahach and Gregory Trafton. The laboratory currently is supported by grants from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, the Federal Aviation Administration, the Federal Highway Administration, the Graduate Record Examination Board, the National Science Foundation, the Office of Naval Research, and the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. The lab also supports research conducted by students involved in our HFAC program.
At the open house, we will give an overview of our research projects at the end of dinner and then open the lab for demonstrations of many of our projects, as well as demos of our eye tracking facility. The titles of projects to be discussed include: Understanding and Measuring Cognitive Workload, Crew Resource Management and Database Management Issues in Regional and Major Air Carriers, Transportation Safety in Traditional and Intelligent Highway Transportation Systems, Computational Cognitive Modeling of Submariner Situation Assessment: Project NEMO, Development of Questionnaire Design Tools, Factors Affecting Difficulty in Quantitative Reasoning, and The Origin of Errors in Rule-Based, Programming Tasks.
Note – We have a standing offer to Student Members of the Chapter: Dinner at a monthly meeting FOR FREE if you write up a synopsis of the meeting for publication in the Newsletter. Contact the Newsletter Editor when interested.
