MichSpace

The aerospace student groups, which are numerous, prolific, and ever-growing, produce strong leaders and attract both incoming students to the department, as well as students from around and outside the College of Engineering. These groups are considered an asset to the department, for good reason, and have displayed posters detailing their mission and work in the past. Recently, however, the department has renewed its interest in showcasing the accomplishment of its' students, likely because the considerable increase in the scale of student involvement and success in the past years.

The department spoke through its newfound mouthpiece, AIAA, to voice the requirement that all student groups must have a poster on display which obeys a certain size requirement. These posters, which describe the purpose and activities of the student groups, have long been on display in the atrium, are normally 3X4 feet in accordance with a natural and standard aesthetic. Unfortunately, however, because of the sheer increase in the number of student groups, coupled with an increase in objects and curiosities displayed in the atrium - engines, turbine blades, an experimental aircraft, a moon rock/NASA display case, a flat screen display, cases of faculty-edited journals, models of airplanes, and more - these posters cannot be larger than 45X30 inches - a tall, skinny poster. This is an awkward poster size, but will hopefully be large enough to display an adequate amount of pertinent information and visuals to represent the student groups. It will, however, require all student groups to produce or remake their posters, before Thursday, January 28th.

It is our hope that the quality of the posters does not suffer from this unexpected and close deadline. We worry, too, about the aesthetic of the atrium. These tall type posters will certainly change the look of the atrium - probably, how good the posters look will be entirely dependent on the presentation and taste of the student groups. This is troubling - we are aerospace engineers. However, all shall only be told at the end of the day. And of course if we don't like it, we can always voice our concerns via the newly repositioned suggestion boxes.

A full representation of the power and might of Michigan's aerospace students was on display. Especially SEDS@UM. In fact, our title slide was in 3D. This was fitting - everything we do is in 3D. We managed to recruit two members at the event... not many, but more than I expected. When all was said and done, even if our recruiting power was somewhat impotent, I enjoyed seeing the familiar faces of Aero student group leaders, nearly destroying the XSAS demo, and making my first presentation with a 3D title slide.