Recognizing the unique needs of returning military members, UofL established the Office of Military and Veteran Student Services in 2009 to help ease the transition from military to student life. This includes helping UofL’s veteran and military students navigate the admissions process and apply for G.I. Bill benefits, as well as assisting them with withdrawals and re-admittance when they’re deployed or called to
active duty. There are 971 veteran and active-duty military students enrolled at UofL this semester.

The office’s existence and other university efforts have helped UofL earn the
distinction of being named a military-friendly university for the seventh year in a row by publishing company Victory Media Inc. The company also praised UofL for
its military-focused degree offerings, exercise therapy classes for wounded soldiers and VetStart, a program developed by the College of Business that helps veterans
start their own businesses.

The Office of Military and Veteran Student Services staff — Kristen Roy, program coordinator senior and Carissa Gentry, VA certifying official and program coordinator — helps connect students with resources available to them on campus or through the Veterans Affairs office, such as tutoring, counseling and health care. For disabled veterans, including those suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder or other mental health issues, UofL also provides vocational rehabilitation benefits, which give veterans additional counseling and support throughout their educational careers.

For Gentry, a U.S. Navy veteran, the work is personal. “When I came out of the military, nobody told me about vocational rehabilitation. I want to be that direct connection so students know they have that option. I don’t want them to find out 10 or 12 years too late, like I did.”

From the barracks to the blackboards

Meanwhile, thousands of other young men and women across the United States are being introduced to military and university life at the same time through the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC), a college-based officer training program in place on 275 campuses and more than 1,100 other affiliated institutions of higher education. ROTC students attend regular college classes as well as military training programs taught on or near campus. As it happens, all cadets nationwide in the Army ROTC receive instruction from cadre
and faculty who have trained at Fort Knox — an Army base just 40 miles south of UofL and home of the U.S. Army Cadet Command.

A couple years ago, the commanding general of Cadet Command reached out to UofL’s College of łÉČËÖ±˛Ą and Human Development in search of a rigorous program that would help ROTC faculty become more effective educators and better engage today’s college students.

CEHD professor and chair Jeffrey Sun, who spearheaded the project, explained that the Army knows “in order to win wars and battles, they’re going to have to rely much more on the cognitive dominance — the brain power — more so in the future than just physical fighting.”

“In order for us to do that,” Sun continued, “we have to upscale what the cadre and faculty can do, because they’re teaching the future officers, the cadets. So we’ve created a program that looks at multiple areas, including innovative problem solving, critical thinking skills, ethical decision making, technological infusion, strong pedagogical learning styles and leadership.”

In 2015, the CEHD kicked off a pilot version of the Cadre and Faculty Development Course with 82 Army educators learning from 60 nationally recognized faculty and staff — including 22 from UofL — over the course of 10 weeks of 40 to 45 classroom hours each. Thanks to the overwhelmingly positive response, the U.S. Department of the Army awarded UofL’s CEHD an $848,000 grant to expand the program to accommodate 366 educators in 2016 and 300 in 2017.

At present, UofL is the only university the Army has asked to host this program, and while that alone is a high honor, Sun sees an even broader impact: “While we’re teaching faculty members or cadre in potentially a thousand different campuses, the effect that we’re going to have on our military is huge. Because they’re training thousands more cadets who are going to be future officers of our Army.”

In addition to the intense summer session at UofL’s Fort Knox campus, cadre and faculty return to their respective campuses in the fall to put the principles they’ve learned in action, meeting with their faculty mentor over videoconferencing services like Skype.

“The reason we want to give them one-on-one touchpoints is because each of their campuses is so different,” Sun explained. A small, religious-affiliated college in the Midwest will have a different student body and learning culture than, say, a large public university in the Northeast. “We gave them general principles of what to teach, but we want them to cater the program to the campus and to the types of students that they have.”

Enjoying the fellowship of thinkers

As it turns out, even those “future officers” that Sun references choose to compete and are selected to study at UofL. Col. Archie S. Herndon Jr., will be the third Army War College Fellow UofL has hosted in as many years. That makes the university one of only 48 educational across the United States and overseas to host this prestigious program, which allows senior officers in the Army to spend a year in a civilian setting conducting research and broadening their outlook to sharpen their skills as strategic thinkers.

During his or her year at UofL, the Army War College Fellow participates in McConnell Center lectures and seminars, audits graduate classes and produces a research project closely related to his or her career. Fellows are assigned faculty mentors from UofL and the Army War College, as well as a senior military officer adviser.

Gary Gregg, PhD, director of the McConnell Center, which serves as the Fellows’ “home” on campus, explained, “When a War College Fellow comes here, they try to make themselves available and actively engage with the community.” That often means speaking to veterans’ and student groups, including the McConnell Scholars, as well as meeting with other community leaders.

Last year’s Fellow, Lt. Col. Thomas Russell-Tutty, was a military police officer who had recently served as deputy commander of the 6th Military Police Group Criminal Investigative Division (CID), which is responsible for an area that covers half of the globe. During his time at UofL, he built a relationship with Louisville’s Chief of Police and witnessed the planning process for security at Thunder Over Louisville and the Kentucky Derby, giving him a civilian’s perspective on security at large events.

“My year as the University of Louisville’s U.S. Army War College Fellow was both a phenomenally rewarding and enriching experience,” he said. “It allowed me to increase my knowledge about how our government actually operates, as well as strengthening my resolve and reinforcing my dedication for what I do as a soldier.”

The benefits of the U.S. Army War College Fellow program flow in both directions. “I think all of our students have found it extremely broadening for them to have access to an accomplished military officer,” Gregg said. “When the Fellows have been part of our seminar discussions, they’ve always added valuable insights that the average civilian professor just can’t offer. It’s great to have that kind of diversity here on campus.”

Broadening the minds of world travelers

Yet for other members of the military — especially mid-career leaders — life can start to seem like a never-ending cycle of training and deployment. To help prevent such ruts, the Army instituted a number of Strategic Broadening Seminars — intense, focused courses that give soldiers the opportunity to expand their horizons in a civilian setting and strengthen their strategic thinking and leadership skills.

One of only a handful of universities in the country chosen to do so, UofL has hosted the program annually since 2014. Designed to capitalize on UofL’s unique strengths, the curriculum focuses on three key themes — leadership, Constitutional government and the international security environment — and draws on faculty expertise from the McConnell Center and the Center for Asian Democracy, as well as Political Science, History, Liberal Studies and Asian Studies departments.

During the intense 30-day course, the 30 soldiers in the program study political thinkers such as Thucydides, Plato, Machiavelli, Sun Tzu and Alexis de Tocqueville, as well as the Federalist Papers and the U.S. Constitution to aid in discussions of the challenges of democracy and the essential qualities of political and military leadership.

“We take classical political philosophy and we try to make it relevant to them and let them wrestle with these big concepts of what it takes for a democracy to work and the responsibilities of leadership,” said Gregg, who designed the program.

That the soldiers engage with the Constitution in a deep and meaningful way was critical to Gregg. “All soldiers take an oath to protect and defend the Constitution,” he explained. “And so I thought it was important for them to seriously read and think about the American Constitution. We talk about separation of powers, war powers, the history of the Constitution, the evolution of it in practice. It’s been a really terrific part of the program.”

Soldiers also take an in-depth look at the political dynamics, economic issues and cultural environment of Asian countries, most notably China. The soldiers then divide into groups and delve into a topic from the Army War College’s annual Key Strategic Issues List (KSIL), aided by a faculty mentor. Teams research their topic, devise solutions, write a paper and then present their findings in a briefing to an Army general.

More than 20 distinguished military and academic leaders, including UofL faculty, engage with the soldiers through a mixture of seminars, lectures and negotiation simulations. Past speakers include Lt. Gen. Josiah Bunting, President of the Guggenheim Foundation and Vietnam veteran; William B. Allen, former chairman of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights; and Maj. Gen. Thomas C. Seamands, commanding general of the Human Resources Command at Fort Knox, where he leads an organization that manages the careers of more than one million soldiers around the world.

“The Strategic Broadening Seminar is an excellent opportunity for our soldiers and officers to step back from their daily duties and build some academic and intellectual capital,” said Seamands. “It enhances skills that are essential to do more with less and in more innovative ways. Those who attend are different when they graduate and come back to the Army.”
Cpt. Matthew Scrivner, who took the course in 2015, agreed. “I can honestly say that this has been the best, most intellectually challenging and stimulating month of my life. The accommodations, program subject and depth, faculty expertise and level of concern and regard provided by the McConnell Center were second to none.”

At the end of the 30 days, the soldiers return to their stations around the world, but not without the sense of having explored new intellectual ground and gained a deeper understanding of justice, freedom and democracy — the very ideas they risk their lives to defend every day.Ěý

Read more about UofL’s partnerships with the military .Ěý

This is just one of the visions of Dan Popa, PhD, a University of Louisville professor and the Vogt Endowed Chair of Advanced Manufacturing, who is at the forefront of understanding how robots and humans will work together in the future.

For more than a decade, Popa pursued his research initiatives at the University of Texas at Arlington. Then, in January of this year, he joined the J.B. Speed School of Engineering to further his groundbreaking work and seek out a path to commercialization.

His Next Gen Systems (NGS) research group, which is comprised of grad students, undergrad students, grad scholars and other young research professionals at UofL, now operates in three labs on the Belknap Campus. Together, they are exploring the latest in human-robot interaction, including overall physical designs and pressure-sensitive skins that are safe for personal contact.

“I joined Dr. Popa’s team because of the excellence, passion, collaborative nature and progressive open-mindedness that he inspires,” said Josh Baptist, a research & development specialist with NGS who followed Popa to UofL to study electronic skin.

Popa also received a grant from the National Science Foundation’s Partnerships for Innovation: Building Innovation Capacity (PFI:BIC) program. This partnership allows his team to collaborate with industry leaders and study robotics technology in everyday settings to help identify market needs.

NGS now partners with defense contractors RE2 Robotics and QinetiQ (who developed robots used to disassemble improvised explosive devices in Iraq and Afghanistan) and Texas Health Resources. New avenues are also being explored at the UofL Schools of Medicine and Nursing and University of Louisville Hospital to test any lab-created technologies in relevant environments.

One of Popa’s most prominent research projects funded by this grant involves
robot nurses’ assistants. And he believes this is great news for everyone in
the health care industry.

“These robots are not designed to replace nurses, but to help eliminate
mundane tasks so that nurses can focus on more important duties and provide better care for their patients,” Popa said.

The assistants can perform observational functions, such as determining whether a patient is sleeping or sitting, around the clock. They can also interpret verbal commands from a patient, to bring a glass of water or a remote control, for example.

Popa has learned that it is critically important for these robot nurses’ assistants to adapt and customize their actions based on the specific needs of a patient instead of relying on pre-programming.

“When taking patients for a routine walk or moving IV poles,” he said, “the robot needs to recognize and match the patient’s desired pace in order to be successful.”

These robot nurses’ assistants also will be able to provide a wide range of additional services for health care facilities, such as transporting medical equipment and beds from one room to another, taking basic vital signs and alerting staff if a patient needs assistance.

Beyond his research goals, Popa is focused on future commercialization opportunities as he brings his advanced robotics into the public sector. This helped his decision to join UofL for several reasons.

First, the strong reputation of UofL’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the quality of the undergrads within the current Speed School programs were important to him. He also knew that the state-of-the-art Micro/Nano Technology Cleanroom (MNTC) — a $30 million facility in the John W. Shumaker Research Building — and the Rapid Prototyping Center’s world-leading capabilities in additive manufacturing would be key to quickly bringing his products to market.

An active start-up culture across the city of Louisville along with open opportunities for commercialization was very appealing as well. He was already aware of several small companies that had experienced commercial success similar to what he hoped to achieve here in the same short amount of time.

So, with everything UofL has to offer, when can we expect to see Popa’s vision become a reality?

“If they are proven to be reliable and cost-effective, these robot nurses’ assistants may only be about five to 10 years away from real-world hospital applications,” Popa said.

Beyond that, he believes that robot personal assistants may soon become a common appliance in homes around the world. One thing is for certain, though. The addition of Popa has had a tremendous impact on everyone around him.

“Dr. Popa’s expertise in both macro- and micro-scale robotics adds a lot of value to the Speed School,” said Sumit Kumar Das, PhD candidate and NGS team member, “and his research projects and industrial connections are important to the University of Louisville.”

Dan Popa, PhD
• Vogt Endowed Chair of Advanced Manufacturing in the Department
of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Louisville
• Head of Next Gen Systems (NGS) Research Group,
University of Louisville
• Founding Member, Texas Microfactory Initiative,
University of Texas at Arlington
• Affiliated Faculty Member,
UT Arlington Research Institute (UTARI), University of Texas
at Arlington
• Faculty Member, Electrical Engineering Department,
University of Texas at Arlington
• Research Scientist, Center for Automation Technologies, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
• PhD, Electrical Computer and Systems Engineering, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
• MS, Engineering, Dartmouth College
• BA, Dual Major in Engineering and Math with Minor in Computer Science, Dartmouth College

Popa has authored more than 100 referred publications and is an active member of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society (RAS) Conference Activities Board,
the IEEE Committee.