The bad news is that the courses needed for degrees in those fields — like calculus, chemistry or physics — are tough and some students wind up punting their dream. According to a , roughly half the students who declared a STEM major at the start of college left that field either by dropping out of college or switching to a non-STEM major.

Hoping to stem that tide, researchers at the University of Louisville J.B. Speed School of Engineering obtained two research grants to find better tools to measure engagement and improve memory of students in STEM course classrooms.

Aly Farag, director of UofL’s Computer Vision and Image Processing Laboratory, wants to solve the problem using biometrics. Farag has secured a $300,000, three-year grant from the National Science Foundation to measure students’ attention using a biometric sensor network. The BSN would include wall-mounted cameras and webcams already in place in many modern classrooms.

According to Farag, the BSN would use state of the art methods of deep learning, machine learning and artificial intelligence to measure and quantify attention, telling a professor in real time if the students are bored or anxious – signs they are failing to understand the material being taught and jeopardizing their pursuit of a STEM degree.

“We’re going to find out if using new, biometric technology can strengthen our teaching and our ability to keep students engaged in the classroom” Farag said.

Farag’s team includes Tom Tretter, Marci DeCaro, Chris Foreman and Asem Ali from education, psychology, engineering and Farag’s lab, respectively.

While Farag’s research is aimed at determining ways to immediately measure student engagement in the classroom, his Speed School colleague Pat Ralston is working on improving students’ memory. Ralston, chair of the Department of Engineering Fundamentals, has a $596,000 grant to study “spaced retrieval,” a teaching strategy that’s been shown to work in the lab and in a small number of real classrooms.

“Spaced retrieval improves student retention of academic material by spacing out when students answer questions about the material, for example, answering three questions over three weeks instead of all on one day,” Ralston said. “This should make students better prepared for future courses that require them to remember what they learned in past courses.”

Ralston plans to train professors in spaced retrieval teaching methods and reach 1,600 UofL students in a variety of STEM courses throughout the next three years. She’s working with Keith Lyle, professor in Psychology and Brain Sciences, to measure students’ ability to remember key pieces of information and, hopefully, improve the likelihood they will keep pursuing a degree in a STEM field.     

The customer service center, called “Launch,” is staffed by about 50 UofL students from a variety of disciplines, and there are plans to add more. The students get on-the-job experience working alongside those already in the industry.

“We learn by doing things — we teach each other,” said Launch associate, Abdulaziz Arrak. He hopes to join Cardinal Health full-time after he graduates from the UofL College of Business in May. 

Launch started as an idea two years ago. Cindy Adkins, Cardinal Health’s VP of Customer Support Services, said the Dublin, Ohio-based company was looking to expand in Kentucky to support its growing business.

“We knew we needed great talent to round out our team,” she said. “And with a great university in our backyard, we decided to start right there.”

The students perform customer service activities, and collaborate on market research and other strategic and special projects in the space, leased from the University of Louisville Foundation on the third floor of the Cardinal Station building on Central Avenue.

“This partnership is a tremendous benefit for our students,” said UofL President, Dr. Neeli Bendapudi. “Not only does it create flexible, meaningful employment, but it provides our students a great opportunity to work with a leader in the health care industry without leaving our campus.”

Launch is the latest addition to UofL’s industrial partnerships, which include FirstBuild, in collaboration with Haier’s GE Appliances, and  The goal is to help corporate partners innovate and grow while creating educational and job opportunities for students.

“We continue to work aggressively to secure other collaborative ventures, attracting companies that lease space on our campus, hire students and faculty, and look to further our research,” said Interim Executive Vice President for Research and Innovation, Robert S. Keynton. “So we’re so proud to have another cardinal, Cardinal Health, join us here on the Belknap campus.”

Watch a video on the announcement . Students are encouraged to submit applications online at cardinalhealth.com.

“The Alternative Service Break (ASB) program traveled to Baltimore for six days with a group of 15 passionate undergraduate and graduate students and one staff advisor for Spring Break 2017. They performed over 200 hours of service to the Baltimore community.

Half of the group worked with the Living Classrooms Foundation, where they did art projects and played games with children in an after-school program. Kat Gries, one of two undergraduate student leaders for this ASB, used her skills and background as a student in the College of ����ֱ�� to plan the lessons and activities. The experience was transformative for undergraduate student Krista Mills, who changed her major from nursing to education when she returned after her service at Living Classrooms helped her realize her true passion was for children.

The other group focused their service on working with three urban farms. In between weeding, planting 2,000 seeds and cutting vines and branches despite brisk winds and snow, UofL students took part in impactful conversations about food sovereignty and the consequences of labeling areas as food deserts.

The rewarding trip transformed the students, making them even more passionate about taking active roles in our community, our country and our world.

Aliyah Gant, an accounting major, said she ‘left this trip with a rejuvenated hope in humanity, new knowledge, new ideas for Louisville service and new connections to like-minded people on campus.’”

Alternative Service Break trips, organized by UofL Student Leadership and Service in the Office of Student Involvement, are designed to facilitate service learning as well as build awareness about community issues. Each trip focuses on a theme or social issue to challenge students to think critically about root causes and the student’s role within the community. Previous ASB trips have been to communities such as Asheville, North Carolina, Washington, D.C., and the Galapagos Islands.

The students are from a variety of different disciplines including education, nursing, criminal justice, biology, engineering, business and psychology.

Janet Cappiello contributed to this story, which has been updated since it was originally posted in March. 

Callen isn’t sure what the future holds beyond his impending spring graduation, but he knows that he wants Mullikin to be part of it. Since his high school graduation, Callen has been a student in one way or another, first in the officer candidate school for the Marine Corps and later at the University of Louisville. He came to UofL in 2007, first as a student in the Speed School, before transitioned to marketing, and then returning in 2012 to the Speed School. The call for engineering was too strong.

Callen has long studied the science of their relationship. Although he knew that they had good chemistry, Callen had planned for months for the best moment to propose.

“She told me last May that she thought she’d be married by now. When I knew, it was shortly after that. You know what, I’ll never find anyone else in the world that’s going to tell me… I don’t even know how to word that,” Callen said. “The mental aspect of it is a complex thing that most engineers don’t get, because it’s not based on logic. Basically everything we do has to be logical, because that’s how the world works.”

Part of his struggle was in finding the right way to express his love, while staying true to his engineering roots.

“I’m not in touch with my emotional side, I figured that spending the amount of time that it took to make this ring and design it would show here that I care. A lot,” he said.

Callen cared enough to spend 5½ months working on the ring.

“I figured that’d be a way I could show my feelings,” he said. 

As for the process, Callen first had to determine what kind of ring to create, but needed more data from Mullikin. The two looked at a few rings and after identifying a few qualities that she admired, he went cautiously forward. Out of all the options available, he narroed it down to the emerald cut, modified hexagonal and marquee cut. 

“So I did my own research. Which ones did I think were the coolest? Obviously I’m into geometric shapes. There are circle cuts, round cuts… all these weird things. I picked the thing that would be most geometric, which would be emerald,” Callen said.

Once that decision was final, he “extruded a basic shape” on Solid Works, took measurements from a ring Mullikin regularly wears and “went from there.” With help from Joe Vicars in the Rapid Prototyping Center, he designed a mold for the ring, which was then set in gold.

“The mold is not like a mold out of play dough. The mold is a design. To straight up 3-D print in gold would be an astronomical amount of money. People do it, but I can’t do that. I created the plastic version of the ring, so that I had an object to hold, and I sent off all my materials to a place called Shape Ways, a 3-D printing website,” Callen said. 

When it came time, Callen proposed to Mullikin on campus on the first floor of the Rapid Prototyping Center. Mullikin said yes.

After accepting his proposal, Callen took Mullikin on a tour of the facility, leaving campus to meet up with family and friends to celebrate. Now the wedding planning has begun, and true to his nature, Callen has offered to work with Mullikin to create her own wedding band, an act of collaboration symbolic of their love. 

For more on this story, check out the video below: 

Photo courtesy of Kari Donahue.