November 19, 1998

Contents
Enrollment Trends, Research Expenditures Up
Men's Basketball Team Has International Flavor
SIS To Receive Upgrade
Exhibit To Chronicle Life Of New Jersey Novelist
Students To Showcase Theater Directing Talents
Did You Know?
NJIT At Mount Laurel Campus Happenings
NJIT Community News Briefs
Academic Calendar
Seminars
People
Classifieds
Campus Events Calendar

Enrollment Trends, Research Expenditures Up

According to Fenster, NJIT has enrolled one of the finest freshman classes in the university's history, with 20 percent of all full-time freshman students admitted to the Albert Dorman Honors College. He cited additional residence hall space as a significant factor in recruitment, particularly Honors students, and reported that almost 50 percent of all full-time freshmen now live on campus. Another positive enrollment trend, according to Fenster, was that women now make up 24 percent of NJIT's student population.

In fiscal year 1997, total research expenditures from all sources are close to $40 million and the New Jersey Commission on Science and Technology has funded five new NJIT research centers: the Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems Initiative; the Center for Membrane Technologies; the New Jersey Center for Wireless Communications; the Transportation Information and Decision Engineering Center; and the New Jersey Center for Multimedia Research.

The president also noted the increase in campus space, with the opening of the $26.6 million Building Sciences Center, a 195,000 square-foot complex home to both the School of Architecture and the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering.

While NJIT's rankings remain high, Fenster said competition among both public and private institutions of higher education is growing. He said state funding policies, including new "performance funding" methodology, would put a premium on quality and an importance on improving graduation rates. He challenged all departments, faculty and staff to continue to strive for excellence and establish NJIT as a leading scientific/technological research university.

Men's Basketball Team Has International Flavor

"I'm very optimistic,'' said coach Jim Catalano, who enters his 20th season at the university where he's compiled a 388­137 record. "We have a number of fundamentally sound players and I'm anxious to see what they can do against our opposition. This team fits what we do traditionally, which is to get up and down the floor and take advantage of perimeter shooting."

The international players include starters 6-5 junior Moti Ifergan, of Haifa, Israel; 6-6 freshman Itay Koren, of Tel Aviv, Israel; and 6-7 senior Alphonse Ngoma, of Geneva, Switzerland. Oren Gritzman, a 6-6 sophomore from Kiriat Bialik, Israel, is competing for significant playing time. The three student-athletes from Israel are army veterans.

Last season, NJIT competed in NCAA Division II for the first time and endured Catalano's first losing season, finishing 12-14. But at 10-12 in the rugged Division II New York College Athletic Conference, the Highlanders became the initial first-year team to advance to the conference playoffs.

"We didn't know what to expect, but now we have a better handle on things,'' said Catalano. "Yes, our conference is very tough and three of the teamsSt. Rose, Dowling and Adelphiare nationally ranked. Our schedule also includes No. 5 Florida Southern and Division I Columbia, but we have to play that caliber of schedule to attract better student-athletes and to improve by the postseason tournaments.''

NJIT opened the season by winning the inaugural Estelle Fleisher Memorial Tournament, Nov. 14-15, at Entwisle Gymnasium. NJIT defeated the University of District of Columbia, 73-67, on Saturday, and won the championship game the following day, 57-54, against Lowell of Massachusetts.

NJIT is well stocked at the guard position. A.J. Warren, a 6-2 sophomore who graduated from Roselle High School, averaged 10 points per game as a freshman last season at LeMoyne in New York. He starts at shooting guard. Deshawn Charles, a 5-10 junior from Union, plays point guard after averaging 18.2 points per game last season at Union County College.

Others who will receive plenty of playing time in the backcourt are co-captain Michael Catalano, a 5-10 junior from Kinnelon and son of the head coach; Steve Ricciardi, a 5-10 sophomore from Weehawken and graduate of Seton Hall Prep who averaged 6.1 points per game as a freshman; Mario Lugo, a 5-8 freshman from Union City who averaged 25 points per game and was an All-Hudson County selection last season; and 6-0 junior Owain States of Baltimore, another outside shooting threat.

The starting forwards are the Israeli duo of Ifergan and Koren. Ifergan, 23, is a well-rounded player who is a good shooter and defender and, according to Catalano, one of the best passers to play at NJIT. Koren, 22, scores from inside and outside, has good range on his shot and is an aggressive rebounder.

Other forwards include Gritzman, 23, a pure shooter who will open up the perimeter; co-captain Will Dempsey, a 6-4 junior from Wayne who averaged five points and 2.1 rebounds per game last season; and 6-6 junior David Wiggins, of Bronx, N.Y., a transfer from Monroe Community College (N.Y.) who may be the best athlete on the team.

At starting center is 6-7 Ngoma, a transfer from North Carolina A&T who is a tough rebounder and inside scorer; and backup 6-6 junior Latif McMorrin, of South Orange and Union Catholic High School who averaged 6.3 points and 4.8 rebounds per game for the Highlanders last season.

"If we can grab our share of rebounds, we'll be in good shape," said Catalano. "The most positive aspect of this team is that we have so many interchangeable parts. Nearly everyone is a perimeter threat and that's conducive to what we like to do. We lack a little team speed, and this remains to be seen if we can offset that with our intelligence. We will switch defenses every possession and try to throw teams off that way. Our international players are all very fundamentally sound and smart players."

Next Issue: An overview of the women's basketball team.

SIS To Receive Upgrade

The SIS/PLUS Migration Team has been working on the project since February. Representatives from the offices of the registrar, financial aid, bursar, admissions, continuing professional education, graduate studies, and management information systems converted student records into a relational database environment. New SIS screens and transaction processing activities needed to be reviewed as well.

Beginning Jan.11, NJIT students will have the option of registering using the web-based interface or in person at the PC labs in the Student Mall. Effective April 1999, all registration will be done via the new web interface.

SIS operators will need to attend a training session in order to have log-ons and passwords activated in the new SIS/PLUS environment. Training sessions for university staff will be held in early December. Further information regarding training will be distributed prior to Thanksgiving.

Exhibit To Chronicle Life Of New Jersey Novelist

Photos and documents chronicling the life and work of the American realist include first editions of many of his books and artifacts from Crane's early years in New Jersey and New York.

The son of a Methodist minister, Crane was born in Newark in 1871. The family moved to Port Jervis and to Asbury Park, where Crane attended local schools before moving to Lafayette College and Syracuse University, where he pursued his interests in baseball more avidly than academics. Leaving college, he became a journalist, short story writer, poet and novelist.

The "Red Badge of Courage," published in 1895, gained the 24-year-old Newarker international fame. Crane traveled widely as a war correspondent for the next few years, but developed tuberculosis and died in Germany in 1900 at age 28. Crane is buried in a family plot at Evergreen Cemetery, in Hillside.

In 1976, Herman Estrin, NJIT professor emeritus of English, founded the New Jersey Literary Hall of Fame, which honors the work of prominent writers who were born or have worked in the state. The exhibit is the work of Charles Cummings, director of statewide outreach and city historian for the Newark Public Library.

Students To Showcase Theater Directing Talents

"The Directors' Project" is a way to allow freedom of expression unfold in a main stage production. Students display their directorial vision on stage, as any theater professor would do. The vision and artistic responsibility is in the hands of the student director. Students are responsible for coordinating all aspects of the production, from choosing the play, auditions, scheduling and rehearsals, and meeting with designers. They also are responsible for the inner life of the performers, such as the encouragement and artistic guidance in developing the plays' characters.

Did You Know?

• NJIT total student enrollment has risen from 5,000 in 1976 to an all-time high of 8,200 in 1998. In the past four years, enrollment has increased more than 9 percent.
• Student enrollment at the master's level also has increased from 1,650 in 1984 to 2,700 in 1998.
• Doctoral enrollment has risen by 400 percent, from 65 students to 320 in 1998.
• Forty-nine percent of all full-time freshmen live on campus, compared to 37 percent in 1995.
• The NJIT freshman Albert Dorman Honors College enrollment has increased from 30 in 1985 to 120 in 1998. The Honors College now has 450 students.
• The SAT scores (recentered) for first-time, full­time freshmen have increased from 1,055 in 1992 to more than 1,130 in 1998.
• Educational Opportunity Program first-time freshman SAT scores (recentered) have shown a dramatic increase from just under 900 in 1992 to just under 1,040 in 1998.
• First-time freshmen in the Honors College have an SAT score range (recentered) from 1,250 to 1,300 in the past six years, while regularly admitted freshmen have a range of 1,100 to 1,150 in this same period.
• For fiscal year 1997, the university had research expenditures of more than $39 million, with more than 50 percent from the federal sector. This compares to $16 million in expenditures during fiscal year 1991, with 25 percent of this total federal and 37 percent state funding. For fiscal year 1998, state funded research totaled $5 million, representing approximately 13 percent of the total research budget.

Database Training For High School Teachers

Robert Blaylock, technical services coordinator at the campus, presented hands-on training and a formal lecture, where the participants practiced building and utilizing databases in a variety of ways in their classrooms. Blaylock also highlighted many of NJIT's academic programs, particularly those offered at the Mount Laurel campus.

 AIDS Memorial Quilt Displayed

Undergraduate Research Experience Comes To Campus

Muhammad Feknous, assistant chairperson for computer and electrical engineering programs at Mount Laurel, is working with Scott Tasso, a sophomore majoring in electrical engineering, on developing a technical manual based on Electronics Workbench, Matlab and Pspice software which will assist students in integrating a variety of software packages.

The undergraduate research experience provides technical assistance to Educational Opportunity Program and ethnic minority students who, historically, have been underrepresented in the master's and doctoral degree programs.

Holiday Tree Lighting

The joyous event celebrates all the holidays and brings the community together to join in the program's festivities. The university community can purchase bows for $5 and have them placed on the 60-foot tree. Funds collected will defray the cost of the event. Contributions are tax deductible. Purchase forms can be obtained around the NJIT campus.

Seminars

Computing Distances Between Phylogenetic Trees Or Genome Sequences

Bhaskar DasGupta, of Rutgers University, will present "Computing Distances Between Phylogenetic Trees or Genome Sequences," investigating problems such as different phylogenetic trees for the same group of species that are often produced either by procedures that use diverse optimality criteria or from different genes in the study of molecular evolution. Comparing these trees to find their similarities and dissimilarities is an important issue in computational molecular biology.

DasGupta will talk about the complexity and efficient approximation algorithms for computing the nearest-neighbor-interchange (nni) distance and a natural extension of the subtree-transfer distance, called the linear-cost subtree-transfer distance.

The seminar will present several results in this area, including solving two problems that have been open for 25 and 15 years, respectively.

DasGupta also will investigate the computational complexity and approximation algorithms for a new evolutionary distance, called the syntenic distance, between multi-chromosomal genomes. He will prove several results on this and related problems, solving some of the open problems.

Scaling Limit Of ULSI Dielectrics

Beau Farmer, associate professor of physics and director of the Microelectronics Research Center at NJIT, will present "Approaching the Scaling Limit of ULSI Dielectrics," sponsored by the joint NJIT/Rutgers-Newark applied physics program.

The scaling of semiconductor device sizes for increased speed and packing density cannot continue forever. For example, quantum mechanics set a gate oxide thickness limit of ~3.5 nm to avoid direct tunneling. Recently, such tunneling has been found to be not necessarily harmful to the successful operation of low-power, high-speed logic transistors. Working systems with oxides as thin as 1.3 nm have been demonstrated. Still, there must be a wall beyond which a new paradigm has to be implemented.

People

Best wishes for a speedy recovery to Judy Myrtetus, University Advancement, and Maxine Kahn, Office of Research and Development, who were hit by a car while walking to lunch at the corner of University Avenue and Bleeker Street, Wednesday, Nov. 11. Both were taken to University Hospital at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey and released. Judy suffered a dislocated shoulder. Maxine suffered a shoulder injury. Both have since returned to work.

Classifieds

FOR SALE: '89 Jeep Cherokee 4x4 limited edition, new tires and brakes. Asking $4,200 or best offer. Call (973) 743-9460.

FOR SALE: 1988 black Ford Festiva, good condition. Asking $500. Call Angela, (973) 484-7076.

FOR RENT: First floor of two-family house, in Kearny, near NJIT. Includes indoor garage and backyard. Six rooms (three bedrooms). Nice, safe neighborhood. Modern home. $1,100 per month. Call (973) 472-4082.

FOR SALE: Beautiful eight-piece white lacquer bedroom set, trimmed with brass. Moved, must sell. Only 3-years-old and in excellent condition. Queen size mattress, box spring and triple dresser. Must see. Asking $800. Call Vinnie Ann or Nick, (973) 450-4516.

FOR SALE: 1993 Kawasaki FSXI 750 Wave Runner. One owner, adult owned. Excellent condition. Comes with trailer, life vests and wetsuit. Asking $3,000. Call (973) 759-2579.

FOR SALE: '89 Subaru XT two-door coupe. Four cylinder, auto, air conditioning, power windows, 82,000 miles. Excellent condition inside and out. $2,000. Call (973) 808-1081.

FOR SALE: Refrigerator, dish washer, air conditioner, dryer and much more. Very low prices. Call (973) 808-1081.

FOR SALE: Sharp VHS camcorder, model VL-L285U with carrying case, $100; Bell phone calling line identifier, model 77110, $10; Wen Wet Stone Machine, model 2900, $30; Soloflex exercise machine, complete with accessories, $300. All items seldom used. Call (973) 485-6040.

FOR SALE: Five-month-old leather couch with two built-in recliners. Moving, must sell. Call Amy Milavsky, (908) 272-3072.

FOR RENT: By owner. Seeking mature, single, professional female to occupy third floor of a private home on a lovely, well-secured, residential block in Newark. Two rooms, shared use of kitchen, laundry room and bathroom. References required. Call (973) 374-3986.

FOR RENT: Apartment available in Belleville near Nutley border. Four rooms, one bedroom, on third floor of owner-occupied three-family house. Heat and hot water included. No pets. $725 per month plus one month security. Available Dec. 1, 1998. Call (973) 844-9344.

FOR SALE: Magic Chef refrigerator, almond, 18 cubic inches, top and bottom, with icemaker. Brand new, only 2-months-old with two-year maintenance contract. Asking $500. Call (973) 485-5430.

FOR SALE: 1987 Acura Integra LS, five doors, five speed, hatchback. Ideal commuting car, great performance and 30 miles per gallon. Low mileage for age, perfect working order. Three cars two drivers, so this one needs a home. Blue Book trade-in value $1,900. All reasonable offers considered. E-mail "sebastian@admin.njit."

MANICURIST WANTED: Experienced, dependable, motivated person to work full- or part-time and a half day Saturday in Summit salon. Relaxed, pleasant, atmosphere. Call (908) 273-4466, 10 a.m.-3 p.m., Wednesday through Friday.

FOR SALE: Service for 8 with serving dishes, china, golden wheat design. Make offer. Roller blades, women's size 8, almost new with elbow and knee pads; $50. Call Roberta Hartlaub, (973) 642-1055.