The only way to learn if your water source has hexavalent chromium is to check with your public water supplier and request a water quality report, said NJIT Professor Taha Marhaba, a civil/environmental engineer.  >>

A delegation from Ningguo in the People’s Republic of China will visit NJIT Nov. 18, 2010 to learn more about sustainable urban living and solar energy.  The delegation would like to transform Ningguo into China’s “Solar City.”  The trip follows a visit this past July from an NJIT delegation led by Donald H. Sebastian, PhD, senior vice president for research and development, in which an agreement was signed with  city officials to help them achieve their solar goals. Ningguo is located in eastern China in the province of Anhui. The city has a population of 380,000. >>

Each year since 2005, colleges and universities across the United States have recognized September as National Campus Safety Awareness Month. Following the ninth anniversary of 9/11, higher education institutions continue to work collaboratively to improve the safety and security of students, faculty, staff and guests on their campuses by sharing information regarding policies and strategies to consistently maintain safe campuses throughout the State. >>

Gale Tenen Spak, PhD, associate vice president of Continuing and Distance Education at NJIT, moderated a panel at the Association of Public Land-grant Universities' Joint Summer meeting of the Commission on Innovation, Competitiveness, and Economic Prosperity and Council on Engagement and Outreach at the Hyatt Regency in Austin, Texas. Spak moderated the session "Technology as a Tool for University Engagement and Outreach" on June 22, at which panelists discussed technology tools – from social networking to engagement web portals – that facilitate economic and community engagement. >>

U.S. Food and Drug Administration district staff recently spoke to a group of some 25 graduate students and professors in NJIT's Graduate Biomedical Engineering Society (GBMES). The presentation centered on the history of the U.S. Public Health Service and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration with an additional focus on the FDA's role in the regulation of medical devices. >>

A poem from NJIT Humanities Professor Burt Kimmelman's new collection As If Free (Talisman House, 2009) will be the featured literary work on The Writer’s Almanac program on April 20.  Garrison Keillor will read Kimmelman's poem “Taking Dinner to My Mother” on his National Public Radio show. Kimmelman, of Maplewood, is chair of the department of humanities at NJIT. In the New York City area, the show will air at noon on WQXR-FM 105.9, and will air at various times during the day depending on where in the country you are tuning in. If you can’t catch the reading “live” then you can pick it up on the NPR or Writer’s Almanac websites in the show’s archive; the poem will be posted there along with a podcast. >>

The Department of Public Safety has introduced Your Everything Tracking Inventory (YETI), a secure, user-friendly web app that stores information about valuable property, thus improving the chance of recovery if items are lost or stolen. Members of the NJIT community can enter information such as make, model, and serial number into an NJIT database. In the event that valuables are lost or stolen, police officers will be able to retrieve the description and serial number of the missing property and enter this information into a national database--significantly improving the chances of recovery. "We would like to thank CCS Capstone students Kaushal Patel, David Holl, and Daniel Rose for their participation in creating YETI," said NJIT Director of Public Safety Robert Sabattis. >>

Design through Dialogue: A Guide for Architects and Clients by Karen A. Franck, a professor in both the NJIT College of Architecture and Design and the NJIT College of Science and Liberal Arts, was published last month by Wiley & Sons. The book explores the relationship between client and architect through the lens of four overlapping activities that occur during any project: relating, talking, exploring and transforming. Teresa von Sommaruga Howard is the co-author.  >>

NJIT students will have the option next fall to live in a state-of-the-art, energy efficient, renewable energy building, thanks to $1.6 million in funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA). >>