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Embry-Riddle Faculty Q & A

Faculty Voices

Archie Dickey,
Associate professor and chair of aviation environmental science, Prescott campus

What’s the connection between aviation and the environment?

A. Dickey: "Airports are miniature cities. Their concerns include air pollution, fuel and de-icer runoff, sewage treatment, traffic, energy usage, vehicular pollution.

Our program (aviation environmental science) deals with what goes on at an airport, like de-icing planes and keeping deer or coyotes off the runway. If you fly into a gull or a goose and take it into the engine, you’ve got engine failure. Even one bird hitting a plane means the plane has to be taken out of service and examined. That costs money."

What solutions have been tried so far?

A. Dickey: "Several airlines are reporting all their wildlife strikes, even though it’s not required by U.S. law. They see a benefit, because it lets the airport control the situation down the road. In the Midwest, airports and airlines are creating special places that catch runoff de-icing fluid so it doesn’t go into a stream. Some airports have switched to electric service vehicles to reduce the amount of gas pollution they generate."

Q. What attracts students to your program?

A. Dickey: "Some students come to Embry-Riddle interested in aviation, but they decide they don’t want to become a pilot or engineer after all, for whatever reason. A lot of kids come here and get into hiking, biking and rock climbing because of our Prescott, Ariz. location. They develop an interest in the outdoors and the environment. Our program gives them a chance to connect both interests."

Q. What do they get from it?

A. Dickey: "Some students have never been outdoors before. Most spring semesters I teach a course on the natural history of Arizona. We take a four-day camping trip to study the biology, geology, and geography of this state. The idea is to get them out into nature and learn plants and animals.
They help maintain the FAA-funded Wildlife Strike Database and Web site we’ve created. They do hands-on consulting projects, such as an environmental assessment of a proposed new road the county wanted to put in. One of our graduates works for an environmental consultant in Las Vegas, another for the Arizona Department of Water Quality, and another handles environmental issues for a California airport."

Shuo Pang
Assistant professor of computer and software engineering, Daytona Beach campus

The July 2007 edition of Sea Technology reports on an embedded software system you developed for tracing chemicals underwater. How does that work?

S. Pang: "It was some research I did before I joined Embry-Riddle two years ago. We tested a planning and guidance system for an unmanned submarine to find a chemical plume, trace it to its source, report it, and map the source location. It’s an underwater nose: special chemical sensors that can detect specific chemical plumes in the water. It would be useful for detecting chemical leaks, locating unexploded bombs, and finding interesting biological phenomena like thermal vents."

What are thermal vents?

S. Pang: "They’re like underwater volcanoes, as deep as 4,000 meters. Because they’re warm, you sometimes find unusual animals, bacteria and minerals there. In 2011, I will be on a Chinese vessel with researchers from Harbin Engineering University, testing my detection system in thermal vents in the Indian Ocean."

Any plans to continue that research at Embry-Riddle?

S. Pang: "Embry-Riddle doesn’t have an underwater vehicle, so I’m seeking funding from the National Science Foundation to do the same research using an unmanned aerial vehicle. People usually talk about GPS or vision-based navigation in UAVs, but no research is being done using olfactory-based navigation in them. Smell is a primary sense. Animals use it for food or reproduction. We’re trying to learn from the animals. You could use it on a UAV to detect a chemical leak that is too subtle to see, or in a fire where visibility is limited by heavy smoke, you could locate the actual fire."

Before joining Embry-Riddle in Florida, you were at the University of California-Riverside. How was that transition?

S. Pang: "Compared to southern California, Daytona Beach is very quiet, and I miss having a lot of authentic Chinese restaurants nearby, but after a year I’ve learned to like it."

Stephanie Rowe
Assistant professor of humanities, Daytona Beach campus

You created a course for Embry-Riddle about 'the dark side.' What’s it about?

S. Rowe: "It’s a World Literature course that traces the idea of the underworld in epic literature from its origins in pagan antiquity to the Christian idea of hell to the modern imperialist conception of the “third world” as hell on earth. We read Homer’s Odyssey, Virgil’s Aeneid, Dante’s Inferno, Milton’s Paradise Lost, and Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, and we watch "Apocalypse Now." It’s a hard course, but the students wind up with this tremendous sense of accomplishment and an expanded worldview. It’s wonderful when they see themselves as participants in this great literary and intellectual tradition."

Do you have a favorite literary character?

S. Rowe: "Satan in Paradise Lost. I love his absolute refusal to respect authority just because it’s authority. I think there’s nothing more unhealthy for a democracy, or a soul, than a slavish respect for authority for its own sake. Satan fights for justice. He’s compassionate. He despises hypocrisy. He refuses to be servile. Even in defeat he’s grand. He’s his own man."

What’s your research focused on these days?

S. Rowe: "Right now I’m working on study that grew out of the underworld course. I’d never noticed the flight imagery associated with these underworlds before I came to Embry-Riddle. In Paradise Lost, for example, of all the arguments that Satan gives Eve to convince her to eat the apple, the one that finally gets her is the promise that if she does eat it she’ll be able to fly. I’m calling the paper “Aviation and Damnation.” I’m also finishing a paper on Poe’s “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” for a book on animals in literature.

What did you do before joining Embry-Riddle’s faculty?

S. Rowe: "I taught humanities and comparative literature at the University of Oregon, where I did my Ph.D. While I was writing my dissertation I worked at a law firm in San Francisco, doing case research in asbestos litigation. I specialized in naval propulsion boilers, comparing plaintiff work histories against the installation and repair histories of ships’ boilers. It was fascinating work. The history of the boilermaker industry in the twentieth century is really interesting, and I loved getting to know these shipyard workers through their depositions."

Stephanie Trombley
Assistant professor of history, department of global studies, Prescott campus

What attracted you to the Prescott campus?

S. Trombley: "The global security and intelligence studies program. It’s an incredibly unique interdisciplinary program, one of only two or three in the country. It combines security and intelligence skills with broader cultural and regional history. Our program educates whole people. If they’re posted to France, they can talk about Camus with people they’re contacting. In other countries, they won’t take you seriously if you aren’t educated broadly. If you know history, literature, and philosophy, you’ll make better decisions and analyze more accurately because you understand the context."

You teach courses in foreign policy, U.S.-Asia relations, modern history, and war. Sounds like a heavy load.

S. Trombley: "It keeps me busy, but I love it. Earlier, I thought of different career options, but even as a student I knew I wanted to teach college. I was a teaching assistant in college and even got to lecture a few times when I was still an undergraduate. I also taught as an adjunct at the University of New Hampshire and Gordon College."

What’s it like to teach Embry-Riddle students?

S. Trombley: "Embry-Riddle students are a different animal altogether – very focused. It’s rare for someone to come here if they don’t have a sense of what they want to do. Embry-Riddle students are more concrete and linear in their analysis. The advantage of that is I don’t have to teach them how to think in an organized, logical fashion. I’m more likely to push them to think outside of the box, not just use cold numbers and facts, but to go deeper, to the real significance of an issue."

What do you do to lighten up?

S. Trombley: "I love music. I play the piano and guitar, and I sing. I also enjoy rock climbing and hiking, which I also did in my native New Hampshire. In Prescott, I live near some great hiking trails in Thumb Butte. In this part of the world, the rocks don’t move, but the sky does. It’s amazing how far you can see. Last week, I climbed to the top of one of the San Francisco Peaks, near Flagstaff, and I could see the Grand Canyon 80 miles away, all the way to Utah."