82nd Annual National Technical Association Conference

"Diversifying the Labor Force to Innovate 2020 Technical Solutions"

September 8 - 10, 2010 
 
Howard University, Blackburn Student Center
400 Bryant Street, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20059

Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson - Honorary Conference Chair
Congresswoman Johnson  is a senior member of the House Science and Technology Committee and she established a subcommittee in the Black Caucus for Diversity in Science and Technology

For more Conference information contact: fwoliver@verizon.net

Knox Tull, CEO, Jackson and Tull, Chartered    Engineers and long time NTA member, invited the organization to move its headquarters to his office at 2705 Bladensburg Rd., NE, Washington, DC. Also, he is providing two of his staffers, Lauren Summers and Allison Stouffer part-time to assist NTA.  This is not the first time that Tull has been so generous.  In the early 1990’s, NTA shared space in his Alexandria Office. he NTA website has had a facelift. Its has a smart new look and is becoming more interactive. Membership and Conference registration applications can be completed and paid online.  You can leave comments, as we develop our new look.  NTA has also joined facebook to provide up to the minute information about the organization and events.           

Call for Presenters
Workshop  Focused on Water, Technology and Ethics

In connection with the upcoming 4th International Conference on Appropriate Technology to be held in Ghana in November 2010, John Tharakan and Charles Verharen are writing an NSF Workshop Grant Proposal.

The Workshop will be held immediately preceding the conference.  If the proposal is funded, workshop participants will have their travel to and from Ghana covered, as well as lodging and meals during the time of the workshop. 

The 3 primary themes are water, technology and ethics.

All those interested in participating in the pre-conference workshops in Ghana should submit (1) the area of expertise they will represent at the conference, (2) potential title of a worshop session, and (3) cv showing their qualifications to lead a workshop session in Ghana.

The focus of the workshop is Appropriate Technology for Water and Sanitation:  An Engineering Ethics.   The workshop sessions will address appropriate solutions from diverse perspectives on community technology needs.  The workshop will emphasize engineering information technology solutions such as using locally sensed and remotely acquired environmental data to guide individual and community water resourcing and clean-up technology development and choices.

Appropriate technologies provide sustainable solutions to developing communities, addressing local quality-of-life problems with innovative, community-centered and appropriate technological choices. Appropriate Technology can be broadly characterized as providing value to communities using relevant devices, processes, organizational structures and software requiring only small investments but resulting in broader impacts for the community. The proposed workshop will bring together US faculty, researchers and students with faculty and researchers from Ghana, including the University of Ghana, Legon (UGL) in Accra, Ghana, and the Kwami Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) in Kumasi, Ghana. The objective of the workshop is to provide the center and connection around which appropriate technology knowledge and technology transfer will take place.

At this stage of writing the NSF grant proposal, it is not necessary that potential participants commit themselves now to going to Ghana if the grant is awarded.

They need only declare their interest by responding to the three points listed above.

Statements of area of expertise, provisional panel title, and cv's should be sent to John Tharakan, Department of Chemical Engineering, Howard University, Washington, DC  20059 via these emails:  jtharakan@gmail.com and jtharakan@howard.edu.