Rensselaer recently named Graig Eastin as vice president of Institute Advancement. Formerly, Eastin was the vice president of the Children’s Hospital Foundation and hopes to use the knowledge and skills he developed previously to improve RPI through his post. The authors of this article were given the opportunity to sit down with Eastin to discuss plans for the future of RPI and where he sees the Institute heading. Read more...

It’s that time of fall again. Registration began last week, and this week, registration is open to upperclassmen and athletes. For underclassmen, there is still time to create your schedule and make sure you are prepared to register. Read more...

With Halloween passed, many are left wondering what to do with their beautiful, delicately carved pumpkins. Something so wonderful deserves a proper funeral before rot takes over the remains. The American Society of Mechanical Engineers determined that the most fitting solution would be launching our beautiful pumpkins as far across the ’86 Field as their trebuchets would allow. Read more...

Friday night, RPI hosted the defending national champions, Union College, at the Houston Field House in game one of a home-and-home series. Over 4,000 fans piled into the stands to witness the first game between the two teams since the infamous Mayor’s Cup brawl. Despite their weak record and five-game losing streak, the Engineers came prepared to encounter the formidable offense of their arch-rivals. Union entered the game with an impressive 5-1 record. With 60 minutes of unabated tenacity, RPI routed the Dutchmen 6-1 at Black Friday game. Read more...

On Thursday, October 30, Rensselaer President Shirley Ann Jackson held the Town Meeting for the Fall 2014 semester, delivering a speech entitled “Seizing the Future.” The speech focused primarily on Rensselaer’s approach to 2024—the 200 year anniversary of the Institute’s founding—and how Rensselaer remains at the cutting edge as a state-of-the-art research institute. Read more...

Every student at RPI knows the struggle that comes with attending such a difficult college. Many of us are happy to get even a couple hours of sleep a night, just so that we can finish an assignment that took hours to complete with a decent grade. Most students are content if they preformed average on an exam when the average is around a 60. The academic pressure alone is enough to make the typical student stressed. However, every now and then, the pressure of academics, relationships, and other commitments becomes too much for some and depression and anxiety can set in. Read more...

On Friday, October 31, also known as Halloween, the Sigma Chi Fraternity Pomeroy Chapter House transformed into a haunted mansion, packed full of strange clowns, zombie pledges, ravenous cannibals, and an evil surgeon. Intent on terrifying any who dared to enter, the brothers of Sigma Chi and sisters of Alpha Phi donned fake blood, masks, wigs, and robes and wielded chainsaws, butcher knives, and scalpels in their efforts to serve the community with the best haunted house they could muster. Read more...

After nine weeks of scintillating National Football League action, most of the 32 NFL teams will evaluate the first half of the season and try to make adjustments for a second half playoff push. Others will look to improve for next season and determine what positions they can supplement at next year’s draft. But which teams have the mark of a future Super Bowl champion? Conversely, which teams have been successful up to this point but don’t have the all-important “it” factor necessary to win in the playoffs? Read more...

On October 28, 2014, an unmanned Antares rocket, built by Orbital Sciences Corporation, exploded just after it launched. The rocket was carrying supplies, which included food, science experiments, and equipment, to the International Space Station. No one was injured in this incident. Several buildings nearby, however, were damaged. The launch complex itself requires some repairs. Orbital has begun an investigation in the cause of the rocket’s failure. Two Antares rocket launches have successfully carried supplies to the ISS in the past. The company has a $1.9 billion dollar deal with NASA for eight supply missions; the cost of the recent failure is valued at $200 million, not including repair costs. Further Antares rocket launches have been grounded until the cause of malfunction itself is found. Read more...

The future of humanity and life on Earth is currently in a state of uncertainty. Many extremely complex problems have arisen that remain without clear solutions. Notable, in my mind, now are invasive species, extinction from a variety of causes, anthropogenic climate change, current energy sources being non-renewable, general resource depletion, general global pollution, cancer and other serious health issues, various geopolitical issues, global poverty, an exponentially expanding population and the associated problems, and the vulnerability of humans to planet-wide catastrophe. This list is certainly incomplete. Read more...

RPI students have some eclectic pastimes. Sure, we have a Division I hockey team and as many intramural sports as the next school, but only at RPI can you find a significant number of students spending their time at organizations like Super Smash Brothers Club, Embedded Hardware Club, and the Rensselaer Center for Open Source Software. Some of the people in PULSE, the electronic music production club, have actually built parts of their own setups. Read more...

This week’s athlete of the week is sophomore forward Riley Bourbonnais of men’s ice hockey. Before this past weekend’s action, Bourbonnais had tallied two assists in his college career, but no goals. However, in the anticipated Black Friday matchup against the Dutchmen of Union College on Halloween night, Bourbonnais broke out, scoring the first three goals of his career to help the Engineers defeat the defending national champions 6-1. Read more...

Grand Marshal, Kyle Keraga ’15, was not present at this week’s Senate meeting. Instead, Senate-Executive Board Liaison and Class of 2016 Senator, Shoshana Rubinstein oversaw the meeting. The meeting began with words from Lester Gerhardt, president of the Faculty Senate, who was present for his usual first-of-the-month review. Although Gerhardt had no new news business to report, he did convey the willingness of the Faculty Senate to work with the Student Senate on problems they may see fit. He applauds the work of Marcus Flower ’16, head of the Academic Affairs Committee, and suggests that when the AAC discusses their projects with the Faculty Senate, they are presented in order of preference. This is so that the faculty may see a concrete formulation of the work done and will likewise be able to help them in the best way possible. Read more...

To open this week’s Top Hat, I would like to wholeheartedly congratulate the RPI Engineers on their back-to-back victories against our rivals and national champions, Union College, this past weekend! These two wins form the first consecutive victories against the Union Dutchmen since the 2004 season. RPI will now carry a three-game winning streak within the rivalry into the January 24 Mayor’s Cup. I would like to further congratulate Riley Bourbonnais on his first three goals (and first hat trick!) in his career with Rensselaer men’s hockey! This Friday, come watch the Engineers play Harvard University at the Houston Field House in a bid to extend their winning streak and Eastern College Athletic Conference dominance. Read more...

On the evening of Wednesday, November 5, five startups will get the opportunity to present their fresh ideas to an audience in Revolution Hall in downtown Troy. This is part of the StartUp Tech Valley series, co-sponsored by RPI’s own Severino Center for Technological Entrepreneurship. These meet-ups are held monthly for startups from the local community, especially colleges, to bring their product or service to a larger audience and gain support and recognition. Each month, a new line-up is chosen. Everybody is invited to attend; the event begins at 5:30 pm. This month’s line-up is as follows: Read more...

On Friday, October 31, the Tau Nu chapter of Phi Gamma Delta at RPI and the Chi chapter at Union College held their second annual FIJI Puck Run together. The game hockey puck used for the ceremonial puck drop before the RPI-Union rivalry faceoff at this year’s Black Friday game was carried for a 20.6 mile run from the Union College Messa Rink to the RPI Houston Field House by the brothers of both chapters, with brothers passing off the puck every few miles. Beginning its journey at approximately 3 pm, the puck successfully traversed its route, primarily following the Mohawk-Hudson Bike Trail, arriving at the Field House at 6:45 pm, just in time for puck drop. Just as last year, this philanthropic event was to benefit the United Service Organizations, one of Phi Gamma Delta’s official charities. The USO provides support for members of the United States Armed Forces and their families. Money was raised through local business sponsors, individual donations, and by selling shirts designed by a brother of the Union College FIJI chapter. Read more...

First, happy Founders Day! Today is the anniversary of the founding of Rensselaer, or in other words, it is RPI’s 190th birthday! To celebrate this, there will be two events today. There will be birthday cake on Freshmen Hill and at the Rensselaer Union (what would a birthday be without cake?). Then at 6 pm, weR is hosting weR BRIGHT in front of the Troy Building. weR BRIGHT will include lighting of the trees on the ’86 field, a capella performances, free hot chocolate and desserts, as well as a premier showing of the “How Has Rensselaer Changed Your World?” video. So, please join President Shirley Ann Jackson, the AGENTS of weR, and your fellow classmates in celebrating the founding of Rensselaer! Read more...

On November 22, EcoLogic will be hosting their first EcoPrincess Festival. The RPI EcoPrincess Festival is a family-friendly event that focuses on building a sustainable outlook as well as a healthy self-image among young girls (and boys as well). The goal is to help the younger generation get excited about issues they care about and also connect those issues to social problems such as health. Using princesses and princes as an example makes the topics fun and educational by focusing on the broader ideas of stewardship and being a leader in your community. While it’s fun to look beautiful, the core values the EcoPrincess Festival is trying to convey are that it is important to be more than a princess and you must learn to care about others. A true Princess wants to make a difference and creatively find ways to do that, and finally the real magic comes not from fairy or “quizzle dust,” but from within the heart and the mind of the Princess. These values and the inspiration for this event were taken from the Princess Festival hosted annually in Utah, and more information about that event can be found at
http://poly.rpi.edu/42183. Read more...

On Monday, October 28, Project Manager at Campus Planning and Facilities Design Barbara Nelson ’80 was awarded the Troy Treasure award at the Troy Rehabilitation and Improvement Program/Rensselaer County Housing Resources annual dinner. The Troy Treasure award goes to “an individual, group, or business who is passionately committed to improving Troy, toils in his or her neighborhood out of a love of community, and demonstrates his or her hometown pride in Troy in very positive and real ways,” according to the TRIP website. Read more...

Your time at RPI is limited. The quality of your experience at RPI is only limited by your willingness to put yourself out there. Opportunities for unique experiences and personal growth are everywhere at RPI. It’s more of a decision of how to spend your time. Be proactive about what goes on around campus. Seek those opportunities that will create memories for you to cherish even after you graduate. They will help build yourself and form valuable life experiences for outside the RPI bubble. Read more...