Origami beaver on Zoom

Thirteen of us gathered in a Zoom meeting to socialize and try to make the MIT origami beaver.  We had two new grads and two current students stuck at home in the Kansas City area because of the Wuhan virus. 

Let me just say that we made all the way to minute 1:10 of the YouTube directions.  No one on the call was an origami master, and so some of us just stumbled our way as far as we got.  Here's the link if you want to give it a try.  You just need a square piece of paper (lightweight copy paper is fine).

First Annual Nerd Holiday Party

Fortunately, we were able to get a meeting room at the JOCO Library with short notice, because our original date had unfortunate weather.  Needless to say, we had a great time, and the nerdy gift exchange was really cool.  Gifts ranged from the unromantic, but always useful, flash drive, to physical puzzles.

The refreshment buffet and unknown nerdy gifts

Cherry and a puzzle

Deb and a book for taking over the world

Erin (RPI alumna) and a flash drive

Christine and an English-Swedish dictionary

Dave

Jenny and manual drafting tools

Jesse

Norton and Cherry

Christine and Tammy

Casual Wichita meet-up

Deb was in Wichita for a conference and met with some of the Wichita alumni (Emmanuel, Steve, Tony, and Laura) at a WSU Starbucks.  John tried to get there, but there are two Starbucks at WSU.  She distributed some MIT swag and reconnected with some of the alumni there.

Summer Send-off 2019

Our summer send-off picnic was hosted again by Prof. Simon Friedman.  It was a very nice, intimate lunch with a new alumna to the KC area and some old friends from our alumni group.  We only had two new admits this year, one in KC Metro and one in Wichita.

MIT-KC Wichita Edition

A number of the Wichita-area alumni/ae gathered for the first annual Wichita MIT Alumni Dinner. We resolved to reconvene the same time next year.

Our group (left to right): Tony and wife (Patricia), Laura, Emmanuel, Jeanne and Laura (Deb was photographer) with little MIT banners

Mary and her family were a little late

The obligatory Brass Rat photo

Laura forgot her Brass Rat but sent a photo after the fact

Brunch and Kinetic Event

Jenny, (and Steve) and Deb participated in the Tower2Tower 5K,

Team MIT-KC at Tower2Tower 5K

 and then joined Jenny and Jesse for brunch at the Lenexa Public Market.

Jenny, Deb, Cherry and Jesse

We had an amusing interaction with a townie who asked if someone at our table went to MIT in a snotty tone.  We responded "All of us."   He took a step backwards and departed.

Pi Day 2019

This year, the Pi Day celebrations are one of two mandated alumni gatherings (in place of the Toast to IAP).  We wanted to have fruit pies and pizza and had some difficulty locating a venue, but the UMKC Emeritus College offered their facility (which is located in the library), so we held this event in mid-town Kansas City.

Jenny, Satyen and Deb, and the pies! Satyen's son was the photographer.

We included a charitable drive of toothbrushes and shampoo for Giving the Basics, and hoped for a nerdly gift exchange, but we only had one nerdy gift.  Therefore, we had an MIT trivia playoff (it was online) between Jenny and Satyen.  Well, Satyen won the clip-on calculator.

This was also the 24-Hour Challenge day, so we kept the website open to watch the progress of the challenges and fund-raising.

It was small, but fun.  Hope to see you at Pi Day next year.

Inaugural Sloan Event

Our kick-off Sloan event was a bit spoiled by the weather.

This was the weather map around 2115, after I got home safely.

It was a small turnout of the MIT-KC alumni, but the speaker was very good, and we hope to try this again later in the spring (when we only have severe thunderstorms to worry about).  Jay Pestrichelli was very interesting.  He's an RPI graduate, and enjoyed being able to discuss first-order derivatives and normal distribution statistics with abandon.  Royal Fund Management was a nice host for the event.  Stay turned for future Sloan events!

It was just fun

A few of us were meeting to plan the next MIT-KC event, when I noticed that my knife was magnetized.

And, being a proper MIT alumna, I made the most of it.

But after I put my little video on YouTube, I saw that this happens pretty often. But it was a first time for us.

Summer Send-off Picnic with photos

Dr. Simon Friedman was kind to host our 2018 Summer Send-off Picnic at his house in Brookside.  It was hot and humid, so we mostly stayed inside.

Simon the Chef!

The young man with the tie (!) on is Cody, a newly-admitted MIT student, class of 2022.

Some of Simon's artwork is on the wall

MIT Networking Reception

Johanna Westcott is our contact in the MIT Alumni Office, and she is in town for a conference.  She and a few others from the Alumni Office are hosting a reception on 1 August 2018 at the Charbar in Westport.  Mark your calendar!  Details will be sent in an email.

Summer Send-off Picnic 2018

Our Summer Send-off Picnic will be hosted by one of our alumni in the area, and will be held on Sunday, 5 August 2018.  Look for an email with details.

Spring Kinetic Event-2018

Three of us (Deb, Jenny and Cherry) participated in the Tower2Tower5K in Lenexa, and then had breakfast together at the Whole Foods, just south of the race site.

MIT history - the move from Copley Square

This short film is terrific:  http://mit2016.mit.edu/ more specifically: https://youtu.be/obD_nK9VanE

IAP Event

Six of us (plus a wife and child) enjoyed a pleasant evening at O'Neill's in Overland Park for the IAP event.  We had some great discussions about the future of the MIT-KC group (mostly everyone is happy with the activities), which, hopefully, will include some Sloan-focused events and some activities for our alumni/ae in Wichita.

Boston (the band)

I was listening to the first Boston album on my drive in, and was wondering if Tom Scholz (BS and MS Mechanical Engineering) would ever be in KC where we could host his visit, but when I looked them up, I found that they're still touring and making albums:  https://bandboston.com/ As a 1979 graduate, I remember BIG speakers on the steps of the Stratton Student Center blasting the 1977 album every day that summer.  He might just be too busy...

(Note posted later on 2/1/18:  There's an article in the Tau Beta Pi magazine about Tom Scholz.  You can read it for free.)

Fall Cerebral Event at Linda Hall Library

We spent a fascinating morning in the Rare Book Room at Linda Hall Library.  Dr. Ben Gross (Ph.D. History of Science, Princeton) put together a cool set of old books for us.

London (Hooke's Micrographia (1665), Willughby and Ray's De Historia Piscium (1686) and Sir Isaac Newton's Principia Mathematica (in English, 1729)):

Hooke's microscope

Willughby & Ray

Newton's first law

Then on to Paris (Émilie du Châtelet's Principes mathématiques de la philosophie naturelle (1759), Diderot and d'Alembert's Encyclopédie (1751), Lavoisier's Traité élémentaire de chimie (1789)).

Lavoisier

To Germany (Haeckel's Kunstformen der Nature (1904), Rontgen's Ueber eine neue Art van Strahlen (1895), and.... Einstein's Zur Electrodynamik bewegter Körper (1905):

Haeckel's art in nature book

Rontgen's famous hand X-ray

And then a real treat for us: three wonderful MIT books: Edgerton's Flash! (1939), Wiener's Cybernetics (1948) and Vannevar Bush' Science: The Endless Frontier (1945)

Here's a photo of some of our alumni that morning:

Steve, Deb, Eric and Eric's wife

Fall Cerebral Event 2017

The MIT-KC alumni will be touring the Linda Hall Library Rare Book Room, and then going to lunch at The Mixx on Main Street.  Day:  Saturday, 14 October 2017; time:  probably start at 10:30 am.  More details later.

Summer-sendoff Picnic report

We had a nice picnic in Shawnee Mission Park.  Our group include a toddler and an incoming freshman.  We grilled some hot dogs and enjoyed the pot-luck salads.  Our next event will be in the fall - watch for the announcement.