News

Popielarczyk Named Atlantic 10 Pitcher of the Year

Senior civil engineering major Joe Popielarczyk, a right-handed starting pitcher on the UMass baseball squad, has been named the 2012 Atlantic 10 Pitcher of the Year. Popielarczyk was also tabbed First Team All-Atlantic 10 and Academic All-Conference. He was recently named one of the two UMass Spring Scholar-Athletes for 2012. Popielarczyk’s microscopic earned run average of 1.24 per game leads the Atlantic 10 and ranks third in the nation. He joins Matt Torra (2005) and Jay Murphy (1995) as the three Minutemen in program history to be recognized as A-10 Pitcher of the Year. Popielarczyk did all that while maintaining a 3.42 GPA in the demanding civil engineering curriculum while also being accepted by the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department as a graduate student for next year.

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McCaffrey Featured in Atlantic

Anthony McCaffrey, postdoctoral research fellow at the Center for e-Design in the Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Department, was the subject of an article in The Atlantic, one of the nation’s oldest and most respected publications.The Atlantic article continued the national coverage for the method developed by McCaffrey to enhance anyone’s problem-solving skills, especially engineers, inventors, and other innovators. McCaffrey believes his Obscure Features Hypothesis (OFH) has led to the first systematic, step-by-step approach to devising innovation-enhancing techniques for overcoming a wide range of cognitive obstacles to invention. Additional media coverage includes articles in Psych Central, Red Orbit, Science Daily, Science Codex, and a column in the San Francisco Chronicle.

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CEE Student Named UMass Spring Scholar-Athlete

Senior civil engineering major Joe Popielarczyk of the UMass baseball team has been named one of the two UMass Spring Scholar-Athletes for 2012, it was announced recently. Popielarczyk holds a 3.42 GPA in the College of Engineering. Currently, with three regular-seson games to be played, the right-handed pitcher ranks first in the Atlantic 10 Conference with a 1.31 earned run average in 72.2 innings on the mound. Allowing only seven extra base hits, all doubles, Popielarczyk has limited opposing hitters to a stingy .215 batting average. He was recently one of 51 players named to the watch list for national Pitcher of the Year by the College Baseball Hall of Fame.

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