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Two weeks after graduating with degrees in chemical engineering and German, Gretel Raibeck ’03 (Albrightsville, Pa.) will fly to Germany to attend a highly selective four-week program for engineers at the University of Munich.
She will join peers from Cornell, Penn, Yale, Columbia, and other institutions June 9-July 4 for “High Tech in Old Munich,” a program funded by the German Academic Exchange Service. Her experience will include courses on German language and contemporary German culture; technical, economics, and cultural workshops; and visits to renowned German companies.
Outings are planned in Munich and its surroundings, Neuschwanstein and the Alps, the medieval city of Regensburg, and Salzburg, Mozart’s birthplace and home for most of his life.
While she is studying in Germany, Kenneth Haug, assistant professor of chemistry, will present their EXCEL Scholars research June 16-18 at the 63nd annual Physical Electronics Conference hosted by Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. In Lafayette’s distinctive EXCEL Scholars program, students assist faculty with research while earning a stipend. Raibeck worked on computer-simulation projects that may help scientists understand the biology that keeps human hearts beating regularly and have applications in the manufacture of semiconductor and magnetic devices (see related story). Last year, Haug presented results of his collaboration with Raibeck and another student at the conference, which focuses on the physics and chemistry of surfaces and interfaces.
Raibeck also presented her work at last year’s Intercollegiate Student Chemists Convention, hosted by Lebanon Valley College in Annville, Pa. (see related story).
Her trip to Germany will be the second in two years. Last summer, she served an internship with fit GmbH in Hirschfelde through a program established by Lafayette’s department of foreign languages and literatures and the University for Applied Sciences in Zittau/Gorlitz. She conducted tests to determine what substances could be incorporated in the company’s dishwashing detergent to prevent calcium deposits on glasses. She also used a device to gauge how much calcium could be absorbed before the element falls out of solution.
She followed up on her internship this school year by conducting an intensive examination of East Germany’s energy sources before and after reunification. Her mentor was Margarete Lamb-Faffelberger, associate professor and assistant head of foreign languages and literatures.
“Under Communist rule, there were no environmental regulations concerning mining and power production,” says Raibeck, a member of Delta Phi Alpha, the national German academic honor society. “Since the reunification, major steps have been taken and must be taken to both clean up past damages and to change energy sources to renewable sources.”
“Returning from living and working in East Germany was difficult because I feel like part of me is there,” she adds. “What excites me most is how tangible and relevant this information is to Germany and to the United States, and how I have experienced it first hand.”
Raibeck notes that the area of Germany where she worked is very similar to the coal mining regions in Pennsylvania, but the environmental movement in Europe is far ahead of the United States.
“I owe Professor Lamb-Faffelberger the ability to complete my degree in German,” she says. “My internship abroad was only possible with her guidance and insistence that I take advantage of my desire to study German.”
As part of Lafayette’s alumni externship program, Raibeck shadowed Richard Coleman ’71, an environmental chemist at HawkMtn labs in West Hazleton, Pa., an independent laboratory specializing in a variety of environmental testing and related services.
A member of American Institute of Chemical Engineers, Raibeck served as program director of WJRH, the campus radio station, and played trumpet in Pep Band. She competed in intramural athletics and was alumnae relations and ritual coordinator for Alpha Gamma Delta sorority. She also acted in the College Theater production of Thornton Wilder’s The Skin of Our Teeth (see related story).