Well, it appears that it has become time at last for Team UV to end its journey.  Today marks the 345th day that TeamUV.org has been active and I can guarantee you that every one of us here at Team UV has throughly enjoyed and cherished the 29,676,840 seconds that this blog has been running (at the time of publishing this post).  During this time we have had the incredible opportunity to share some of our own research and, far more importantly, help to inspire interest in the STEM fields amongst the general public with visitors from 115 countries for a total of nearly 8,300 views and well over 200 likes from 114 WordPress followers, our email followers, and many others.

This blog has far exceeded our expectations and for that we have all of our family, friends, supporters, and readers to thank.  Without all of you, we would have never been able to accomplish what we have over the past year.  I have been honored to lead this team and to have the chance to interact with all of you on a daily basis, all-the-while growing with my teammates and watching them progress through the challenges of the last 15+ months of our senior project.  I believe that I can speak for all of us when I say that the experience of writing to all of you here at Team UV is not one that any of us will soon forget.  These are the kinds of memories that stick with you.

The experience afforded to all of Team UV by sharing with you all over the past year will serve us well in the future as we push onwards and upwards in life and face new challenges, and I sincerely hope that our time here will serve all of you in the same way.  From compressible flow regimes to programming Arduinos to biomedical diagnostic tests to 3D-printing makeup to insects with gear-like rear legs, we truly have covered a whole lot of incredibly diverse topics here at Team UV, but we have not even begun to scratch the surface of what the world of engineering has to offer.  Part of the beauty of the world of engineering is that it truly is limitless.  Boundaries to the engineering mindset do not exist and physical barriers to what engineers can do simply serve as challenges for scientists and engineers alike to accept.  We hope that we have begun to shed some light on this reality and on the opportunities available within the STEM fields.

We set out hoping to reach just one person out there and help to inspire them to go on to pursue STEM-related careers or simply just to spend some time everyday thinking scientifically.  I personally have heard from numerous people over the past year about how we have made a difference within their lives or the lives of their friends or families.  I have also heard similar stories from my teammates, and that is the golden metric.

I am beyond proud of my team and what we have been able to accomplish and look forwards to continue to share with our readers about STEM over at our next project: EAF.  For those that do not know, Engineering A Future (EAF) is a website that I originally intended to launch back in December 2012 with the goal of inspiring interest in the STEM fields amongst the general public…sound familiar?  After preparing and stockpiling posts for a few short weeks, my Winter Break ended and the Winter 2012 quarter started in at Cal Poly Pomona (CPP) and my plans fell apart.  I had become far too busy, did not have any help, and simply put had never done anything like EAF (or TeamUV.org) before.  EAF was created with good intentions, but was not planned for properly by me, but I can assure you, that has all changed.

Flash forward three years and EngineeringAFuture.com will be relaunching on Monday (July 13th, 2015).  This time the website is ready to go, as is the team.  I have spent the past few months preparing EAF for its launch and am excited to cut the ribbon Monday morning.  EAF will follow the same idea that TeamUV.org has, but will take it to a whole new level.  EAF has been optimized with one goal in mind: to get as many people as humanly possible excited about STEM.  Crazy, right?  Well I believe that I have the perfect team to do it and that we are more than prepared to hit the ground running, help people to learn, learn (ourselves), and just have fun with it.  Most of Team UV will be carrying over to EAF:  Abraham, Ketton, and Andrew will all be bringing their massive brains, awesome outlooks, and passion for STEM-blogging and connecting with the community over to EAF.  Unfortunately, Ben will not be continuing with us at EAF and so we wave a somber goodbye to a valued team member and friend.  But fear not, while we may be losing a teammate, we are also introducing some awesome new features.

First is the style of posting.  EAF will be posting three times a week (just like Team UV has been), but this time we will be posting on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.  Posts will go live at 0800 (purely so that our followers who check the site early will already have the content up to read, rather than having to wait around for two hours) and the social media (Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram) sharing of the posts will be sent out at 1000 hours (two hours later).  Post categories have been almost completely revamped and the new categories will consist of:

• Blog Posts (Monday – Brian, Wednesday – other EAF members & guests)
  • Techno Babble: Much like our Well Read posts; talking about interesting science/engineering being done today
  • Lecture Notes: Much like our Presentation posts; mini lectures on cool science and engineering
  • Open Mind: This category will be carried over; insight into the engineering mindset
  • Guest Posts: This is a cool new category where people from outside EAF can submit requests to write guest posts on EAF! Read more here.
• Picture Posts (Friday): Very short descriptions (1-3 sentences on average) accompanied by cool STEM-related pictures
• EAF News: Short announcement posts whenever there is a change to EAF

On top of this, the new website is far more aesthetically pleasing, has many cool features and pages, and will hopefully mean a much more awesome experience for our readers and followers.  Lastly, we have some very cool ideas in the works for some awesome new types of content that will launch later on down the road.  The website is currently having its finishing touches put on with the About EAF page being finished up offline before transferring it to the site this weekend, a few member bio pages being finished up, and the graphical interface being tweaked a little bit more for Monday’s launch.

In closing, we want to thank our readers/supporters/followers for joining us along this journey and sincerely hope that all of you will continue to follow us over at EAF starting Monday!  On Monday, a post redirecting our readers to EAF will be published.

Thank you for your time

Sincerely,
Brian