Graduate School Newsblog

Category: News

Interesting stories about and for our students.

Alumnus makes Surprising Finds on St. Thomas, Virgin Islands

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He’s digging up the past–somewhere between 200 BC and 400 AD–in an unexpected archaeological excavation in downtown Charlotte Amalie on the Caribbean island of St. Thomas in the US Virgin Islands.

David Hayes, who got his MS in Industrial Archaeology from Michigan Tech in 2000, is principal investigator for a year-old dig that began when he noticed pottery popping out of a highway improvement site. The highway work was stopped, and the pieces have since been dated to early ceramic makers and farmers of the Saladoid era, 2000 to 1,400 years ago.

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Tech Gives Minnesota Communities’ History Back to Them

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A PhD candidate in Industrial Heritage and Archaeology at Michigan Tech has given the residents of Minnesota’s Cuyuna Range a unique gift–a glimpse into the history of their own communities. Fred Sutherland is researching the history of the Cuyuna Range, an iron mining region between Brainerd and Aitkin, Minn., for his PhD dissertation. Earlier this month, he presented a summary of findings from a survey of nearly 900 historic buildings and sites along the Cuyuna Range.

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Michigan Tech: Nation’s Snowiest Campus!

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It took some initiative from the proud Michigan Tech family, but our campus has claimed its rightful place on the top of the snowbank.

Accuweather initially ignored Michigan Tech in its ranking of ten snowiest campuses, but when many people registered “copious responses,” they changed their listing, and we became number one.

The story appeared on the Accuweather site and Inside Higher Ed, and the folks from Syracuse and Oswego took their demotion to number two in stride.

Published in Tech Today.

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Tech Student Brings Solar Power to Chinese Village

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Yawei Wei inspects the solar panels he and his family installed on his cousin's roof in the rural Chinese community of Zao Yuan.
Every Chinese New Year, the power goes out for everyone in Yawei Wei’s hometown. That got him wondering: isn’t there some way to get more electricity to China’s rural villages?

Wei, whose specialty is power engineering, realized he might not be able to keep the lights on during the surge in power demand over New Year’s Eve. But he could do something. He could bring solar panels to sunny Zao Yuan. Specifically, he could bring them to his cousin’s roof.

Read the full story.

Published in Tech Today by Marcia Goodrich, magazine editor

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Michigan Tech Online Programs Rise in US News Rankings

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Michigan Tech’s online graduate programs in business and engineering rank in the top 40 of such programs nationwide. Best online rankings released today by US News and World Report rated Michigan Tech’s online graduate engineering program 35th of 74 programs and Tech’s online MBA program placed 36th of 239 programs.

“This is very good news for Michigan Tech,” said Jacqueline Huntoon, dean of Michigan Tech’s Graduate School. “Given our remote location, our efforts to provide graduate education online allows us to reach a larger number of students than we can otherwise.

“We at Michigan Tech know that we have high-quality offerings, and it is great to see that we are beginning to receive the recognition we deserve,” Huntoon went on to say. “Of course, the faculty members involved in teaching the courses and advising the students are the ones who deserve the most credit for these achievements.”
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Help with English Language Skills Is Here

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Registration is now open for the next Michigan Tech Community ESL class set to run weekly, from 7 to 9 p.m., Feb. 13 through April 10.  While the class is targeted to the spouses of international scholars, there is also limited space available for spouses of international graduate students.

Depending on the needs and wishes of the participants, the course will be similar to the pilot program held during fall 2013. During the upcoming term, field trips are planned to help acquaint participants with the Keweenaw.

Due to the success of the pilot class, the course will again be sponsored by the Michigan Tech Office of the Provost with support from the Dual Career Program.

The registration fee is $10. Those interested should begin the registration process by emailing comlanguage@mtu.edu for details.

Published in Tech Today.

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To Russia with Code: Tech Students Make World Finals in Computer Programming

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Only 120 teams of 10,000 worldwide are going, and Michigan Tech is one of them. They earned the right to go to Russia to compete in the world finals of the International Collegiate Programming Contest next June by finishing fifth in the North Central regional qualifying contest.

Computer science students Tom Holmes and Eric Rinkus and math major Ryan McNamara will be making the trip to Ural Federal University in Ekaterinburg with coach and computer science PhD student Jason Hiebel.

According to longtime coach Dave Poplawski, professor of computer science, it is a great accomplishment just to get this far, especially given the quality and size of other universities that have qualified and the number of schools Tech had to beat. US teams the likes of MIT, University of California-Berkeley, Carnegie Mellon, University of Michigan, Virginia Tech, NYU and others will be crunching 0s and 1s in Russia.
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