“Office hours” are an elastic concept for Michigan Tech’s 2012 Distinguished Teaching Award winners. “His office is always open,” says physics department chair Ravi Pandey of Will Cantrell, associate professor of physics, who received the award in the professor/associate professor category. “I’ve seen him here on Saturday and Sunday working with students.” Cantrell came to Michigan Tech in 2001, after serving as a postdoc in chemistry at Indiana University and completing his PhD at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Pandey called Cantrell “a superlative model of the scholar-teacher.” READ MORE
On the Wednesday before obtaining my Bachelor’s Degree, I left Houghton at 05:00 with 16 other Mind Trekkers for DC (story here). On Saturday, I woke up, donned my Mind Trekkers jersey, and went to the event. I noted that Bill Nye would be signing things starting at 11am, so around then I put on my cap and gown, grabbed my diploma cover, and John Lehman (assistant VP, enrollment services) and myself headed over there. READ MORE
The Department of Physics is pleased to announce the best oral and poster presentations by physics graduate students during the Physics Colloquium poster session held on April 19, 2012, in the Aftermath Atrium in Fisher Hall. There were two similarly rated best oral presentations: “Conduction Amongst Mesoscopic Particles” by Douglas Banyai and “Calibrating a Gamma-Ray Observatory” by Nathan Kelley-Hoskins. There were also two similarly rated best poster presentations: “Individual Particle Analysis of Carbonaceous Aerosols Emitted from the Las Conchas Wildfire, Los Alamos, NM” by Swarup China and “Exploring Cloud Microstructure with the HOLODEC I” by Matthew Beals. The presentations were evaluated by the physics graduate students and ranked in order of preference. The winners will receive a small monetary award.
It’s a tradition at this event for the graduating seniors to be recognized and for a senior coach to say a few words or tell a story about their experiences working as a coach. For example, Edward Leonard, from the Physics Learning Center, recounted backwards his four years at Tech, and with each year (and story) he took off a layer of clothes. READ MORE