Category: Graduate Studies

Sophia Ford– First Place Winner in the Copper Country Community Arts Center’s Community Art Exhibition

Sophia Ford- “Mine Waste: A quilt to mend”

Congratulations to graduate student, Sophia Ford (MS EEP), who was the First Place winner in the Copper Country Community Arts Center’s community art exhibition “Shaft Series” inspired by mining heritage.


First place – Sophia Ford “Mine Waste: A quilt to mend”

Second place- Charlie Eshbach “Delaware”
Third place- Tammy Gajewski “Champion Hen House”
This art exhibit piece links to Sophia’s larger research project that integrates anthropology, geography, environmental policies and GIS and indigenous research methodologies to connect the legacy of mining legacies to contemporary social justice, gender, environmental and sovereignty issues. One way in is that she is examining the history of these issues with ongoing processes related to mining property and law and she shows how the appropriation of lands and resources depends on the erasure of rights and access to lands. Drawing on her training in geology, and her insights into the process of mineral deeds and mapping – she layers these understandings to investigate the anthropology of erasures. That is, extraction is always about exclusion. Her approach weaves multiple knowledges/data sets – including this art exhibit where she create a  ‘quilt’ using mining waste, to investigate the multiple valances and impacts of mining on communities.

Wurst and IHA Students Investigate Camp Au Train

On the weekend of September 29, archaeologists from the Department of Social Sciences’ Industrial Heritage and Archaeology program , directed by Dr. LouAnn Wurst, along with the Hiawatha National Forest investigated Camp Au Train in Alger County near Munising. The weekend field work was highlighted in the article, Camp Au Train archaeology,  featured in The Mining Journal.

Our research also focuses on aspects of the everyday life of the CCC enrollees and the German POWs while they lived at Camp Au Train. Historic records and oral histories provide a great deal of information about both camps. Archaeological data adds information about mundane aspects of everyday life by recovering the objects that the occupants had, used, or threw away.

 

Burkett Awarded a Michigan Sea Grant Graduate Student Research Fellowship

erin-burkettErin Burkett, Environmental and Energy Policy PhD student, was awarded a $78,497 Michigan Sea Grant Graduate Student Research Fellowship. As a fellow, Erin will work with her faculty advisor Dr. Richelle Winkler and an agency sponsor at the Michigan Department of Natural Resources (Tracy Kolb) on a project that supports existing Great Lakes research. The awarded project, titled “I once caught a fish “THIS BIG”: Using Participatory Photovoice to Understand Michigan’s Great Lakes Anglers”, will explore the reasons Michigan residents participate in Great Lakes recreational fishing.

Graduate Student Prehoda In the News

image144321-persABC-10 News aired a story, about the potential for using solar energy in the UP, quoting Michigan Tech graduate student Emily Prehoda.

She is working on a survey that will be conducted in L’Anse next fall, a collaborative effort of the Western Upper Peninsula Planning and Development Region, the Village of L’Anse, WPPI Energy, and Michigan Tech’s Keweenaw Research Center and Department of Social Sciences.

Residents of the village buy their power from WPPI Energy, a non-profit company.

Prehoda was also featured in USA Today (“The US could prevent a lot of deaths by switching from coal to solar“), and on NBC and CBS with researcher Joshua Pearce (MSE/ECE).

Also in print, Joshua Pearce (MSE/ECE) and social sciences PhD Student Emily Prehoda coauthored, potential lives saved by replacing coal with solar photovoltaic electricity production in the U.S., in Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews that can be read here.

 

 

Will Solar Power Work in the U.P.?

Emily Prehoda
Emily Prehoda

ABC-10 News aired a story about the potential for using solar energy in the UP, quoting Michigan Tech graduate student Emily Prehoda. She is working on a survey that will be conducted in L’Anse next fall, a collaborative effort of the Western Upper Peninsula Planning and Development Region, the Village of L’Anse, WPPI Energy, and Michigan Tech’s Keweenaw Research Center and Department of Social Sciences. Residents of the village buy their power from WPPI Energy, a non-profit company. See here.

Pischke Receives Graduate Student Leader Award and Graduate Student Service Award

PischkeAward3
Erin Pischke, Jessie Knowlton, and Jill Fisher.

Erin Pischke (EEP) received two graduate student awards at the Graduate Research Colloquium Banquet held on February 16, 2017.  Pischke won a Graduate Student Government merit award for Exceptional Graduate Student Leader and the Graduate Student Service Award.

Congratulations Erin!

Read more and watch the video at ABC10 UP, by Rick Allen.

Complete list of winners:

Oral Presentation Competition

  1. 1st Place: Kevin Sunderland, Department of Biomedical Engineering
  2. 2nd Place: Teresa Wilson, Department of Physics
  3. 3rd Place: Andrew Chapp, Department of Kinesiology and Integrative Physiology
  4. Most Attended: Muraleekrishnan Menon, Department of Mechanical Engineering – Engineering Mechanics
  5. Most Attended: Niranjan Miganakallu, Department of Mechanical Engineering – Engineering Mechanics

Poster Presentation Competition

  1. 1st Place: Matthew Kilgas, Department of Kinesiology and Integrative Physiology
  2. 2nd Place: Brian Page, Department of Mechanical Engineering – Engineering Mechanics
  3. 3rd Place: Zichen Qian, Department of Biomedical Engineering
  4. People’s Choice: Mugdha Priyadarshini, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Graduate Student Service Awards

  1. Gorkem Asilioglu, Department of Computer Science
  2. Hossein Tavakoli, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
  3. Kate Glodowski, Department of Kinesiology and Integrative Physiology
  4. Erin Pischke, Department of Social Sciences

The GRC is held each year by the Graduate Student Government at Michigan Tech.

PhD Research Assistantship Opportunity

Energy Conservation PhD Research Assistantships at Michigan Technological University – Drs. Chelsea Schelly and Kathleen Halvorsen seek motivated applicants for two fully funded three-year research assistantship positions available for students pursuing a PhD in Environmental and Energy Policy at Michigan Technological University (MTU).

 Students will be involved in a National Science Foundation Innovations at the Nexus of Food, Energy, and Water (NSF INFEWS) funded interdisciplinary research project.  The project focuses on understanding and seeking ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through conservation of household-scale food, energy, and water. FEW PhD Position Description-1

John Baeten

John Baeten (Ph.D. candidate, IHA) has received a research grant from the Mining History Association to study the industrial heritage of the Mesabi Iron Range of Northern Minnesota. Baeten’s research project investigates the historic context of low-grade iron ore mining and processing in the Mesabi Range through the lens of industrial heritage and environmental history. His project will consist of  both archival and field research. While in the field he will be conducting a driving and pedestrian survey of the western Mesabi Range, documenting the historical footprints of iron ore “beneficiation” plants that produced both “washed ores” and the more familiar taconite, concentrated iron ore pellets, before shipment to the steel mills of the Great Lakes and beyond. The landscape he is investigating has undergone extensive abandonment and scrapping. This project hopes to connect the stories of direct shipping iron ores to taconite by exploring how the development of washable iron ores in the Mesabi Range helped pave the way for the eventual success of the taconite industry.

 

Industrial Archaeology Summer 2015 Field School: Isle Royale

IsleRoyaleThe Industrial Archaeology Summer 2015 Field School participated in excavation work at the Ransom Smelter on Isle Royale National Park.  Their work was captured in the production titled  Beneath the Wilderness: Revisiting Isle Royale’s Industrial Past from Ravenswood Media.

Video SummarySeth DePasqual, Cultural Resources Manager National Park Service, partners with a team of industrial archeologists from Michigan Technological University to uncover a 19th century smelter on Isle Royale National Park. Known primarily as a wilderness area, Isle Royale was, for a short time, the center of copper mining in the United States. The National Park Service provides the student archeologists with a valuable experience in industrial archeology while gathering important information for park visitors about the island’s gritty industrial past.