Tuesday evenings — 5:00 p.m. until 9:00 p.m.

Wednesday evenings — 5:00 p.m. until 9:00 p.m.

Thursday evenings — 6:00 p.m. until 9:00 p.m.

The CNSA Learning Center coaches will be available in EERC 328 during the times listed above.  For further information, contact Evan Hendrick at erhendri@mtu.

These scholarships are presented to undergraduate survey students who are in their second to fifth year of study and enrolled at Michigan Tech in the bachelor’s degree program for Civil Engineering or Surveying Engineering. Michigan Tech scholarship recipients are Ethan Richmond (Eben Junction) and Mark Jakubik (Whittemore).

“This year the scholarship committee received thirty applications and is able to provide 12 scholarships,” UPRB Scholarship Fund President Kevin Harju said. “We are excited to see so many bright and talented young people seeking a career in civil engineering and are honored to support their educational development.”

Since 1956, the Upper Peninsula Road Builders’ Memorial Scholarship Fund has encouraged men and women to study civil and environmental engineering, acquiring the tools necessary to pursue careers in Michigan’s construction industry and beyond. Unlike most undergraduate scholarship programs that support students in a four year course of study, the UPRB scholarships are intended to support fifth year civil engineering students who often do not qualify for scholarship aid to finish their studies.

“The young people receiving scholarships exemplify the work ethic and commitment of students at Michigan Tech in pursuit of their education and goals,” Harju said. “We congratulate them on their scholarship.”

The Upper Peninsula Road Builders’ Scholarship Fund is funded by private donations from the men and women who work in Michigan’s road building industry. Those wishing to help the fund sponsor future scholarships are encouraged to send contributions to the Upper Peninsula Road Builders’ Memorial Scholarship Fund, Box 239, Hancock, MI 49930.

The principles involved are Associate Professor Nasser Alaraje, who is chair of the electrical engineering technology program, and Assistant Professor Aleksandr Sergeyev. The two just conducted an intensive, two-day workshop on Very High Speed Integrated Circuit Hardware Description Language (VHDL) and Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA).

Representatives from seven institutions in six states (Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Georgia) engaged in the hands-on learning experience, working with both the software and the hardware.

The workshop provided faculty members of both community colleges and four-year electrical engineering technology programs with the opportunity to expand their expertise in VHDL and FPGA design. The participants will utilize these skills to develop new courses in digital logic design, using VHDL and FPGA, at their respective institutions.

The science amounts to “reconfigurable computing,” Alaraje said, and the applications are many–from aerospace and defense to consumer electronics.

He added that the use of the FPGA-based logic design capability has become more attractive as a design medium during the last decade, so industrial use of it is increasing rapidly.

“These design skills are relevant, current, and best meet industry needs,” Alaraje said. “This technology reshapes the way digital logic design is taught in electrical engineering technology programs.”

Surveys, he said, show that only 20 percent of four-year electrical engineering technology programs and only 17 percent of two-year electrical engineering technology programs have this curriculum component.

The goal of the workshop, hosted at SOT laboratories, was to reshape college curricula so they are current with new technology.

Next summer Alaraje and Sergeyev, in partnership with College of Lake County in Illinois, will offer the second workshop to community college teachers.

The workshop on campus went “extremely well,” Alaraje said. “There was an overwhelming positive response to this opportunity.”

The focus: an understanding of the electrical and electronic systems that control modern industrial processes.

“Engineers need this experience,” said Dean Jim Frendewey, “and it will help them and us.”

Associate Professor Nasser Alaraje, chair of the School’s electrical engineering technology program, put together the new minor. He said, “It’s a valuable skill that is highly marketable, highly respected, and highly desired by industry. There is great interest.”

The minor addresses gathering, analyzing, and interpreting data as a component of designing and conducting experiments and industrial functions.

Alaraje said the capability is ideal for engineers of every discipline being offered on campus. “It’s the basis for collaboration on multidisciplinary projects, because most real-world work involves several disciplines.” The specialty, he added, brings together electrical systems, computing, sensing hardware, data acquisition software and control systems.

The minor, the first in the School, entails 16 credits. All of the required and elective courses are already being taught on a regular basis by existing faculty.

Stubbings will illustrate process, bidding procedures, funding, management, and relationships among clients and expert collaborators who represent various disciplines. In this context, he will talk specifically about four projects:

• Fort Angelo: a huge fortification of medieval origins at the mouth of Malta’s Grand Harbor.
• Palazzo La Salle: an original palazzo that dates to the origins of Valletta, built by the Knights of St. John in the sixteenth century. It is now used as a school of arts.
• St. Peter’s Monastery in the old city of Mdina: a pre-medieval building that was first used as a hospital and in 1418 became a nun’s cloister.
• Restoration of a 300-year-old house of character transformed to a modern private residence.

Everyone is welcome to attend.

Dean Jim Frendewey says of the program, which was approved by the State Thursday, “It fits in with what we are about and what we do.” He adds that this blend of theory, technology, and application is “a natural evolution.”

Simply put, geospatial means information linked to location. Global sustainable development depends on the availability and reliability of data about natural and built features and locations–rivers and towns, mountains and pipelines. This information can be used to plan the built environment or to respond to natural disasters; for instance, locating a cell phone tower, or, after an earthquake, comparing damage information and population information to help deliver emergency services and pinpoint zones of refuge.“More and more people want to know where things are located,” Frendewey says. That includes industry, government, military, and the scientific community–the latter ranging from geologists to environmentalists to social scientists. Meeting those needs, he says, constitutes “a valuable undertaking.”

The program, which has an intensive online component, hinges on interdisciplinary collaborations among faculty on and off campus. The faculty lineup includes Research Scientist Colin Brooks and Codirector Robert Shuchman (MTRI); Assistant Professor Michael Falkowski, Professor Ann Maclean and Professor Andrew Storer (all of SFRES); Assistant Professors Eugene Levin and Yushin Ahn of the School of Technology; industry leaders from the US and Russia; and scholars at the University of Maine, Ohio State University, the Technical University of Israel and Moscow State University.

The acquisition and processing of geospatial data about the land make for an applied science. The technology includes surveying, geodetic science, photogrammerty, cartography, and mapping–all enriched with new, sophisticated technology in satellite systems, remote sensing capabilities, precision surveying instruments, computing, data networks, laser systems, radar, and sonar.

The master’s program will begin in the fall and is comprised of 25 classes. No new faculty will be needed on campus for the initiative.

Levin says Tech’s program is unique. There are universities that specialize in individual aspects of this inquiry, he says, but none that blend them all. “It’s not enough to have one small specialty anymore,” Levin says. Thus, the “integrated” component. “It’s a big enterprise now,” he adds.

The program has already garnered “strong interest” as word gets out, in part by a paper about the initiative that Levin coauthored in 2010 in the journal, “Surveying and Land Information Science.” Fifteen prospective students from around the world have inquired about the opportunity. As well, Levin adds, “Our graduates are pushing us.”

That’s because the career opportunities are “excellent.” Levin points out one website that indicates there are currently 10,000 jobs in the field.

Levin was hired to develop and implement this program, which proved to be a four-year labor.

Is it time to celebrate? “Not yet,” he says. “It’s too early. We need more students, and we have to work more to make that happen. We will be gratified in two years when our students get their dream jobs.”

He has a postcard from a recent graduate who has a bachelor’s in surveying engineering: “I am down in Antarctica right now, about to install some GPS units to track the ice sheet. Houghton just wasn’t cold enough for me”–postmarked McMurdo Station.

“I don’t know how many people have mail from Antarctica,” Levin says. “When you get a message like this, you’re doing something that’s needed.”

The endeavor includes a graduate certificate. As well, Levin and Frendewey foresee a PhD in the field, and they anticipate adding another master’s program in medical informatics.

Frendewey says the program fits into the University’s strategic goal of enhancing the graduate program overall.

Dean Jacqueline Huntoon (Graduate School) says, “This program and its courses will complement many of the current graduate programs offered at Michigan Tech. It has been carefully designed with input from industry, and we are optimistic that it will prepare students to become leaders in this growing industry.”

The Geospatial Engineering pathway was defined to study geospatial concepts that include measurements, modeling, data collection and acquisition techniques, maps and mapping technologies, data and metadata formats, and visualization. The approved plan reflects state-of-the-art geospatial research and technologies, and it includes courses from Surveying Engineering (School of Technology), Computer Science, Physics, and Business.

As a geospatial engineer, you will combine the use of spatial information software and analytical methods with terrestrial or geographic data to create 3D maps, employing Earth observation systems, global navigation satellite systems, laser and radar imaging sensors, wireless technologies, and more.

Contact Jim Loman (jcloman@mtu.edu or 487-2259, School of Technology advisor, for more information.