Donations Needed for Semi-annual Free Sale

amato-henderson-personnelCo-founders of the highly successful semi-annual free sale at Michigan Tech were featured in a segment on TV6 news on Monday evening. Female faculty began the free sale five years ago due to limited local options for women’s business attire.

Ready to clean out your closet and help students at the same time? Consider donating your gently used, clean women’s business clothing and accessories to the Free Sale. Your items will be available to all Michigan Tech students at no cost. Donations help provide students with business attire for the fall career fair. Sizes 12 and up are particularly needed this year.

It has become kind of a passion of mine and I think the reason why is because when you see those students stand taller, look a little prouder and realize that they do look wonderful and their gratefulness that they have when they are leaving is just, I think, what inspires us to keep going — Susan Amato-Henderson, Cognitive and Learning Sciences Department chair.

The next semi-annual Free Sale will be held from 11-3 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 29, at the Meese Center. Donations are now being accepted during normal business hours at the following locations:

  • Van Pelt and Opie Library – Front Desk and Jeannie DeClerk’s office, 219
  • Lakeshore Center – Pat Muller’s office, 320 A1
  • Academic Office Building – First Floor and Latika Gupta’s office, 128
  • Dillman Hall – Tess Ahlborn’s office, 108A
  • Meese Center – Susan Amato-Henderson’s office, 107

The semi-annual Free Sale is held the weekend before Career Fair. Your donations have helped hundreds of students dress for success. In addition to business suits, we gratefully accept and give away business-appropriate shoes, jewelry, blouses, briefcases, blazers and more.

We are in particular need of larger sizes. Want to volunteer and join the fun? Contact Tess Ahlborn for more information.

ACSHF Student Receives Local Hero Award

boroski-personnelWhitney Boroski, MS student in the ACSHF program and Manager of Student Health and Wellness, was recently awarded the 2018 Michigan Coalition to Reduce Underage Drinking (MCRUD) Local Hero Award. MCRUD provides leadership on state and national issues, and assists individuals, grassroots groups, and organizations to reduce underage drinking locally.

Boroski has been resourceful in creating programs and utilizing campus and community resources to assist in reducing underage drinking at the university.

Stockero tops most cited articles

Shastockero-personnelri Stockero (CLS/Math) co-authored two of the most cited articles in the Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education (JMTE) and Journal for Research in Mathematics Education (JRME). According to Google Metrics,  Stockero’s article “Characterizing pivotal teaching moments in beginning mathematics teachers’ practice”, was the 9th most cited JMTE article from 2013-2017. Laura Van Zoest from Western Michigan University is co-author.

A second article, “Conceptualizing Mathematically Significant Pedagogical Opportunities to Build on Student Thinking”, was the 12th most cited JRME article for that same time period. The article was co-authored by Keith Leatham and Blake Peterson (Brigham Young University) and  Laura Van Zoest.

 

Research for Teachers Poster Session

Group of Teachers present posters on mobile chalkboards to attendeesA poster session for the Michigan Tech 2018 Research Experiences for Teachers was held from 3 to 5 p.m. yesterday (Aug. 9) in the Great Lakes Research Center Second Floor Atrium.

The poster session concludes the NSF-funded Teacher Professional Development summer institute, “Computational Tools and the Environment.”  Twelve in-service teachers were paired up with civil and environmental engineering graduate students to research topics such as water quality, lead contamination, aquaponics and renewable energy.

The results of their research have been translated into curricula for science and mathematics classes. They will present the results of their research and curriculum development at the poster session.

Michigan In-service Teachers Participate in Engineering Course at MTU

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Through the generous support of a grant from the Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship Program, 8 Michigan teachers participated in a two-week long summer institute on the campus of Michigan Tech last month. The teachers are newly admitted students in the Master’s of Applied Science Education program, housed in the Department of Cognitive and Learning Sciences. The teachers engaged in hands-on experiments in the course, The Engineering Process, which was taught by Dr. Irwin from the School of Technology. Teachers took part in both the technical and creative sides of the problem solving process surrounding engineering.

New Funding

Kevin TrewarthaKevin Trewartha (CLS/RICC) is the principal investigator on a project that has received a $455,884 research and development grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services/National Institutes of Health. Shane Meuller (CLS/RICC) is the Co-PI on the project “Motor Learning as a Sensitive Behavioral Marker of Mild Cognitive Impairment and Early Alzheimer’s Disease.”

This is a three-year project.

Psychology Student Presents at APS Conference

APS is the leading international organization dedicated to advancing scientific psychology across disciplinary and geographic borders. The 30th Association for Psychological Science (APS) Conference brought together more than 4,000 scientists from disciplines spanning the full spectrum of psychological science, some of whom hailed from our own Michigan Technological University. Attendees gained insights into research and trends from world-renowned psychological scientists, improved their skills, deepened their knowledge, and forged life-long collaborations with colleagues. 
UnderAPS Photo 1graduate psychology major Elizabeth Kelliher (pictured), Madeline Peabody (ACSHF Alumna), and Professor Veinott presented an analysis of group brainstorming idea generation at the 2018 APS Conference in San Francisco, California.
For the poster, Premortem: Evaluating two structured analytic techniques for group brainstorming, Elizabeth analyzed the number of reasons and solutions generated based on traditional brainstorming research measures. Groups using the Premortem generated 58% more unique reasons for plan failure than groups using the Worst-case scenario technique.  This research, which is part of a larger series of experiments, provides quantitative evidence for improving plan evaluation techniques and brainstorming. Great job, Elizabeth!

ICAD 2018

International Conference on Auditory Display, ICAD 2018 Michigan Technological University graphic logo.Michigan Technological University has the honor of hosting the 24th annual International Conference on Auditory Display.

ICAD is a highly interdisciplinary academic conference with relevance to researchers, practitioners, musicians, and students interested in the design of sounds to support tasks, improve performance, guide decisions, augment awareness, and enhance experiences. It is unique in its singular focus on auditory displays and the array of perception, technology, and application areas that this encompasses. The overarching theme of this year’s conference is sonification as ADSR (art – design – science – research).

Portions of this conference have been made available for free to the general public:

Presentation from Dr. Stefania Serifin

June 11th, 11 a.m. – 12 p. m. 
Forestry Building Room G02

20 Years of Sonic Interactionsstefania_Lg-300x300

Sonic interaction design is a fertile field of investigation at the intersection of sound and music computing and interaction design. For the past twenty years together with several collaborators we have been designing sonic interactions for different applications, ranging from physics based simulations of musical instruments and everyday objects, new interfaces for musical expression, cultural heritage, walking and rehabilitation, learning and training, as well as virtual and augmented reality. In this talk, she will present an overview of these activities reflecting on their impact and perspectives for the future.

Presentation from Dr. Carryl BaldwinCarryl

June 12th, 11 a.m. – 12 p. m.  
Forestry Building Room G02

Auditory Displays to Facilitate Attention Management in Highly Autonomous Systems

Two recent crashes in January 2018 involving Tesla’s Model S, underscore the importance of the need for driver’s to maintain awareness in semi-automated vehicles, even when the autopilot is engaged.  Despite manufacturer’s warnings and cautionary statements in owner’s manuals, decades of research in vigilance indicates that this will be a challenge, if not impossible for most drivers. This talk will focus on our recent and on-going research developing novel methods of assisting the driver with attention management in highly autonomous systems.  Included in this discussion will be a discussion of the methods to develop and validate effective auditory collision avoidance alerts, driver state monitoring with low-cost physiological sensors, and using specific types of music as a means assisting operators with maintaining sustained attention.

Diversity Workshop

June 12th, 3:30 p.m. – 5 p.m.
Forestry Building Room 144

A hands-on workshop on the development of audio-based educational tools and teaching scenarios of activities pertinent to the ICAD domain.

Sonification Concert

June 13th, 6 p.m. – 7 p.m.
Rozsa Center for the Performing Arts

Experience experts’ takes on sonification in concert setting.

You may also register for the full conference here. For more details, visit http://icad2018.icad.org/

Partial funding is provided by the Visiting Women & Minority Lecture/Scholar Series (VWMLSS) which is funded by a grant to the Office of Institutional Equity and Inclusion from the State of Michigan’s King-Chavez-Parks Initiative.