Tag: Study Abroad

Summer Reflections

Greetings from the College of Sciences and Arts at Michigan Tech!

Students immerse themselves in concepts like mechanics,
electric circuits, electromagnetics, and nuclear reactions in SYP’s Introduction to Computational Physics.

July 1 marked my four-year anniversary at Michigan Tech and with it the end of my first term as dean. I was pleased to accept President Koubek’s offer to continue in the position. I look forward to leading the College going forward. With President Koubek and three other new deans also starting the same day I did, the formation of a new College of Computing, and then a global pandemic, my first term was certainly “interesting”. A little more boring would not be unwelcome for the next few years!


Campus is fairly quiet now, although each week a new group of youngsters arrives for our amazing Summer Youth Programs (SYP) for grades 6-12. An enormous variety of offerings is available for both local commuting students and to students who stay in the Wadsworth dorm. My eighth-grade son stayed in the dorm and took “Stock Market with Blizzard: Turn $1000 into $1 Million,” offered by the College of Business. He had a wonderful time and is already talking about all the classes he wants to take at Tech. He also managed to lose $300,000 of play money on June 23, a day the Dow Jones was up 800 points! Something about leverage and using options to bet against the market?! I need to have a talk with COB Dean Johnson. I can’t recommend SYP enough for your kids or grandkids!

A student practices the art of creative writing in our great outdoor classroom in SYP’s Wild Writing, taught by Jennifer Nance.

A little further off campus… I wrote in the Spring about our amazing Study Away programs. Almost a dozen students recently finished their program in Costa Rica. They learned how Costa Rica has been creating a more sustainable society in terms of the environment, ecology, energy, water treatment, and more. They have been based at the Monteverde Institute in Costa Rica for 6 weeks. You can follow their adventures on their blog. We cannot wait to welcome them back to campus in the fall.


I just returned from a two-week vacation to visit family in Central New York. I took along some “light reading”, a recent book by Social Sciences professor Sarah Fayen Scarlett titled “Company Suburbs- Architecture, Power, and the Transformation of Michigan’s Mining Frontier.” It is a fascinating tale of “company towns” and “elite suburbs” during the mining heyday from 1875-1920. It includes lots of fascinating tales (and photos!) of houses in East Houghton, East Hancock and Laurium, many of which are now Greek houses at Tech. Yes, what is now College Avenue and Agate Hill was a “suburb” of Houghton. Read the book to learn why! Dr. Scarlett is one of our many CSA faculty producing interesting scholarship, both in and out of the lab. Sarah and her colleagues have also been hard at work digitally mapping the history of the Keweenaw. They created the Keweenaw Time Traveler, an online interactive historical atlas that is changing how we learn about, share, and research the history and heritage of Michigan’s Copper Country. Check it out here!

See images of the past and maps galore at the Keweenaw Time Traveler.

Spring (Finally!) Arrives at Michigan Tech

Greetings from the College of Sciences and Arts at Michigan Tech!

Spring arrived in the Copper Country with sunshine and 70+ degree temperatures last week melting away most of the remaining snow. Alas, Spring also brings construction season as the second half of the two-year project on route 41 through town is underway just west of campus, requiring southbound traffic to detour all the way up to Sharon Avenue and down Macinnes Drive.


Spring also brings exciting construction to campus! On April 29 we broke ground on our new $50+ million H-STEM building. This magnificent structure will lie just to the east of the ChemSci building and will host our departments of Biomedical Engineering and Kinesiology and Integrative Physiology as well as the offices of our Health Research Institute. Large numbers of CSA faculty do human health research, and we are all looking forward to the building opening in 2024. You can watch the construction on a live webcam here.

Image of Michigan Tech students sitting on an Amtrak train studying, working and chatting.
Michigan Tech students aboard the rolling Amtrak classroom heading into Glacier National Park.

CSA also leads the way on campus in providing summer study abroad and study away opportunities for our students. Social Sciences faculty member Dr. Mark Rhodes is leading a three-week Amtrak tour of the western U.S. titled “Amtrak Tourism: Trains, Cities, & Sustainability”. See our students experiencing this terrific learning opportunity. Another Social Sciences faculty member, Dr. Richelle Winkler, is taking students to Costa Rica to study global sustainability, Costa Rican culture, and the Spanish language.

Image of Joel Nieves, music director of the Keweenaw Symphony Orchestra.
Joel Nieves Keweenaw Symphony Orchestra Music Director

The end of the semester brought our Spring Board of Trustees meeting and final approval for a dozen faculty promotions in CSA. This year’s batch of dossiers was particularly impressive; our faculty are exceptional in the classroom, in the laboratories, and in performance venues! Indeed, we have three new full professors in Visual and Performing Arts! One of them, Dr. Joel Neves, led the Keweenaw Symphony Orchestra as it celebrated 50 years with a performance of Carmina Burana on April 23. Another, Dr. Jared Anderson, led our choirs during the same performance.


Critical to everything we do are our alumni and friend donors. All your donations to our departments, scholarships, and the general fund are vitally important to our success. Thank you so much for supporting Michigan Tech! Learn more about CSA giving opportunities.

If you are ever back in town I hope you will stop by, say hello, and share with me your MTU story. Please do not hesitate to email me any time at djhemmer@mtu.edu to share your MTU experience or offer suggestions.