Category: News

Interesting stories about and for our students.

Graduate School Announces Summer 2014 Doctoral Finishing Fellowship Awardees

The Graduate School is pleased to announce that the following students have earned the Doctoral Finishing Fellowship:

  • Douglas Banyai, PhD candidate in Physics
  • Rasika Kishor Gawde, PhD candidate in Environmental Engineering
  • Ryan Lemmens, PhD candidate in Mechanical Engineering–Engineering Mechanics
  • Seyedmehdi Morazavi Zanjani, PhD candidate in Mechanical Engineering–Engineering Mechanics
  • Ranjeeth Naik, PhD candidate in Mechanical Engineering–Engineering Mechanics
  • Ruiqiang Song, PhD candidate in Civil Engineering
  • Ehsan Taheri, PhD candidate in Mechanical Engineering–Engineering Mechanics
  • Khrupa Vijayaragavan, PhD candidate in Chemical Engineering
  • Anqi Zhang, PhD candidate in Mechanical Engineering–Engineering Mechanics
  • Yunzhu Zhao, PhD candidate in Environmental Engineering

Photographs and details of awards and fellowships coordinated by the Graduate School can be found online.

Nominations are currently being accepted for spring 2015 finishing fellowships. Nominations are due Oct. 21 by 4 p.m. to Debra Charlesworth. Please see the website for full details.

Registration Open for Safe Place Training

There is still room to register for the fall 2014 Safe Place training. The Michigan Tech Safe Place program is a comprehensive resource to better prepare faculty and staff to address the needs of students who identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, queer and questioning (GLBTQ).

The training program addresses a wide range of terms that GLBTQ students use to define their identities, issues that they often deal with during the coming out process, concerns that they face both in and out of the classroom, ways that faculty and staff can create inclusive classroom and office environments, and refer students who need to report harassment, and the on-and off-campus resources available to students.

View the fall 2014 training times and register online.

Fall Enrollment at All-Time High for Female Engineering, Minority, International and Graduate Students

Michigan Tech submitted its preliminary fall enrollment figures to the state this week.  Enrollment totaled 7,100 this fall, up from last year and the second highest since 1983.

Female enrollment in the College of Engineering is 1,005, an all-time high at 22 percent.

American minority students totaled 474, nearly 7 percent of the student body and another all-time high.

Graduate School enrollment also hit an all-time high this fall, at 1,442 or 20 percent of the student body.  The Graduate School received 1,800 more applications this year than last.

Michigan Tech’s 1,093 international students represent another all-time high. Retention—the percentage of first-year students who return for their second year—was 85 percent, the highest it has been since 1993.

Read the the full story.

Published in Tech Today by Jennifer Donovan, director of news and media relations

PhD students co-authored paper in Journal of Applied Physics

PhD students Ankit Vora (ECE) and Jephias Gwamuri (MSE) co-authored a paper with Joshua Pearce (MSE/ECE), Paul Bergstrom (ECE) and Durdu Guney (ECE) titled “Multi-resonant Silver Nano-disk Patterned Thin Film Amorphous Silicon Solar Cells For Staebler-Wronski Effect Compensation,” in the “Journal of Applied Physics.”

Published in Tech Today.

International Conversation Partner Opportunity

Conversation Partners is a program that pairs students in the Intensive English as a Second Language (IESL) program with more proficient English speaking members of the Michigan Tech community. The program is open to students, faculty and staff. Participants commit to one hour a week of one-on-one informal conversation by signing a contract with the IESL program for one semester. Volunteers are required to meet their partners in public places on campus for a minimum of one hour a week.

IESL is offering this opportunity again for the fall semester—by volunteering, you can make an enormous difference.

Michigan Tech Multiliteracies Center offers graduate students writing groups

The Michigan Tech Multiliteracies Center (MTMC) offers graduate students at any level of their degree writing groups to work on projects (planning and writing), proposals, conference papers, posters, presentations and defenses.  These groups are discussion based, allowing students to explain their project to other students and get feedback from peers.

Middle, High School Students: Sign Up for Free Computer Programming Lessons

The Department of Computer Science is offering local students free, hands-on instruction in the basics of computer programming and computer science.

Starting Sept. 13, Copper Country Programmers meets from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturdays during the academic year at the Van Pelt and Opie Library.  Computer science faculty and students will teach the fundamentals of programming, starting with simple languages like HTML and BASIC and progressing to the well known and widely used Java language.

Michigan Tech Approved as Test Site for the Graduate Record Exams

Michigan Tech has been approved as an official test site for the Graduate Record Exam (GRE), an entrance exam required by most graduate programs around the country. This will enable students from this area to take the GRE at Michigan Tech’s Testing Center, part of the Jackson Center for Teaching and Learning.

Previously, Michigan Tech students and locals had to travel four hours or more to take the standardized exam. The closest test sites were Sault Ste. Marie and Duluth, Minn.

“We have been working for years to get approved as a GRE test site,” said Margaret Landsparger, coordinator of the Michigan Tech Testing Center. “Now we have this beautifully equipped center and the capability to administer secure exams, and this time we were approved.”

The Michigan Tech Testing Center opened in October 2013. It is also certified to give Pearson Vue exams, including the popular Fundamentals of Engineering exam and the GMAT, a graduate entrance exam for business schools.

Tech joins 10 other GRE test sites in Michigan. The Testing Center can administer up to 10 tests at a time. The center has four test dates scheduled between now and the end of the year: the first is on Sept. 26, and there will be two in October and one in December.

“I am delighted that the GRE test will be offered at Michigan Tech in the future,” said Jacqueline Huntoon, dean of the Graduate School. “We have all been working on this for a very long time. The hard work done by the Jackson Center staff made it all possible. Staff members in the Graduate School have also been working to educate individuals in leadership positions at GRE, to help them understand the realities of our geographical location.”

For more information, see GRE.

Michigan Tech, Central Michigan University Launch Collaborative Physical Therapy Doctoral Program

With a purposeful pun—“an exercise in partnership”—Bruce Seely, dean of the College of Sciences and Arts, marked the launch Monday of a unique partnership between Central Michigan University (CMU) and Michigan Tech. The program will offer a Doctor of Physical Therapy degree from CMU to students at both campuses.

“This partnership is a signal of Michigan Tech’s commitment to strengthening its education and research initiatives in the life sciences,” said President Glenn Mroz. “We are thrilled to mark the beginning of this cooperative endeavor by dedicating this wonderful space designed for physical therapy education.”

The space, including a technologically cutting-edge remote classroom that will be shared in real time by students at CMU and Tech, is in the Advanced Technology Development Complex. A student lounge there was furnished by a gift from the family of Roy and Ruth Jurva.

A cohort of 12 students is starting the program at Michigan Tech. Another 48 are enrolled on the CMU campus. The Michigan Tech students attended the dedication of their program space, cheering and clapping. Several of their fellow students at CMU attended remotely through a direct video link between the two classrooms.

For the full story, see Michigan Tech News.