Graduate School Newsblog

Category: News

Interesting stories about and for our students.

World Water Day: Michigan Tech Helps Make a Difference

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World Water Day was recently observed at Michigan Tech with a variety of events including a poster session.  Several graduate students were honored with awards including:

  • Ellis Adams, Environmental Policy
  • Jessica Billings, Environmental Engineering Science
  • Aleta Daniels, Forest Ecology and Managements
  • Jonathan Ebel, Biological Sciences
  • Danielle Haak, Biological Sciences
  • Laura Kangas, Applied Ecology
  • Mariah Maggio, Environmental Policy

Read more about the events and see photographs of the award recipients online.

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Peace Corps Master’s International Volunteers Try Changing the World–One Step at a Time

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When graduate students Kristina Denison, Callie Bertsch and Michelle Cisz left the wooded hills of the Michigan Tech campus to serve as Peace Corps volunteers, they headed to countries that couldn’t be more diverse: Zambia, Bulgaria and Paraguay. But the lessons they learned in Michigan Tech’s Peace Corps Master’s International (PCMI) program were remarkably similar.

“I was going to Africa to change the world,” says Denison, who spent three years in Zambia, a landlocked little country in southern Africa, between Zimbabwe and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. “I learned that you have to count the small steps, to be satisfied with planting a seed.”

Bertsch expected to bring “some great innovation” to the village of Gurmen in Bulgaria. But she soon realized she was having her greatest impact in a more subjective arena: people’s attitudes. “We’re so glad you came to live with us because you’re not at all like we thought Americans were,” the Bulgarian villagers kept telling her.

Halfway around the world, in the small South American country of Paraguay, Cisz was busy readjusting her expectations too. “I had big goals, but I had to take small steps,” she says. “It was a very humbling experience.”

All three women are working toward their Master of Science in Forest Ecology and Management. They wanted to travel, to serve and to learn by doing–the Michigan Tech way–so they joined a program that lets graduate students combine course work with volunteer service overseas in the Peace Corps. With eight PCMI programs in four different colleges and schools, Michigan Tech has more active Peace Corps volunteers than any other university in the nation.

See Tech Today for the complete news story.

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Keweenaw Pride Hosts 2011 Pride Week

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Keweenaw Pride, the gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and ally (GLBTA) organization on campus, kicked off its annual Pride Week celebration last week. This week has been a work in progress for the organization since September, and it is a celebration of diversity, bringing together many people of many different origins and orientations in a week full of discussions and panels meant to open minds and break stereotypes.

The week began with a film about the controversial California Proposition 8 that was passed and put into effect in November 2008, and it was followed by a discussion panel that allowed attendees to share their opinions.

Following are the events for the week:

Tuesday, March 29
The annual event, “Guess the Straight Person,” will be at 7:30 p.m., in the DHH Ballroom. This event is meant to prove that not all stereotypes indicate a person’s sexual orientation. Come meet the panel and guess their orientation.

Wednesday, March 30
A presentation by activist JAC Stringer will be at 7:30 p.m., in the Memorial Union Ballroom. JAC is well known for his educational and entertaining presentations.

Thursday, March 31
Taboo Talk will be at 7 p.m., in the DHH Ballroom. Got a topic that is taboo in your community that you want to know more about? Come to this event.

Friday, April 1
The 11th Annual Michigan Tech Drag Show will be at 8 p.m., in the Rozsa Center. This year the show will feature the extraordinary talents of Joey Black, Tabitha Stevens, Cass Marie Domino, and, coming all the way from Las Vegas, DuWanna Moore. Seats fill up fast, so get there early.

For more information, see the Keweenaw Pride website, www.keweenawpride.org, or the Michigan Tech Calendar.

Published in Tech Today.

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Seventh Annual Student Research Forum Held

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Faculty, staff and students are invited to attend the Seventh Annual ESC/BRC Student Research Forum, held from 3 to 5 p.m., Friday, March 25, in the atrium of Noblet. Awards and pizza will follow.

Graduate students working in ecosystem science and biotechnology fields will present their research posters. New this year is a separate undergraduate division. To view the undergraduate abstracts, see undergraduate presentations . To view the graduate abstracts, see graduate presentations . The presentation order will be determined on the even- and odd-numbers in the links above. Even-numbered posters will present from 3 to 4 p.m., and odd-numbered will present from 4 to 5 p.m.

For more information, contact Jill Fisher, program manager for the ESC, at jhfisher@mtu.edu , or Mary Tassava, program manager for the BRC, at mltassav@mtu.edu

Published in Tech Today.

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Michigan Tech Graduate Engineering Programs Move up One Position in US News Rankings

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The College of Engineering has moved up in the US News & World Report annual ranking of graduate schools. Tech’s graduate engineering program is ranked 85th in the nation in 2012 rankings released online this week. Last year the graduate engineering program overall ranked 86th.

Four graduate engineering specialties were ranked in the top 50 nationwide for the second year in a row. Environmental engineering ranked 28th; materials Science and Engineering and mechanical engineering-engineering mechanics each ranked 48th; and civil engineering ranked 49th. Their rankings were the same last year.

“We are pleased to be recognized among the nation’s best graduate engineering programs, and to continue to receive special recognition for our programs in environmental, mechanical, materials and civil engineering,” said Dean Tim Schulz (COE).

Dean Jacqueline Huntoon (Graduate School) said she was glad to see the positive change in the ranking of Michigan Tech’s College of Engineering. “The initiatives that are currently underway are beginning to pay off and will hopefully lead to even higher rankings in the future,” she observed. “I am also happy to see that the rankings of four of our programs remain in the top 50 again this year. We face strong competition and are holding our own.”

Each year, US News ranks professional-school programs in business, education, engineering, law and medicine. The overall rankings of graduate schools are based on two types of data: the opinions from deans, program directors and senior faculty at more than 1,200 institutions, and statistical indicators of excellence, including percentage of faculty who are members of their most selective peer group (in the case of engineering schools, the National Academy of Engineering); the average Graduate Record Exam score; the ratio of PhD students to faculty; research expenditures; graduate enrollment; and PhDs granted.

The rankings of engineering specialties are based purely on assessments by department chairs in each specialty.

US News periodically ranks graduate programs in the other fields, including the sciences, social sciences, humanities, public affairs and public policy, fine arts, library and information science and health fields. Michigan Tech’s biological sciences, earth sciences and physics graduate programs were ranked last year. They were not evaluated this year.

The rankings can be accessed online at http://www.usnews.com/grad.

Published in Tech Today.

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Michigan Tech Hosts Statewide Equity Conference

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Michigan Tech will host faculty, staff and administrators from public and private colleges and universities, community colleges and precollege GEAR UP programs across Michigan at the annual King Chavez Parks Equity Within the Classroom Conference, March 27-29 in the Memorial Union Ballroom. The conference theme is “The Changing Face of America: Helping Michigan Compete.”

Featured speakers will include:

Monday, March 28

  • 8:45 to 9:45 a.m., Valerie Young, an expert on the “imposter syndrome” and author of a popular career newsletter called “Changing Course,” will present “How to Feel as Bright and Capable as Everyone Seems to Think You Are: Why Smart People Suffer from the Imposter Syndrome and What to Do About It.”
  • 1 to 2 p.m., Howard G. Adams is the founder and president of a Norfolk, Va.-based consulting firm that provides, leadership, career planning and diversity-related training programs for universities and other organizations.
  • 4:45 to 5:30 p.m., Maya Kobersy, assistant general counsel at the University of Michigan, will talk about the legal landscape for diversity in higher education.

Tuesday, March 29

  • 8:15 to 8:45 a.m., Kimberly Houston-Philpot, president of the Dow Corning Foundation and global community relations director for the Dow Corning Corporation, will present a corporate view of equity and diversity.
  • 10 to 11 a.m., Michael Boulus, executive director of the Presidents’ Council, State Universities of Michigan, will present “Moving Michigan Forward into the Knowledge Economy.”
  • 11:15 a.m. to 12:15 p.m., Sandra Begay-Campbell, who leads efforts at Sandia National Laboratories to assist Native American tribes with renewable energy development, will talk about how America can stay competitive in the STEM fields.

Workshops will also be offered on effective cross-cultural communication, recruiting minority students to graduate school, the Michigan College Access Network, getting a campus climate survey started, free web-based math programs, partnerships and 3M’s science outreach programs.

Registration is free, but space is limited. To register for one or more sessions, visit www.diversity.mtu.edu/equityconference.

Published in Tech Today.

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Graduate Student Government Sponsors Research Colloquium

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The Graduate Student Government recently sponsored their annual Graduate Research Colloquium, featuring presentations and posters.  The annual event was capped off by an awards banquet where students and faculty were honored.

Honorees included:

  • Outstanding Graduate Mentor Award presented to Dr. Chris Middlebrook
  • Exceptional Graduate Student Scholar presented to Hessam Ghassemi
  • Exceptional Graduate Student Leader presented to Kevin Cassell
  • Winners of the poster and presentation competition
  • Recent recipients of the Dean’s Award for Outstanding Scholarship
  • Recent recipients of the Graduate Student Service Award
  • Recent recipients of the Outstanding Graduate Student Teaching Award

Photographs of the posters and awardees can be found online.

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Michigan Tech Graduate Student Wins a Spot in International Satellite Imaging Competition

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There is trouble in paradise. What used to be home to half a million people making a living farming, raising livestock or fishing, the land is becoming inhospitable to vegetation. The flocks of migratory birds that used to fill the skies are rarely seen.

The region used to be called the Garden of Eden. It’s located in a region of Iraq known as Mesopotamia, a formerly fertile valley between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers that is becoming increasingly arid due to rising salinity of the soil. Now a graduate student at Michigan Tech, originally from Iraq himself, has developed a plan to use high-resolution satellite imagery to analyze the salinity of the ground and–hopefully–find ways to make the Garden of Eden fertile again.

DigitalGlobe, a company that manufactures a high-resolution, 8-band sensor for satellite imaging, found the project so innovative and promising that they have invited Sinan Abood, a PhD student in environmental engineering, to participate in a worldwide competition called the 8-Band Challenge. More than 500 proposals were submitted; Abood’s is one of 10 that were accepted. The competition, open to graduate students and postdoctoral research fellows, is slated to be judged this spring.

See Tech Today for more about Sinan’s research.

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Graduate Dean Review Process Begins

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A committee has been appointed to conduct the required review of Graduate School Dean Jacqueline Huntoon. Members include Carl Anderson, Nancy Auer, Andrew Burton, Gerard Caneba, Rob Greenhoe, Jarod Maggio, Paul Nelson, Bruce Seely, Andrew Storer, Greg Waite and Yoke Kin Yap. As part of the review process, the committee has prepared a survey for the main constituencies with whom the graduate dean works and requests input from all constituencies on campus.

The surveys are being run through SurveyMonkey for graduate students, faculty and administrators, as well as academic and professional staff. The committee asks that members from each group log in using the appropriate link listed below.

Faculty and staff access will be automatically restricted to computers with an IP address for Michigan Tech. This means that each computer access the survey only once.

Because several graduate students may need to use the same computer, accesses to their survey requires a password log-in. That password is being distributed to all Michigan Tech graduate students via a message from the graduate student government listserv.

Anyone encountering access issues should contact Bruce Seely at bseely@mtu.edu .

The survey will be open until 5 p.m., Monday, March 21. Responses will be confidential and no information about users or computers is being tracked. The committee thanks everyone for their participation and assistance.

Following are the surveys.

Link to the graduate student survey:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/Graddean_survey-grad_students .
Access is password protected

Link to the faculty and administration survey:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/Graddean_survey_faculty-administration .

Link to the staff survey:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/Graddean_survey-staff .

Published in Tech Today.

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Session on Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award

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Just a reminder that tomorrow, March 15th from 12:00 to 1:00 in Ballroom A-1 of the Memorial Union Building, is the session on the NIH Individual Graduate Fellowship Opportunity (Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award NRSA).

Dr. Tammy Donahue, who has served on the NIH study section for NRSA awards 5 times, and Dr. Jason Carter, who has active research support from NIH and a comprehensive understanding of the NRSA, will provide insight and explanation on the different NRSA funding mechanisms, an understanding of the role of institutes in funding decisions, and how to determine if NIH is a good fit for interested applicants or if NSF or others are better.  Specific proposal development tips will be given on the four main proposal components: candidate qualifications, training plan, mentor statement, and research plan.

Graduate students and faculty will gain an understanding of who should apply,  what is involved in preparing an application, specific tips for writing a successful NRSA, and an inside perspective on the criteria which reviewers use to evaluate applications.

Register for this event at:   http://www.admin.mtu.edu/research/vpr/registration/

Drinks and dessert will be provided.

Please contact Jodi Lehman (jglehman@mtu.edu) at 487-2875 with any questions.

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