Graduate School Newsblog

Professor Alex Mayer (CEE) has received the Lake Superior Binational Forum’s 2011 individual Environmental Stewardship Award for the US. The award honors “extraordinary achievements by ordinary people.”

The Lake Superior Binational Forum is composed of 12 Canadian and 12 American stakeholders, representing industrial, Tribal/First Nations, business, environmental, recreational, tourism, health, labor and academic interests.

The forum is recognizing Mayer, who heads the Center for Water and Society (CWS), for his efforts to restore the health of the Huron Creek watershed. That project was the first one taken on by the CWS.

Mayer worked with other faculty and graduate students, as well as public school teachers and their classes, home-schooled students and concerned citizens who formed the Huron Creek Club under Mayer’s guidance. They won funding to analyze, restore and monitor the creek and to develop a recreational and interpretive trail along it. They have also helped the City of Houghton and Portage Township develop storm water management ordinances.

“Alex’s unflagging efforts have raised awareness and galvanized local concern in the community, spawning many new community efforts and activities, and bringing very diverse partners together to enhance the environment and the aesthetics of the area, and attract residents to the area,” said Joan Chadde, education program coordinator.

Mayer called the award “quite an honor for all of the people who have been working to improve and protect Huron Creek.” He cited others closely involved, including Chadde, Associate Professor Hugh Gorman (SS), Assistant Professor Rod Chimner (SFRES), Scott MacInnes (Houghton city manager) and dozens of students, including former graduate student Linda (Kersten) Watson (MS in Environmental Engineering).

Published in Tech Today.

Last Saturday, people flocked to Chassell for the Strawberry Festival, but not everyone was there for the strawberries. “The Strawberry Festival was nice, but I really came here for the Agassiz,” said Carl Groeneveld, a resident of Houghton.

The Western UP Center for Science, Mathematics and Environmental Education hosted the public aboard the Agassiz, Michigan Tech’s research vessel. Participants learned how scientists study the Great Lakes and what factors contribute to a healthy lake. More than 100 adults and children signed up for the scientific excursions on Chassell Bay, so many that the organizers added two 45-minute trips.

Participants pitched in, dropping a small dredge to pick up a sediment sample from the lake bottom and collecting plankton using a fine-mesh net. The plankton were then scooped it into a jar and passed around for a sniff. (It smelled like fish.)

“It was interesting and a lot of fun,” said youngster Josh Eckloff, from Allouez. “I liked learning about science and, of course, the mud.”

The chief scientist, PhD graduate student Marcel Dijkstra (Environmental Engineering), addressed a variety of ecological concerns, such as stamp sand in Torch Lake, zebra mussels in the Great Lakes and unbalanced oxygen levels in the water.

See Tech Today for the complete news story.

Nelson Mandela, who led the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, is Taile (pronounced Dah-ee-lay) Leswifi’s hero. And the graduate student is certainly following his counsel. She is making the most of what she has: an aptitude for science and math, the problem-solving mind-set of an engineer, a deep commitment to improving life for the people of her native land, and a fierce dedication to communicating to coming generations of South African children that education is the key that can open the doors of their world.

Studying on Fulbright and PEO Sisterhood international scholarships, Leswifi is researching new ways to produce a sustainable, renewable, low-cost source of hydrogen energy from water and sunlight–energy that does not add to the pollution of the environment. She is also preparing herself to teach at Tshwane University of Technology back in South Africa. The university is holding a professorship for her, and she plans to work with a South African Fulbright group to take the promise of success through education to children in remote reaches of her country.

“I can’t change all of South Africa by myself,” she says, “but if I can change the mind-set of one person, then that person can change one other person, and that’s the way real change takes root.”

Leswifi knows about the challenge of living in a remote area. She grew up in one herself, the small town of Phalaborwa in northern South Africa. When she was small, apartheid was still the law of land. It deprived black South Africans of citizenship and gave them limited access to education, health care and other public services. Blacks could only get jobs considered undesirable by whites. Racial segregation was total and enforced by law.

For the rest of her amazing story, see Hope.

Published in Tech Today.