It’s become a popular and successful strategy. Graduate School staff venture to Thailand to recruit, and they get a lot of help from alumni over there.
Jacque Smith, director of graduate enrollment services, and Kristi Isaacson, assistant director of graduate enrollment services, have just returned from another trip, replete with 30-hour airplane rides both ways.
While there, they attended the Royal Thai Scholar event, which featured Thailand’s best and brightest, according to Smith.
Michigan Tech alumnus Otha Thornton ’01, president of the National PTA, has been named one of Ebony magazine’s Power 100, the country’s African American leaders. See online.
RTC graduate and retired Army lieutenant colonel Otha Thornton ’01 was featured during the NBC Evening News Oct. 8 with Brian Williams because of his new role as president of the National PTA. Thornton, who was on Michigan Tech’s ROTC faculty, is the first African American man to serve in that capacity.
Published in Tech Today.
Aboard a spacecraft orbiting the moon is a little bit of Brandon Dilworth.
His body is comfortably here on Earth. But for the last several years, Dilworth has poured all his professional skill and passion into a game-changing scientific project that is now hitching a ride on the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer. Launched by NASA Sept. 6. LADEE (dubbed “laddie”) left its Earth orbit Oct. 2 and entered a lunar orbit Oct. 6., Soon, the technical project that Dilworth has been working on at MIT Lincoln Laboratory for the last four years will spring into action.
“I’ve supported the Lunar Laser Communication Demonstration since my first day at Lincoln,” he said. “I got my PhD in August 2009, drove out to Massachusetts, and started work the next Monday.”
Since Dilworth earned his master’s and doctorate in mechanical engineering at Michigan Tech, he has been working on equipment that will revolutionize space communication.
The full release is posted on the Michigan Tech news site.
Published in Tech Today.
Postdoctoral Associate Jaclyn Johnson (APSRC/MEEM) recently received the 2013 SAE Excellence in Oral Presentation award for “Investigation of Key Mechanism for Liquid Length Fluctuations in Transient Vaporizing Diesel Sprays Using Experimental Results and CFD Modeling,” which she presented at the SAE World Congress in April 2013.
Published in Tech Today.
The School of Forest Resources and Environmental Science has honored four SFRES alumni. Francisca (Panchita) Paulete ’06 and Aaron M. Everett ’01 were named 2013 Outstanding Young Alumni. David Myrold ’77 received the School’s 2013 Outstanding Alumnus Award, and Jacob Hayrynen ’81 was inducted into the SFRES Honor Academy.
Paulete is a graduate of the Peace Corps Master’s International program at Michigan Tech. She served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Gambia, West Africa, from 2003 to 2005. She now is district planning and environmental coordinator for the Eugene District of the Bureau of Land Management in Oregon.
Read more about the alumni awards in Tech Today.
Peace Corps Master’s International alumna Kristina Owens, who has joined the Peace Corps National Association board, was interviewed in the Peace Corps Connect newsletter. See online.
Michigan Tech’s latest I-Corps team placed first among 21 teams in New York last week, after a final presentation of their market analyses for new technologies. The team was led by Associate Professor Adrienne Minerick (CE), with post-doc Kaela Leonard serving as entrepreneurial lead and team mentor Mary Raber, associate director of the Institute for Leadership and Innovation.
A National Science Foundation program, I-Corps stands for Innovation Corps. Its goal is to help researchers learn how to do customer and market analysis, to enable them to fine-tune their technologies to meet an actual market need.
The technology they are looking to develop is a rapid, portable blood-typing device.
Minerick’s team is the third one from Michigan Tech chosen to participate in the I-Corps program.
Published in Tech Today
Christy Oslund, coordinator of Student Disability Services, wrote the chapter, “Building a Professional Ethos on LinkedIn,” which is included in the text, “Online Credibility and Digital Ethos: Evaluating Computer-Mediated Communication,” (2012, IGI Global). This collection was edited by Michigan Tech Humanities alumni Moe Folk ’09 and Shawn Apostle ’11.
Rod Carter credits his graduate education at Michigan Tech for the strong problem-solving skills it takes to succeed at his job: high-level materials research for Boeing. A research and technology engineer, Carter was the first African American to earn a PhD in Chemical Engineering from Michigan Tech, in 2008.
During an all-day seminar at Michigan Tech on Saturday, Sept. 15, Carter will talk about the doors that graduate education opened for him. Called the GEM GRAD Lab, the meeting addresses a critical shortfall in US engineering and scientific talent, focusing specifically on recruiting more underrepresented students into graduate programs. GRAD stands for Getting Ready for Advanced Degrees.
“Students will leave the GRAD event with a definite plan on how to apply and gain funding, and hear about real-life research and internship experiences,” says Marcus Huggans, senior director of external relations for the National Consortium for Graduate degrees for Minorities in Engineering and Science, Inc., sponsor of the program. “GEM appreciates Michigan Tech’s Graduate School leadership to bring this workshop to students in the Upper Peninsula.”
Jacque Smith, Michigan Tech Graduate School director of marketing, explains: “It’s all part of an even larger goal of creating a pipeline for this talent to move on to corporations and organizations after receiving their graduate degrees.”
A major component of GEM is fellowships for Master of Science in engineering students or PhD students in engineering or science. The GEM fellowships include full tuition, summer internships and stipends.
His GEM fellowship has made all the difference to Sterling Prince, a doctoral candidate in electrical engineering. “The GEM Fellowship has been a blessing to my life,” says Prince. “It has strengthened my decision and given me confidence to achieve a doctorate in electrical engineering. It has provided the financial support I needed for my graduate program, allowing me to dedicate my time to my studies rather than working. The program has also provided me with the opportunity to work at a national laboratory, an experience that allowed me to see that I enjoy the area of scientific research and want to pursue it in my future.”
In addition to Carter, Prince and two other current Michigan Tech GEM fellows and PhD candidates–James Alexander and Tayloria Adams–will speak at Saturday’s seminar. Other speakers include Huggans; Patty Lopez, a component design engineer at Intel; and Howard G. Adams, founder and president of H. G. Adams and Associates, a consulting and training firm. Michigan Tech’s Associate Provost for Graduate Education Jackie Huntoon and Jodi Lehman, coordinator of proposal and fellowship development for sponsored program enhancement, will also speak.
More than 100 of the nation’s top universities, many Fortune 500 companies, and numerous national laboratories support GEM, which began in 1976. Since then, more than 3,000 GEM Fellows have gone on to successful careers. Michigan Tech has participated in GEM since the 1990s.
Registration for the free event starts at 9:30 a.m. Saturday at the Great Lakes Research Center.
