The Graduate School is pleased to announce new theses and dissertations are now available in the J.R. van Pelt and Opie Library from the following programs:
Professor Emeritus Robert Baillod (CEE) worked alongside his son Brendon during the filming of an episode of the “Explorer” series, “Ghost Ships of the Great Lakes,” which will run Saturday, May 14, from 7 to 8 p.m. on the National Geographic channel.
The teaser reads: “The discovery of a human skull in the depths of Lake Superior begins a story that will take historian and author Brendon Baillod across two Great Lakes and a century of history. It takes him and a team of elite technical divers more than 20 miles off Milwaukee, where they discover the wreck of one of Lake Michigan’s lost queens. It then takes them to the remote waters of Lake Superior where they risk their lives to determine the identity of yet another lost ship. And it takes us into the forgotten life of a brave and stubborn woman who lived, and died, on these wild waters. Whether her presence cursed these lost ships, or a more earthly explanation can be found, the Great Lakes reputation as a graveyard for mariners stands firm.”
Published in Tech Today.
Michigan Tech’s University Transportation Center for Materials in Sustainable Transportation Infrastructure (UTC‐MiSTI) and the Center for Technology and Training (CTT) traveled to Lansing last week to participate in Michigan’s Construction Career Days, a workforce development event.
This is the fourth year Michigan’s transportation and construction industry has hosted the event which provides educational and career information. Staff from the CTT served as on-site volunteers providing logistical assistance.
Michigan Tech’s UTC‐MiSTI provides funding to offset the transportation costs for the forty-plus schools bringing more than 2,400 middle and high school students to the event.
Undergraduates, graduate students and staff from the UTC‐MiSTI, the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, the Transportation Institute’s Rail Transportation Program and Admissions interacted with students, teachers and counselors at the University’s informational exhibit.
Photos from this year’s event can be viewed at MiSTI .
Published in Tech Today
Today and Tuesday, April 18-19, Professor Martin Auer (CEE) and his graduate students will bring hands-on science investigations about Lake Superior to CLK Elementary School students in Calumet. Each grade level will spend 55 minutes with the scientists, learning about Lake Superior.
This special event is part of CLK’s Lake Superior Stewardship Initiative Heritage Garden project and the school’s monthlong celebration of Earth Month, “3LK at CLK: Living, Learning and Loving the Keweenaw.”
The Lake Superior Stewardship Initiative connects schools and communities in the stewardship of Lake Superior and its watershed. The initiative is one of eight hubs statewide that are part of the Great Lakes Stewardship Initiative, with support from the Great Lakes Fishery Trust and the Wege Foundation.
The Auer team’s activities will include
Auer’s research focuses on modeling of Great Lakes and inland waters and field monitoring and laboratory studies related to water quality modeling and management. He is familiar to many in the Keweenaw for his work with the Agassiz, which has become Tech’s floating ambassador, bringing people to the water and the water to people in the Lake Superior basin. Each year, Auer and colleagues host hundreds of K-12 students aboard the R/V Agassiz, where they learn how the Great Lakes are studied by scientists.
Published in Tech Today
The National Science Foundation has selected three Michigan Tech students and a recent graduate to receive highly competitive awards that support their research and graduate study. Another student, now at Northern Michigan University, will use his award to pursue an advanced degree at Michigan Tech.
Master’s student Chris DeDene and recent graduate David Schaeffer have received NSF Graduate Research Fellowships. DeDene will pursue a PhD in Civil Engineering at Michigan Tech. Schaeffer will continue work on his PhD in Psychology at the University of Georgia.
Fellowship recipient Erich Petushek is completing his master’s at Northern Michigan University and will be coming to Tech, where he expects to pursue a doctorate degree in Applied Cognitive Science and Human Factors focusing on Biomechanics.
Graduate Research Fellowships support students in NSF-supported STEM disciplines who are pursuing research-based degrees. Each fellow receives a three-year annual stipend of $30,000, a $10,500 cost-of-education allowance and access to the TeraGrid supercomputer network. The NSF selected 2,000 fellows from more than 12,000 applicants.
An additional 2,064 applicants received honorable mentions. Among them are Tech students Eric Peterson, a physics PhD student; Eric Wesseldyke, an environmental engineering PhD student; mechanical engineering student Andrew Tulgestke; and Jonathan Ebel, a master’s student in biological sciences. Anieri Morales of the University of Puerto Rico, who plans to pursue a graduate degree at Michigan Tech, also received an honorable mention.
Tech students Erin Thomas and John Lyons, who are earning PhD degrees in mathematical sciences and geophysics, respectively, were selected to participate in NSF’s East Asia and Pacific Summer Institutes. The institutes place US graduate students in research labs throughout East Asia and the Pacific, to help students initiate scientific relationships that will lead to future international collaborations. The awards include airfare, lodging, living expenses and a $5,000 stipend.
Thomas will be conduct research in Beijing, while Lyons will travel to Japan.
To learn more about federal funding opportunities for graduate students, attend an information session at 6 p.m., Wednesday, April 20, in Fisher 131. Faculty, advisors, undergraduates and graduate students are encouraged to attend. For more information, contact Jodi Lehman at 487-2875 or at jglehman@mtu.edu.
Published in Tech Today.
Faculty and students have received awards totaling $72,500 through the Michigan Space Grant Consortium (MSGC), sponsored by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Michigan Tech submitted 30 proposals, 16 of which received funding. See the Tech Today posting for all awardees.
Graduate students receiving $5,000 fellowships are:
The Graduate School is pleased to announce new theses and dissertations are now available in the J.R. van Pelt and Opie Library from the following programs:
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.
Deadline: 4/01/2011
The National Water Research Institute (NWRI) is pleased to offer the following fellowships to graduate students (Masters and Ph.D.) at U.S. universities conducting research in the areas of water resources, treatment, and policy:
* NWRI Fellowships (up to $5,000 a year for 1-2 years). Research must pertain to NWRI’s mission, which is to create new sources of water through research and technology and to protect the freshwater and marine environments.
* Ronald B. Linsky Fellowship for Outstanding Water Research (one fellowship of $10,000 a year for 2 years). Applicants must write an additional 1-page essay detailing their technical capabilities, interest in other fields beside the one they are studying, career goals, and where they hope to take their technical expertise and vision in the future.
* NWRI-AMTA Fellowships for Membrane Technology (two fellowships of $10,000 a year for 2 years). Research must pertain to the advancement of membrane technologies in the water, wastewater, or water reuse industries. Funding is provided by the American Membrane Technology Association (AMTA).
Several annual fellowship opportunities for students interested in “water” related research or service.
