Category: Humanities

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has released its annual research spending report, and Michigan Tech has moved up in its rankings. Of 634 institutions that received research funding in 2014, Tech received $68.5 million, ranking 163rd overall nationwide. The University ranked 117th among public institutions. Mechanical engineering research at Tech received $13.1 million in research funding, ranking 19th in the nation. Atmospheric science—a new interdisciplinary category—received $3.1 million and ranked 34th.

14 Disciplines in Top 100

Fourteen disciplines at Michigan Tech ranked in the top 100 for research spending.  They are:

• atmospheric science (34^th)
• business and management (76^th)
• biomedical engineering (94^th)
• chemical engineering (90^th)
• civil engineering (89^th)
• electrical engineering (62^nd)
• environmental science (52^nd)
• humanities (94^th)
• mechanical engineering (19^th)
• metallurgical and materials engineering (58^th)
• mathematical sciences (88^th)
• oceanography (56^th)
• overall engineering (84^th)
• visual and performing arts (85^th).

“The research funding environment is increasingly competitive, and our improvement in overall ranking, as well as the increases in last year’s funding that will impact future rankings, all indicate the exceptional efforts of our faculty, staff, and students,” said David Reed, vice president for research.

NSF ranks research activities by discipline, not by organizational structure, Reed pointed out, so the spending in some of Tech’s institutes and centers, such as the Michigan Tech Research Institute, the Keweenaw Research Center and the Great Lakes Research Center, are included with the appropriate academic departments rather than reported separately.

(This article originally appeared in Tech Today.)

The final KIP Faculty and Graduate Student seminar is today, Friday Dec. 4, at 3pm in the ATDC Conference Room. Dr. Syd Johnson from the Department of Humanities will be presenting on the ethical and legal implications surrounding concussions and CTE (chronic traumatic en​cephalopathy). This is timely as there is a new movie out this month called “Concussion” (features Will Smith) which highlights Dr. Bennet Omalu’s discovery of CTE in NFL athletes and how his scientific findings were challenged by the NFL. Below are a few background links that might be of interest. This should be a great talk to wrap up the fall seminar series!

Head trauma: Key questions on CTE lack answers

HOUGHTON – Decades after the first research on concussions and chronic head trauma, there’s a widespread effort to mitigate their damage. But many of the most pressing questions still don’t have answers.

Read more at the Mining Gazette, by Garrett Neese (subscription required).

Every year the Elie Wiesel Foundation presents awards to college students for top essays on ethics. First prize is $5,000. This year’s prompt is: Articulate with clarity an ethical issue that you have encountered and analyze what it has taught you about ethics and yourself.

Note this topic is only a suggestion. Students may write about any topic they wish, as long as it explores the theme of ethics. Essays must be submitted by Dec. 14. Find out more here.

(This article first appeared in Tech Today.)

Laura Fiss (Hu) will present “Feelings About Reading” at 6:30 p.m. next Thursday at the Portage Lake District Library. The event kicks off the Great Michigan Read program by exploring some of the assumptions behind a community reading program: What does it mean to read as a community? In what communities do we read? And, how do programs such as these speak to the cultural value of reading? Fiss will invite discussion from the audience and provide a historical perspective. All programs at the PLDL are free and open to the public.

(This article originally appeared in Tech Today.)

Come listen to music in the Humanities Digital Media Zone (120C Walker) from 12:30 to 2 p.m. today. This month we present Levi Schubert from 12:30 to 1 p.m. and Savanna Curtis and Mike Lemmier from 1 to 2 p.m.

L. Syd Johnson (HU) published “Is Football Safe for Brains?” on The Neuroethics Blog.

HOUGHTON, MARQUETTE — Just a few weeks before renewed violence between Palestinians and Israelis hit the news this month, audiences at Michigan Tech and Northern Michigan universities heard stories about this long conflict from the perspective of an Israeli-American peace activist and author, Miko Peled, whose dream is not the often cited “two-state solution” but a more optimistic solution that would accept Palestine/Israel as one country — cured of its current apartheid-like colonial occupation.

At the invitation of Miguel Levy, Michigan Tech professor of physics and materials science and engineering, Peled visited Marquette and Houghton on Sept. 16 and 17, respectively, and gave two presentations open to university and community audiences. The events were sponsored by Michigan Tech’s Center for Diversity and Inclusion and departments of Humanities, Social Sciences and Physics; the Michigan Tech Indigenous Issues Discussion Group; and Northern Michigan University’s Center for Native American Studies.

Read more at Keweenaw Now, by Michele Bourdieu.

The Department of Humanities’ French Program, in collaboration with the University of Chicago, present a webinar called “Inequality and Capital in the 21st Century” with Thomas Picketty, Friday, November 6 at 7-8:30 pm in Walker 120A.

Picketty is a French economist and professor at the Paris School of Economics whose work focuses on wealth and income inequality. He is the author of the best-selling book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Focusing on wealth concentration and distribution over the past 250 years, he argues that the rate of capital return in developed countries is persistently greater than the rate of economic growth, and that this will cause wealth inequality to increase in the future. Picketty considers this to be a problem, and in order to address it, he proposes redistribution through a progressive global tax on wealth.

This program is possible thanks to our Marianne Midwest partners: the Cultural Service of the Consulate General of France in Chicago, the France-Chicago Center and the French Club of the University of Chicago. The Marianne Midwest’s series Live broadcast debates on contemporary topics bring together American and French points of view to a network of Midwest partners.

L. Syd Johnson (HU) published a paper, “Pigs as Spare (Human) Parts” in Impact Ethics.

(This article originally appeared in Tech Today.)