Month: October 2014

The Van Pelt and Opie Library invites faculty and graduate students to attend a module consisting of three, one-hour sequential workshops exploring strategies for incorporating information literacy skills into instruction. Using the framework of the Michigan Tech information literacy rubric for undergraduate students (learning goal #6), we will explore the library’s information resources, digital tools for keeping current in a field of study, and assignment elements that allow students to practice information literacy skills. Participants will also have the option to workshop an assignment from their own teaching to incorporate information literacy.

The workshop sessions are scheduled for Thursday Nov. 6, 13 and 20 from 1 p.m., to 2 p.m., in Library 243. Please register here, and if you have any questions contact instrlib@mtu.edu.

Faculty and graduate students are welcome to register only for this workshop module or or to participate as part of the Center for Teaching and Learning’s UTL Course Design program.

Please join us for visiting scholar Mark Worrall at 4:00 pm on Monday, November 10 in the East Reading Room of the Van Pelt and Opie Library on the Michigan Technological University campus. This event is free of charge and open to the public. Refreshments will be served.

In this presentation, Worrall will explore the history of the section of the Mineral Range Railroad that extended from Keweenaw Bay, through Mass City, to Riddle Junction. Many aspects of the line’s tenure will be examined, from its construction at the beginning of the twentieth century to its final abandonment in the 1930s. Major topics include the railroad’s connection to local industries, driving factors behind the line’s installation, complications faced during construction of the branch, passenger train operations and the influence that local Finnish culture had on the railroad.

Mark Worrall is a railroad historian whose research interests include the Duluth South Shore & Atlantic, historic interactions between Michigan’s railroads and the mining industry, Michigan rail wrecks and disasters, and late nineteenth and early twentieth century imagery of Michigan railroads. He is the current president of the Michigan Railroad History Conference and chaired the last two conferences. Mark’s research goals are to promote awareness and interest in Michigan’s rich railroad history.

Worrall’s research visit and presentation are supported by a travel grant from the Friends of the Van Pelt Library. Since 1988, the Michigan Technological University Archives Travel Grant program has helped scholars advance their research by supporting travel to the manuscript collections at the Archives.

For more information, feel free to call the Michigan Tech Archives at 906-487-2505, email at copper@mtu.edu, or visit on the web athttp://www.lib.mtu.edu/mtuarchives/.

Please join us for visiting scholar Philip Hartmeyer at 4:00 pm on Thursday, November 6 in the East Reading Room of the Van Pelt and Opie Library on the Michigan Technological University campus. This event is free of charge and open to the public. Refreshments will be served.

In this presentation, Hartmeyer will examine the passenger/package freighter Pewabic and speak to the multiple roles it played in the development of the Keweenaw and its copper industry. The hybrid steamer was a popular vessel to bring downstate tourists to the Copper Country and it also filled its hold with native copper on return trips, an important component of the Detroit mineral market. Pewabic embodies the mid-nineteenth century Great Lakes economic and cultural zeitgeist, having tapped into two profitable enterprises. Historical sources and underwater archaeological data will be used to unearth the identities of Pewabic afloat as well as the new identities it has adopted as an archaeological site, mass grave site, and salvage training ground.

Philip Hartmeyer is a maritime archaeologist currently working at the Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary in Alpena, Michigan. Originally from San Francisco, California, Hartmeyer’s passion for maritime heritage has taken him all over the world to conduct surveys and excavations of shipwrecks. He received his masters in maritime archaeology from East Carolina University, where he wrote his thesis on the passenger/package propeller Pewabic, a middle 19th-century vessel that was instrumental to the copper industry and the settlement of the Keweenaw Peninsula.

Hartmeyer’s research visit and presentation are supported by a travel grant from the Friends of the Van Pelt Library. Since 1988, the Michigan Technological University Archives Travel Grant program has helped scholars advance their research by supporting travel to the manuscript collections at the Archives.

For more information, feel free to call the Michigan Tech Archives at 906-487-2505, email at copper@mtu.edu, or visit on the web at http://www.lib.mtu.edu/mtuarchives/.

Please join us for a presentation by visiting scholar Camden Burd at 4:00 pm on Tuesday, October 14 in the East Reading Room of the Van Pelt and Opie Library on the Michigan Technological University campus. This event is free of charge and open to the public. Refreshments will be served.

In this presentation, Burd will address an environmental approach to the history of natural resource extraction in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Where once the Upper Peninsula was a booming industrial region, it is now a draw for vacationers to experience its sprawling forests and apparent wilderness. Between this era of environmental degradation and natural appreciation, there were disputes over the future of the U.P.’s environments. In the midst of the environmental movement of the 1960s and 1970s many voices attempted to understand, define, and direct how the Upper Peninsula would be perceived by future generations. This talk examines the different voices of the environmental movement and show the complexities behind today’s UP environmental identity.

Camden Burd is a PhD student at the University of Rochester where he studies American Environmental History. He earned his MA in History from Central Michigan University and BA of History from the University of Utah. He has received numerous travel funds from Central Michigan University and was the recipient of the Grace H. Magnaghi Visiting Research Grant at Northern Michigan University to study the environmental perceptions of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Originally from Grand Rapids, Michigan he is especially interested in the environments of the Great Lakes Region and the connection between people and place.

Burd’s research visit and presentation are supported by a travel grant from the Friends of the Van Pelt Library. Since 1988, the Michigan Technological University Archives Travel Grant program has helped scholars advance their research by supporting travel to the manuscript collections at the Archives.

For more information, feel free to call the Michigan Tech Archives at 906-487-2505, email at copper@mtu.edu, or visit on the web athttp://www.lib.mtu.edu/mtuarchives/.