Author: David Hemmer

Greetings from the College of Sciences and Arts at Michigan Tech!

It is cold and rainy as classes start today, but the students’ excitement is palpable as we begin a new academic year. This is always my favorite time to be on campus, the leaves are starting to change, the freshmen are meeting new friends, the raucous sounds of the Pep Band can be heard in the distance, and no one is behind on homework yet! This semester I am teaching my first class here at Tech, with 42 students in Math 3310- Abstract Algebra. It was great to get back in the classroom after two years away, and great to have a real chalkboard!

The big news on campus is the launch of our new College of Computing. The computer science department has left CSA to join the new College, leaving us with 9 academic departments plus Air Force and Army ROTC. The “new” College of Sciences and Arts remains very strong, with our freshmen class up 17% from last year! For the first time ever, the freshmen class in CSA will be majority (52%) female! We not only welcome new students but new faculty as well, with eight new tenure-track faculty and several more teaching faculty joining the College. I look forward to sharing with you their accomplishments as the year goes by.

In our Biological Sciences Department, we are thrilled to welcome Dr. Trista Vick-Majors. Dr. Majors is best known for her work discovering microorganisms under the Antarctic ice sheet. Other projects have focused on boreal aquatic environments and alpine lakes. Her research should be a great fit for the Copper Country. Dr. Elena Giusarma joins our Physics Department as an assistant professor this Fall. She adds to our already strong astrophysics group. She describes part of her work as “building a convolutional neural network to understand the effect of massive neutrinos in the Universe.” Wow!

Our ROTC programs are thriving, with 70 cadets this Fall in Army and more than 100 in Air Force (up from 30 just a few years ago)!  I continue to enjoy meeting our successful alums. Last month I snuck in a quick trip to the Pacific Northwest, hosting alumni events in Seattle and Portland and meeting with more than a dozen of our successful alumni working at Nike, Intel, Boeing, etc….

Planning continues for our new H-STEM building. This beautiful laboratory building will be near the current Chemistry building, which will also be renovated to host our departments of Chemistry, Chemical Engineering, Kinesiology and Integrative Physiology, and Biomedical Engineering. Groundbreaking should be in fall 2020. The architects have made several visits to campus, and are meeting with researchers to design to meet our needs.

Critical to everything we do are our alumni and friend donors. All your donations to our departments, scholarships, and the general fund are vitally important to our success. For those interested in supporting the greatest needs of the College, we have established a “Dean’s Priority Fund”. With state support representing only about 16% of MTU’s budget, your gifts make a huge difference in the lives of our students and faculty every day. Thank you!  If you are ever back in town I hope you will stop by, say hello, and share with me your MTU story. Please do not hesitate to email me any time at djhemmer@mtu.edu to share your MTU experience or make suggestions.

Greetings from the College of Sciences and Arts at Michigan Tech!

I completed my first academic year as Dean of Sciences and Arts at our graduation May 4, when more than 1000 graduates walked across the stage of a packed MacInnes Ice Arena on a beautiful sunny day. On May 3 our Board approved the new College of Computing, which goes live on July 1. While I am sad to see our wonderful Computer Science Department leave CSA, the new College will position Michigan Tech for growth and success in an era where computing and data science dominate so many aspects of our lives.

Things are much quieter on campus now, which leaves time to reflect on the past year and plan for an exciting year ahead. We will have at least eight new tenure-track faculty joining our College in the fall, with our Humanities chair search and biology search still underway. We are excited to welcome Adam Meckler as our new Jazz director, replacing the legendary Mike Irish. You can listen to his smooth sounds at www.adammeckler.com.

Freshmen deposits in the college are up 11% from last year, thanks in part to our exciting new Sustainability Science and Society degree. Thanks to all our alumni and friends who help with recruiting, and feel free to contact me if you’d be willing to help in your area.

Our student, Alyssa Smith, exercise science major, was recognized as the top undergraduate kinesiology student in the nation! Over in biology our superstar sophomore, Tessa Steenwinkel, won a prestigious Goldwater fellowship. Tessa has been working in the lab of Professor Thomas Werner since her first day on campus! Many of our undergraduate research opportunities on campus, both during the year and over the summer, are supported by alumni donations. Our faculty are busy too. Professors Roman Sidortsov and Tim Scarlett received national media attention for their grant to study the feasibility of using abandoned mines for hydroelectric pumped storage, essentially turning the mine into a giant battery!

I departed late on Easter for a wonderful week long trip along Interstate 10 from Pensacola to Mobile, Houston and Phoenix meeting many of our successful and generous alumni.

Planning is underway for our new H-STEM building. This beautiful laboratory building will be near the current Chemistry building, which will also be renovated to host our departments of Chemistry, Chemical Engineering, Kinesiology and Integrative Physiology, and Biomedical Engineering. Groundbreaking should be in fall 2020.

Critical to everything we do are our alumni and friend donors. All your donations to our departments, scholarships, and the general fund are vitally important to our success. For those interested in supporting the greatest needs of the College, we have established a “Dean’s Priority Fund”.

With state support representing only about 16% of MTU’s budget, your gifts make a huge difference in the lives of our students and faculty every day. Thank you!  If you are ever back in town I hope you will stop by, say hello, and share with me your MTU story. Please do not hesitate to email me any time at djhemmer@mtu.edu to share your MTU experience or make suggestions.

Greetings from the College of Sciences and Arts at Michigan Tech!

Winter has been unrelenting! When I arrived last July I was told that Tech “never closes!” We have been shut down for three days this semester. A recent blizzard dumped almost two feet of snow and 68 mph winds were recorded at the airport; it took two full days to get the snow drifts cleared off the road. My kids have not had a full week of school since mid-December, I believe they are at 9 snow days for the year. Mont Ripley has seen 255” of snow so far! I and my two oldest kids signed up for beginning ski lessons and have been enjoying our newest hobby.

Meanwhile, this has been an extremely busy time in the dean’s office. Twenty of our faculty in the College were up for either tenure or promotion to full professor. Reading their dossiers, I was blown away by the teaching excellence and scholarly success of my colleagues, many with worldwide reputations.

Hiring season is well underway. Faculty candidates are visiting on an almost daily basis (when their flights manage to arrive…). We are doing national searches for chairs of three departments: Chemistry, Humanities and Kinesiology and Integrative Physiology. Six other departments are running regular faculty searches. Hiring, retaining and promoting outstanding faculty is among my most important jobs as dean.

The Board of Trustees was in town last week, and I was proud that our own Professor Richelle Winkler, from Social Sciences, was selected to present to them on her community based solar project in L’Anse and Baraga. I enjoyed telling board chair Brenda Ryan about the many exciting happenings in our college, and taking her through the recently opened gallery show “Salon!” in the Rosza Center. Professor Lisa Gordillo curated the show, which features art and poetry from around the world, including some from several of our own faculty members. Up the hill our Kinesiology department awarded its first PhD. Matthew Kilgas defended his dissertation “Acute and Chronic Responses to Exercise with Blood Flow Restriction.” He is now a tenure-track faculty member at Northern Michigan.

As May 1 rapidly approaches all our departments are hard at work on initiatives to increase our freshman class next year. Gone are the days of calling students (they don’t answer their phones!) Instead we set up “texting events” where prospective students can chat with our current faculty and students in their preferred mode of communication!

Critical to all of this is our alumni and friend donors. All your donations to our departments, scholarships, and the general fund are vitally important to our success. For those interested in supporting the greatest needs of the College, we have established a “Dean’s Priority Fund”.

With state support representing only about 16% of Michigan Tech’s budget, alumni gifts make a huge difference in the lives of our students and faculty every day and we thank you!  If you are ever back in town I hope you will stop by, say hello, and share with me your MTU story. Please do not hesitate to email me any time at djhemmer@mtu.edu to share your MTU experience or make suggestions.

Best wishes,

David Hemmer

Dean- College of Sciences and Arts

This will be my inaugural communication as the new Dean of the College of Sciences and Arts. I join Michigan Technological University after eleven years in the mathematics department at the University at Buffalo, SUNY; the last six as department chair. I am joined by my wife of 18 years, Ginny, and our children Meghan (13), Benjamin (9), and Adam (7).

I marveled from afar in June at the resiliency of the Copper Country residents pulling together to recover from the disastrous Father’s Day flood. We were fortunate that our new house, high up on Agate Hill, escaped unscathed. Our new friends and neighbors have been so very welcoming to our family.

This is an exhilarating time to arrive at Michigan Tech. We have a new president and four of the five colleges/schools have new deans. Everyone is full of ideas on how to maintain and build on the great momentum the departing leaders built.  Four of our 10 departments will be searching for new chairs this year.

I have been touring the CSA departments and am so impressed by the commitment of our faculty to excellence in both teaching and scholarship. I visited our beautifully renovated chemistry teaching labs. I hope we will secure the funds to renovate the remaining labs. I toured the sleep center where Professor Jason Carter of our Kinesiology and Integrative Physiology department is supported by Michigan Tech’s only NIH R01 grant, studying “Alcohol and Neurovascular Control in Humans”.

I attended a beautiful performance of the opera “Carmen” in front of a packed house at the Rosza center. Visual and Performing Arts Chair Jared Anderson directed the chorus and his colleague Joel Neves conducted the orchestra.

I want to thank outgoing Dean Bruce Seely for his dedicated 10 years of service and to wish him all the best in retirement. Bruce has been extremely generous sharing with me his time and wisdom, both before I arrived and since I started.