Tag: Notes from the Dean

Most academics expect to move and change universities on occasion, as part of the normal pattern of life.  But some of us – including yours truly – find a place we want to be and stay awhile. On May 9, Michigan Tech recognized those staff and faculty who had 25, 30, 35, and 40 years of service.  Several people from the college were on that list, and I want to recognize them reaching these important milestones.  A university pays attention to teaching and learning and to research — two labor-intensive activities.  In other words, we cannot be successful without the dedicated efforts of the people who lead those efforts in education and knowledge generation. Each of the people on this list make a difference in all they do, and we are most thankful for it.  Even more importantly, the students depend up on them.  To be excellent for a long time is a difficult thing to do, but this group has done exactly that.

25 years:  Michael Irish (VPA), John Jaszczak (PHY), Donald Kreher (MA), Sylvia Matthews (CSA), Ravindra Pandey (PHY),  Lorri Reilly (CH), Kelley Smith (CH), Allan Struthers (MA), Vladimir Tonchev (MA)

35 years: Andrea Lappi (PHY) Karen Salo (CSA)

Both of the 35-year recipients are pivotal staff for CSA. Andy manages the day-to-day tasks as department coordinator in Physics, while Karen is the heart and sole of administration in the college. But everyone here contributes to making the college work.  I want to congratulate everyone for their contributions and for their efforts – and for making it to 25 or 35 years! Thanks to each and every person!

FYI – for truth in advertising purposes, that’s me in the picture with Karen Salo – as I now have 30 years of service to Michigan Tech. The other picture shows Ravi Pandey and Andy Lappi from Physics.

Universities have occasionally struggled in recent decades to achieve an appropriate balance between our two core responsibilities: teaching and research. Not surprisingly, this challenge has surfaced at Michigan Tech as we have worked to balance Tech’s traditional strength as an undergraduate teaching institution with the more recent strategic emphasis upon graduate education and research supported by external funding. But in the College of Sciences and Arts, our commitment to teaching and learning has never weakened and remains a crucial yardstick for measuring how well the college meets its mission.

Indeed the college and its faculty take pride in excellence in the classroom.  A significant part of CSA’s mission is delivering core foundational courses in calculus and statistics, physics, chemistry, composition and communication, global issues and other courses in the general education program to EVERY student in every major. For example, the Department of Mathematical Sciences instructs more than 7,000 students in its courses each year, at a time when the university enrollment is just over 7,000. Yet the math faculty also maintain a high level of scholarship and each authors an average of 2 research articles per year. That type of balance is found in every department, for the college’s faculty must be good teachers as well as good scholars. And many are excellent!

I consistently take pride in the efforts of our best teachers, and this is the time of year when those individuals are recognized. This spring, I highlighted the efforts of five college faculty for their exemplary teaching approaches and goals in the Dean’s Teaching Showcase. The showcase is a weekly event inaugurated by the Director of the Jackson Center for Teaching and Learning, with each dean selecting exemplary faculty whose instructional efforts are less likely, because of the topic or the course, to achieve recognition through the regular teaching awards.

The showcase continues the rich and valuable dialogue that has taken place among the faculty over the past 15 years or more about teaching and student learning. You can read more about the showcase nominees from CSA in Tech Today: Elizabeth Reed (MA); Raymond Shaw (PHY); Loredana Valenzano (CH); Donald LeFreniere (SS); and Steven Elmer (KIP); each brings something special to our students and is well deserving of this recognition.

As the Showcase unfolded this spring, the process of nominating the faculty to be inducted into Tech’s Academy for Teaching Excellence proceeded on its own pathway, culminating in a dinner on April 4 to honor the new inductees into the Academy as well as others nominated for a teaching award more than once.  This year the college was again well represented: 2 individuals were nominated in the Lecturer/Assistant Professor Category, and another faculty member in the associate and professor category.  The first nominee was Senior Lecturer Beth Reed from Math, who was inducted  into the Academy in 2012 and has since been nominated several times for the outstanding teacher award.  Beth’s repeated nominations reflect her intense dedication to help students succeed in her statistics classes.

A first-time nominee to the Academy is Brigitte Morin from Biological Sciences, who is an integral part of the Medical Laboratory Sciences (MLS) program.  Her nomination highlighted the amazing enthusiasm she brings to teaching and learning.  A graduate of our MLS program, she returned to Tech several years ago and has made an an exceptional contribution from day one.  She mentioned herself how thrilled she was to be back here with the people whose teaching had made such a difference to her.  Now she is doing the same for another generation of Tech students! But the highlight of the evening may have been the comments from MC Friedrich in Visual and Performing Arts, nominated (again!) in the professor category.  MC chose to read a few comments from students she found posted on RatemyProfessor.com. They seemed to have a different idea about excellent teaching.

“The class was a little too slow for me but others needed the time.”

“Stop expecting us to remember and do what we learned earlier in the class.”

“In the future add in some more evil twists to the projects so we can brag to the following classes that we did not have to do that.”

“The projects are hard.  Make them simpler.”

“And I wish you wouldn’t give us a chance to fix mistakes for points.  That’s too much pressure.”

Behind the humor, however, we can see the commitment to preparing students for their future careers that is the mark of every good teacher.  It’s a hallmark of our faculty, and yet another reason for pride in what is happening here at the college!

The pace of the academic semester picks up in mid April, with students and faculty alike realizing that the end of the semester is looming.  Students hustle to complete projects and papers, but I am especially impressed by the number of research activities in which CSA undergraduates are involved.

Michigan Tech has sought to connect students to research as early as possible in their time here, believing that research, like other experiential activities, can transform their education. The following list of their work is, I believe, impressive.

In Biological Sciences, fourth-year Biological Sciences student Rebecca Hobmeier recently presented a department seminar on “Drosophila Gene Regulation in the Formation of Complex Color Patterns in Yellow Evolution of Guttifera.” Thomas Werner was her adviser.

In the Physics Department, a number of seniors presented summaries of their projects at a department colloquium. These included:

• Floyd Johnson — “Free-standing and Substrate-Supported Cytosine Molecules: Molecular Dynamics Study, advised by department chair Ravi Pandey
• Austin Hermann — “Quantum Confinement Effect in Silicon,” advised by Ranjit Pati
• Colin Sheidler —”Unidirectional Emission from Microring Lasers,” advised by Ramy El-Ganainy
• David Russell — “A Search for Exotic Particles Using AUGER Data”, advised by Brian Fick
• Michael Foetisch — “Iron Electrowinning: Proof of Concept and Optimization,” advised by Timothy Eisele
• Nick Videtich — “Pico-second Pulsed Laser System Using Neodymium-doped Yttrium Vanadate Crystal,” advised by Jae Yong Suh
• Kelci Mohrman — “Searching for Emission from the Geminga Pulsar Wind Nebula in GeV Engines,” advised by Petra Huentemeyer.

And in Social Sciences, three students presented their undergraduate theses in anthropology to the department.

• James Wezensky — Stamp Mill Technologies: The Industrial Past of Isle Royale National Park, advised by Pat Martin
• Jakob Williams — The Party of Trump: Understanding the Rise of the Billionaire Populist, advised by Melissa Baird

This list could be multiplied many times, as faculty in the life sciences (especially Biological Sciences, Chemistry and  Kinesiology) eagerly recruit undergraduates to work in their labs, so that some of them leave Michigan Tech as co-authors or contributors to a publication in an academic journal.  These outcomes explain why many of us talk about the unity of teaching and research and see them as deeply complementary activities.  These student projects offer only the most recent example of effort to integrate these core responsibilities.

One of the best things about being dean is to watch faculty and students build the successes that help their careers and the reputation of Michigan Tech. Three items passed across my desk this week that show the range of areas where the people in this college are doing really good things.

Kathy Halvorsen, professor of natural resources policy in Social Sciences, with a joint appointment in the  School of Forest Resources and Environmental Sciences, was just elected Executive Director of the International Association for Society and Natural Resources (IASNR). Her term will begin in January 2018. Kathy has been deeply involved in a major project on Sustainability, Ecosystem Services, and Bioenergy Development across the Americas, sponsored by the National Science Foundation’s  Partnerships for International Research and Education program to the  tune of $4.8 million over the period 2012-17.  Through such international efforts, Kathy has been involved in IASNR, culminating in this newest leadership position within the organization. 

Anne Beffel, professor in Visual and Performing Arts, has been deeply in performance art over her entire career. She has labeled her most recent effort “Every Color of Eyes.” The effort is related at least in part to the visit to campus this week of Jane Elliot, recipient of the National Mental Health Association Award for Excellence in Education. Elliot conducted the now famous  “Brown Eyes/Blue Eyes Experiment” in which she treated blue-eyed students better than brown-eyed students, and student performance quickly came to match those expectations. Beffel, with the help of several students, intends to show our differences as well as our common humanity through the metaphor of eye color. She is asking for people to email her pictures of their eyes for an exhibit opening March 31 in the Rozsa Gallery. Please consider volunteering!

Stephanie Dietrich, received first place presentation in the Fifth Annual Undergraduate Research Symposium.

Her research was “Subjective and Objective Assessments of Sleep Differ in Male and Female Collegiate Athletes,” in Kinesiology and Integrative Physiology.

This is the second year in a row that KIP students have been at the top of the list in this event! And that does not exhaust the list of accomplishment from that department.

Two KIP students- Matt Kilgas and Thomas Bye — and faculty advisor Steve Elmer received Michigan Space Grant Consortium awards in the most recent competition. But this year Tom Bye was the first undergraduate in the department to secure this type of support.

Congrats to Stephanie, Matt, Tom. Clearly, the faculty and students in the college are doing quite well – and I extend my congratulations to all of them!

Considering that Michigan Tech offers no degrees in music, the variety of quality musical groups here is quite amazing. Jazz and vocal groups, an orchestra and bands — students can participate in all of these, often in more than one venue. But for the typical student here, the Huskies Pep Band has been the face of Tech’s musical activities. The band enters every sporting on campus playing “Also Sprach Zarathustra” – the theme from “2001 a Space Odyssey.” And the fun only begins there, as the announcers welcome “The Cream of the Keweenaw, The Pride of Pasty Land, The Second-Best Feeling in the World!” The band has grown large enough to maintain three separate units, and every one of them has a good time!

The stories about the DaWGs (Damn, We’re Good!) are legion. I remember when Nebraska-Omaha added their Division 1 hockey team in the 1990s, they engaged Pep Band director Jeff Bell-Hanson as a consultant to tell them how to do it right! Obviously Tech knows how to do it right. How else to explain Northern Michigan’s decisions more than 2 decades ago to NOT allow the Pep Band into the ice arena in Marquette? The Northern Sound Machine simply could not compete! And for several years, the Huskies provided the official pep band for the WCHA Frozen Five hockey finals. Not bad for a unit that prides itself on volume!

Recently the band’s truck, which moves instruments from Walker to the SDC (or wherever the band is playing), got a facelift. The humor associated with everything the band does (ask Northern Women’s Basketball Coach Troy Mattson how it fells to attract the band’s attention!) is obvious on every panel. I especially like the rear door, which thanks drivers for being “behind” the Pepe Band!

The decorations mark the support of alumni and friends of the band, who have long provided gifts large and small. But funds from friends and alums also support the acquisition of the instruments provided to students, notably percussion, tubas and other large bass instruments. Instrument repair and maintenance, music, and other operating expenses also are assisted through the generosity of those making annual gifts. In this day of declining state support for higher education, the importance of gifts are rarely so obvious. So let me join the band in thanking everyone whose support allows the band to be heard (and now seen!)  from in its own inimitable way!

The band will clearly help make a difference at the upcoming WCHA hockey championship at the Student Ice Arena Saturday March 18th. Go DaWGS and Go Huskies!

While the College of Sciences and Arts is approaching 50 years, several departments here have a longer history. One is Chemistry, which only came into the college in the late 1990s — before that it was joined to the Chemical Engineering unit. It is now an integral part of the college and an number of good things are happening there.

First, several new faculty who have joined the unit in the past 8 years are making their mark. Xaiohu Xia, who arrived in 2014, recently received the prestigious NSF CAREER Award to advance his studies of bimetallic nanostructures for medical diagnostic purposes. And earlier in the fall Loredana Valenzano, who came here in 2012, attended a workshop in India during which she lectured about modeling and fundamentals of electronic structure theory.  As the chair of physics noted, “she also charmed students in her own Italian way!”

Second, a few days ago word reached me that Cary Chabalowski, chair of chemistry, was recognized as the coauthor on one of 25 most cited papers in the  Journal of Physical Chemistry — “Ab-Initio Calculation of Vibrational Absorption and Circular-Dichroism Spectra Using Density-Functional Force-Fields”  that appeared in 1994, volume, 98 (45), 11623-11627. (See http://axial.acs.org/2016/12/15/physical-chemistry-most-cited/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email0117&utm_campaign=Axial) Cary explained that he was neither the lead nor the corresponding author, but that he  “spent several years doing the foundational research along with my colleague and dear friend, Dr. Philip Stephens (lead author & since deceased), at USC.”  Cary added, “working with Philip gave me some of my most enjoyable years as a scientist.”  Cary’s career in administration took him away from research for many years, but his arrival here 3 years ago was supposed to allow him to get back to it.  He’s been tied up in too many things administrative, but we’ll be trying to find ways to allow him back into research.  This news from the American Chemical Society shows the quality of work that explains why we asked Cary to chair the department. Congratulations, Cary!  He’s working to help other faculty match his record of accomplishment.  The potential is certainly there!

February 16, 2017

I’ve recently returned from a trip to India – my 6^th in the past eight years.  The purpose of the trips has been to develop connections between faculty and universities there and at Michigan Tech.

The primary connections so far have centered on computer science – a natural area of common interest given the strong information technology foundation there – and also physics.  The latter orientation grows from the fact that Ravi Pandey, chair of Tech’s physics department, is from India and has worked hard to facilitate my visits.

This time I attended a conference on the Interface of Physical, Chemical and Biological; Sciences at Dr. Harisingh Gour Vishwavidyalaya (University) in Sagar (Ravi’s hometown), and then visited the Noble College in Sagar, AISECT University in Bhopal, IIT Bombay in Mumbai, and the National Institute of Technology in Calicut (NITC).

At each place, I was warmly received, as has been true during each stop in my earlier visits.  Normally I deliver a seminar on a topic appropriate to the university; typically I have talked about the societal implications of nanoscale science and engineering. This subject matches the world-wide interest in nanotechnology, but often the audience hears for the first time the perspective of a historian of technology on this topic. The resulting discussions have been useful and interesting – and provide a springboard to examine ways in which Tech’s faculty and research activities might align with faculty and students at the universities in India. There are many other areas where the research interests of faculty in India and the U.S overlap, and developing collaborative arrangements built from that common interest are the primary target of these visits. This trip, Michigan Tech and NITC signed an agreement to strengthen shared research programs in atmospheric science and applied physics. Similar linkages seem very likely to emerge from the visits to AISECT and IIT Bombay as well.

Also on this trip I had two opportunities to address middle and high school students.  The Noble Public School in Deori (Sagar District in Madhya Pradesh) serves a rural community that until five years before had no school.  Most of the 1,000 students currently enrolled come from families in which no other person had ever attended school. As I walked through a number of classes, I found students who were amazingly confident, clearly hard-working, and possessing strong English language skills (they begin English in the first grade). The dedicated teachers (45 of them) were so proud of the students — as they should have been! The students had prepared a science fair for me, as well as crafts exhibit. And after a short talk from me, they asked questions for an hour about all kinds of topics. It was a wonderful experience, as was the second school visit, this time to the Government Girls High School in Balussery in Kerala State. I met with a group of 10^th graders from a gifted and talented program – and they certainly lived up to that billing! Self-assured and confident, these young women asked me about the differences between India and the U.S., about inequality, democracy and technology, and about the differences and similarities between our two countries. I was honored to be the first American to visit them, and urged them to never let anyone suggest they could not do something simply because they were women. Impressive!

Given these two snap shots, I have to think that the future of India will be in good hands!   Students like these are the reason I keep returning to India to build bridges from there to Michigan Tech.

Bruce Seely
January 26, 2017

I write with new year’s greetings from Houghton as we are about to embark upon another year. The campus is quiet this week before the students flock back to Houghton, although preparation for spring semester is underway everywhere.

Two bits of news caught my eye this week; signals of the excellent work that Tech students and faculty produce. The first concerns an alumna of the Humanities Department, Roxane Gay. She has become an award winning author since graduating, and also contributes regularly to the New York Times opinion page. Recently, Roxane published a new collection of short stories with the provocative title “Difficult Women.” You can read her interview with National Public Radio. You’ll find that her time at Michigan Tech is a clear influence on her continued writing efforts.

The second new item concerns a faculty member in Cognitive and Learning Sciences, Myunghoon Jeon (Philart to everyone here). He’s deeply engaged in studies at the intersection of cognitive psychology and computer science, with special attention to sound and human responses. His Mind Music Machine Lab is the subject of an article in the January/February issue of “Interactions,” a leading journal in the area of human-computer interaction.

I remain deeply impressed by the accomplishments of our students and faculty and am sure you will share my feelings. What a great way to start out the new year! Best wishes, everyone!

01/6/2017