Michigan Tech
What's New in Youth Programs 2001
By John Lehman

Summer Youth Program

MTU News

What's new in the Youth Programs for 2001? We expect more than 1,500 middle and high school students this summer. In addition to our usual programs--American Indian Workshop, Honors Orchestra, Women in Engineering, Explorations (formerly Minorities) in Engineering, the Summer Institute for Arts & Sciences with the State of Michigan, and 70 explorations in our Summer Youth Program--we are looking forward to the following:

  • Our Honors Orchestra is performing with professionals in the Pine Mountain Music Festival production of Cavalleria Rusticana and Gianni Schicchi--two short, one-act operas at the Rozsa Center.
  • Motivational speaker D. J. Vanas will be our keynote speaker for the American Indian Workshop. Mr. Vanas was born in Michigan, graduated from the Air Force Academy, has an MS from the University of Southern California, and was a captain in the Air Force Space program. Vanas conveys the message "We Native Americans must succeed in both worlds to progress in the new millennium" to the 12-to-15-year old Native youth attending this program.
  • The Departments of Mathematical Sciences and Geological Engineering and Sciences will hold a precollege version of an engineering enterprise. Associate Professor John Gierke leads students through four weeks of engineering and scientific approaches for groundwater protection using the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community as their data resource.
  • Four instructors from KSAT, based in San Antonio, Texas, will teach three weeks of the Summer Youth Program exploration in Space Science and Rocketry. On the final day of the exploration, students travel to a launch site to test their rockets and related calculations.
  • A precollege session in Wireless Integrated Micro Systems (WIMS) will be taught by Hancock physics teacher Gary Binoniemi during the Women in Engineering and Explorations in Engineering workshops. This is a collaborative effort between Youth Programs and the recently established Engineering Research Center for Wireless Integrated Microsystems (in collaboration with MSU and U of M).

Other collaborations include a four-week applied ecology program at the Ford Forestry Center and main campus, delivered by the School of Forestry and Wood Products; the four-week Summer Institute for Women in Computer Science, which will be delivered by the Department of Computer Science for high school women to investigate careers in CS; and the Electronic Education Across the Curriculum program for Delta-Schoolcraft area teachers and their students, hosted by the Department of Humanities.

Board of Control Chair Claude Verbal highlighted Youth Programs during the latest Board meeting. He noted that approximately 35 percent of participants ultimately apply to Michigan Tech, an unprecedented response rate for any kind of recruitment activity. The latest survey finds over 25 percent of the students at Michigan Tech have attended one or more of these youth programs. And an even higher percentage of the underrepresented populations at Michigan Tech--women and minorities--came through the youth programs.

For more information on Youth Programs, see http://youthprograms.mtu.edu/. You can also reach our site through the MTU Home Page by clicking on Prospective Students, then What's Hot, then Youth Programs.