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1. Enrollment Rises at Michigan Tech |
by Jennifer Donovan, public relations director
Fall enrollment is up at Michigan Technological University, including more women and more ethnic minorities. Enrollment figures submitted to the state on Thursday for the fall semester show 6,738 students, 194 more than a year ago.
The increase reflects successful recruitment of new students and an exceptional retention record. Undergraduate applications soared to 5,046 this year, the most ever in Michigan Tech’s history, and the retention rate for freshmen returning for their sophomore year increased 2 percent, to an impressive 82.7 percent.
"While enrollment of new students is essential, increasing the retention rate of those that are enrolling is equally important,” said Les P. Cook, vice president for student affairs at Michigan Tech. “It often takes years to increase the retention rate one percentage point. To have increased two points is incredible. It reflects all the good things that so many are doing on campus to ensure student success."
Enrollment in the School of Forest Resources and Environmental Science rose 13 percent, to 257. Programs that experienced the largest growth in new undergraduate student enrollment were civil engineering, business and economics, computer engineering, physics, exercise science and geology.
“Michigan Tech’s programs focus on the skills that Michigan students need to thrive in our knowledge economy, and students and their parents recognize that,” said President Glenn D. Mroz.
With 1,647 women enrolled, nearly one in four Michigan Tech students is female, and women make up half of the incoming classes in environmental and biomedical engineering.
US students from ethnic minorities also increased to a total of 409, and Michigan Tech enrolled 63 new degree-seeking international students from 48 different countries.
Undergraduates account for 5,838 of Michigan Tech’s students, a four-percent increase over fall 2006. Undergraduate enrollment this year already tops the University’s goal for 2010.
New undergraduates also started Michigan Tech better prepared this year. Their ACT composite scores rose to 25.6. |
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2. Correction: Parade of Nations Begins at 11 a.m. |
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The start time for the Parade of Nations was published incorrectly in yesterday's issue. It begins at 11 a.m. tomorrow, Saturday, Sept. 15. |
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3. Moonball Golf Tournament Cancelled |
The Blue Line Club's Annual Moonball Golf Tournament, set for today, Friday, Sept. 14, has been canceled due to weather.
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4. Campus Security Act Letters Available Online |
Employees and students may access the Campus Security Act notification letters on the Human Resources and Student Affairs websites.
The letter emailed to employees is available on the Human Resources website here:
www.admin.mtu.edu/hro/forms/CSA2007signednotificationletter.pdf .
The letter emailed to students is available on the Student Affairs website here:
www.admin.mtu.edu/em/documents/m/ . |
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5. Youth and Adult Tennis Lessons Start Soon |
Tennis adult league and youth lessons for the fall will begin soon and take place at Gates Tennis Center.
The Adult Instructional Tennis League will run Oct. 8-Nov. 12, 7:30-9 p.m. on Monday evenings.
The league, 30-45 minutes of instruction or drills followed by a set of tennis, is perfect for anyone who may have played some tennis but is not confident enough to join a competitive league. Learn and play in a fun and relaxed atmosphere.
Youth tennis lessons will run Sept. 25-Nov. 6 on Tuesday evenings. The age divisions and their respective times and fees follow.
*4–5-year-olds, 6-6:45 p.m., $40
*6–8-year-olds, 6:45-7:30 p.m., $40
*9–11-year-olds, 7:30-8:30 p.m., $50
*12 and up, 8:30-9:30 p.m., $50
Fast-moving games and activities that develop proper tennis skills will have the kids running and smiling at the same time. The United States Tennis Association's 30/60 tennis program will be used to help young players learn the game quickly.
Proper-sized racquets for each division will be available for those who do not have one. Kids that are in the tennis program can come to Gates on most Saturday mornings to practice their tennis skills in a supervised, yet unstructured, atmosphere. As the players progress and develop, we will begin to offer youth tennis leagues for those with a competitive nature.
For more information or to sign up, please contact Kevin Kalinec at 487-2975 or kgkaline@mtu.edu . |
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6. "Evita" at the Rozsa Sept. 25 |
"Evita," the legendary Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, is coming to the Rozsa Center for one performance only on Tuesday, Sept. 25, at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are available from the Rozsa Box Office, 487-3200, Monday-Friday, 11:30 a.m.-5 p.m. or online at www.tickets.mtu.edu .
Winner of seven Tony Awards, "Evita" brings to life the dynamic, larger-than-life persona of Eva Peron, wife of former Argentine dictator Juan Peron. Eva Peron, blessed with charisma, captivated a nation by championing the working class. The epic story of her rise and fall is told in a sweeping pop opera, featuring one of Broadway's most dynamic and lush melodies, "Don't Cry For Me, Argentina."
Telling the tale of Eva Peron from her illegitimate birth into poverty to her status as a world player and South America's most important woman, "Evita" is a story of glamour, power and greed.
"Evita" was the first mega musical when it opened at the Broadway Theatre in 1979, setting records for the largest box office advance. It went on to sweep all theatre awards in 1979, winning seven Tonys, including Best Musical, Score, Book and Director. It played 1,568 performances, closing in 1983.
It became the first Broadway show to be reproduced successfully in every major city in the world, including the Philippines, where it had been banned under the Marcos regime because of the uncomfortable parallels to Imelda Marcos.
As a courtesy to its patrons, the Rozsa Center strives to begin shows on time. There will be no late seating for this performance, so please arrive on time.
The show is sponsored by the Michigan Tech Student Entertainment Board with funding from the Student Activity Fee.
For more information, please contact the Rozsa Center at 487-2844. |
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7. Intelligence Expert Speaking Sept. 19 |
William (Bill) DeGenaro will visit Michigan Tech as a 2007 School of Business and Economics Executive in Residence guest speaker.
DeGenaro will present "A Counterintelligence Officer's Experience in the Private Sector: The Hidden War Over US Intellectual Property" on Sept. 19, 3 p.m. in M & M U115. His presentation will discuss how companies in the United States are threatened by and extremely vulnerable to both legal and illegal intelligence operations aimed at gaining access to sensitive information. Employees need to be aware of the threat and how they are being exploited for intelligence purposes.
DeGenaro has over thirty years of experience in strategic planning and intelligence. He was director of strategic planning, director of innovations resources and director of business research and analysis for 3M. He has worked extensively in both government and corporate intelligence, counterintelligence and security issues.
He is president of DeGenaro and Associates and has offices in Florida and Michigan.
For more information, please contact Diane Benda, assistant to the dean, at 487-2668. |
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8. Entrepreneurial Coffee Break Sept. 20 |
Anyone interested in entrepreneurship, commercializing research or starting their own business is welcome to attend the first Michigan Tech Entrepreneurial Coffee Break on Thursday, Sept. 20, 9:30 a.m. in the Peninsula Room of the Memorial Union.
The Center for Technological Innovation, Leadership and Entrepreneurship (CenTILE) will have a short presentation from Tech Initiatives, a group of Michigan Tech undergraduates who have started their own company, are applying for a patent and are in discussions with the industry leader in their product's field. They will describe how they took a senior design project from concept to reality in 14 weeks. |
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9. Teaching at Tech: A Nobel Laureate On Teaching Science |
by William Kennedy, director, Center for Teaching, Learning and Faculty Development
The current issue of Change contains a thought-provoking article entitled “Why Not Try a Scientific Approach to Science Education?” by Professor Carl Wieman. Wieman not only received a Nobel Prize in Physics in 2001, but he was subsequently awarded the Carnegie Foundation US University Professor of the Year award in 2004.
In his article, Wieman argues that the academy can no longer settle for science instruction that struggles to meet the basic needs of science majors but must develop a much more-robust form of science instruction capable of profoundly transforming every students’ thinking so that a scientifically literate citizenry will make decisions and vote using rational thought based on evidence.
Wieman says such a hope will be realized only if science teachers approach the teaching of science like scientists. He argues that science teachers must employ the practices that are the essential components of scientific research, namely: 1) basing their teaching practices and making improvements based on evidence rather than anecdote or tradition, 2) disseminating the results of their educational experimentation in a scholarly and public way that allows for replication and 3) making full use of the modern technologies that allow humans to extend their senses and expand their ways of knowing.
Wieman reports that his own teaching practice has changed radically over the years as a result of employing these very methods. Like most college teachers, he started out by simply trying to create clear and compelling lectures to pour into the heads of his undergraduate students. Though he labored long and hard to produce effective lectures, exam performance proved that most of his students failed to master what he thought he had explained so clearly and painstakingly.
Even more troubling, Wieman notes, was the performance of his graduate students who would come to his labs with exemplary undergraduate records and be totally clueless as to how to proceed on their own. Amazingly, after a few years of working in his labs, every one of these very same students had mysteriously blossomed into expert physicists. Colleagues suggested that it was being in the lab and rubbing elbows with working scientists that provided the opportunity for these intellectual caterpillars to blossom into physics butterflies. But Wieman wasn’t totally convinced. His review of contemporary understandings of human learning gave him some critical insights into the mysterious blossoming. First, through research, Wieman discovered that an enormous body of educational research had repeatedly demonstrated that not just his students but that nearly all students don’t retain very much from listening to lectures. Moreover, the research suggested that what they do retain, they don’t retain for very long nor will they be able to use it very well.
Then he learned from a body of research undertaken by physics educators that, using standardized instruments and carefully replicated experiments, in traditional lecture courses, the typical physics undergraduate student masters less than one-third of the foundational concepts essential to actually doing physics and subsequently mastering more-advanced concepts.
Finally, Wieman and his associates developed a questionnaire to assess how a person’s beliefs about physics might predict their ability to actually do physics. The instrument places students on a continuum from “novice” to “expert.” Novices, according to Wieman, tend to see the content of physics as so many isolated pieces of information, handed down from authorities and then treated as essentially disconnected bits of data. Experts, on the other hand, tend to see physics as an experimentally derived, coherent structure of concepts that describes nature. Experts see this specifically configured conglomeration of concepts and procedures as a useful tool that they can then employ to probe the world in order to unlock more elements of the functioning of nature.
Applying his “novice to expert” instrument, Wieman was shocked to discover that most students who completed an undergraduate course in physics tended to have more novice-like understandings after the course than students just beginning their first course in physics. Wieman says similar ongoing research in chemistry indicates that the situation within that disciplinary framework may be even more dire.
So what’s an expert? It's true that experts have a considerable load of factual information, but, and this is essential, in addition to that factual knowledge, experts have what Wieman calls a “mental organization structure” that enables them to retrieve and apply factual knowledge in productive ways. In addition, his research demonstrates that experts have the ability to monitor the quality and consistency of their own thinking within the realm of their disciplinary understandings.
We’ll dig deeper into Wieman’s excellent article next week. |
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10. Job Posting |
Staff job descriptions are available in the Human Resources Office or at http://www.admin.mtu.edu/hro/postings . For more information regarding staff positions, call 487-2280 or email jobs@mtu.edu .
Faculty job descriptions can be found at http://www.admin.mtu.edu/hro/facpers/facvac.htm . For more information regarding faculty positions, contact the academic department in which the position is posted.
Staff Job Posting 09/13/07
Manager of Employment and Classification/Compensation
Human Resources
Michigan Technological University is an equal opportunity educational institution/equal opportunity employer. |
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11. Michigan Tech Notables |
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Senior Research Scientist Mark Stuff (MTRI) served as mentor to a team of six graduate students in mathematics participating in a workshop on mathematical modeling in industry at the Institute for Mathematics and Its Applications. This workshop, organized by the institute, was held Aug. 8-17 in Minneapolis. The graduate students were selected from graduate programs in mathematics across the country. |
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12. In Print |
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Postdoctoral Associate Cuihua Xue and Assistant Professor Haiying Liu (Chemistry) published an article, "Post-Polymerization Functionalization Approach for Highly Water-Soluble Well-Defined Regioregular Head-to-Tail Glycopolythiophenes," in Macromolecules, Sept. 18, 2007, Volume 40, Issue 19. |
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