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1. Richard, Elizabeth Henes Endow Professorship in Mathematical Sciences |
by Jennifer Donovan, public relations director
Michigan Tech gave Richard Henes an education that enabled him to found and run several successful companies. Now he's giving back to Michigan Tech--again.
Henes and his wife, Elizabeth, are donating $1 million to endow the Richard and Elizabeth Henes Professorship in Mathematical Sciences at Michigan Tech. The couple endowed a chair in mechanical engineering in 2002, held by John W. Sutherland, professor of mechanical engineering and director of Michigan Tech's Sustainable Futures Institute. Their long-standing support of the University has earned them membership in the Hotchkiss and Hubbell Societies for lifetime giving and the McNair Society for their estate gift commitments.
"With this latest generous gift, Dick and Liz Henes have challenged Michigan Tech to continue building a stellar mathematical sciences faculty and to tackle significant problems facing humankind through exceptional research and teaching," said President Glenn D. Mroz.
A native of Menominee, Henes earned a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from Michigan Tech in 1948, followed by a law degree from the University of Michigan. After moving to Arizona, he founded Henes Manufacturing Company, Henes Products and Henes Stamping. He also became a successful real estate investor in Phoenix.
Henes has retired from all but real estate investing. He and his wife divide their time between Paradise Valley and Flagstaff, Ariz.
Henes credits Michigan Tech with stimulating his interest in mechanical engineering and his determination to excel at whatever he did. For many years, Henes has had an active interest in mathematics, and he regards it as the essential building block of all scientific and technological disciplines. He and his wife are committed to helping the University hire and keep top-notch faculty and prepare the next generation to compete in a demanding technological world.
"Liz and I have decided to invest our resources in what will help the world, and Michigan Tech is our choice," said Henes. "What we are doing through this gift is small compared to what Michigan Tech can do for the world."
The Henes professorship is the first named faculty position in the College of Sciences and Arts.
"Endowed faculty positions are a pivotal feature of research universities, for they enhance the productivity of faculty, allowing exciting and promising projects to get started, then move forward and reach completion more quickly and completely," said Bruce Seely, dean of sciences and arts at Michigan Tech. "For this reason, we know that Richard and Elizabeth Henes's hopes for making a difference with their gifts will certainly be realized. I could not be more thrilled that they have chosen to present the first such endowed professorship in the College of Sciences and Arts to mathematical sciences, which has been conducting increasingly recognized research in a number of areas, including statistical genetics."
The new professorship will be awarded to Shuanglin Zhang, a professor of mathematical sciences widely known for his work in statistical genetics. He won Michigan Tech's 2008 Research Award for research into the genes associated with inherited diseases such as type II diabetes and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.
"It is an honor to be the first Henes Professor," said Zhang. "I would like to thank Mr. Henes for his contribution. I will use the funding to support graduate students and postdocs. Mr. Henes's contribution will certainly strengthen my research and will help the development of the department as well."
Mark Gockenbach, chair of mathematical sciences at Michigan Tech, added, "It is gratifying that such a successful engineer and businessman would recognize how central the mathematical sciences are to Michigan Tech. This is also a well-deserved honor for Shuanglin, who has done so much for the department and continues to work at very high level in spite of the physical challenges he faces [Zhang has ALS]. And the Henes Professorship will help the department to continue to build a highly productive and innovative faculty." |
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2. Get Your W-2 Early from Employee Self Service |
Michigan Tech employees can get copies of their W-2 tax forms as early as today, Jan. 16, from Employee Self Service.
Go to http://www.banweb.mtu.edu and log in with your user name and ISO password.
Enter Employee Self Service, select "Tax Forms," and then click on "Electronic W-2 Consent Form."
Check the consent choice box. Next, select "W-2 Wage and Tax Statement" and the 2008 tax year. Click "Display," and your W-2 form will be shown. Print as many copies as you need.
Employees can return to the site at any time and print additional copies for their records.
Payroll Services will print W-2s only for those who do not use Employee Self Service. Those forms will be available for pick-up by departments on Friday, Jan. 23, in Payroll Services. |
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3. Print Shop, Marketing and Communications Closed Till 2 p.m. Today |
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University Marketing and Communications, including the Print Shop, is closed 8 a.m.-2 p.m. today, Jan. 16, for a retreat. |
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4. Lunch and Learn to Feature Fulbright Scholar Mary Durfee Jan. 27 |
Tired of the cold weather and white landscape? Warm up at a Lunch and Learn sponsored by the Memorial Union featuring a presentation by Associate Professor Mary Durfee (Social Sciences), "A Year in Sunny Malta," to be held at noon on Tuesday, Jan. 27, in Memorial Union Ballroom B. Cookies, coffee, hot chocolate and soda will be served. Feel free to bring your own lunch.
Durfee, professor of government, spent the 2007-08 academic year teaching international law and international relations at the University of Malta on a Fulbright. |
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5. Web Conference Set for Jan. 22-23: "Radical Abundance: A Theology of Sustainability" |
Michigan Tech is a university partner site for the Trinity Institute's 2009 Theological Conference, "Radical Abundance: A Theology of Sustainability," to be held on Thursday and Friday, Jan. 22-23. The free conference, based in New York, will be webcast in the Memorial Union Ballroom from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Participants can come and go as they please throughout both days.
This year's conference will explore the theological basis for redefining abundance, to measure not by consumer satisfaction, but by just and sustainable relations with nature and communities. Keynote speakers will include MacArthur "Genius" Fellow and Sundance Channel host Majora Carter; environmental theologian Timothy Gorringe; best-selling author David C. Korten; and Néstor O. Míguez, a professor at Instituto Universitario ISEDT in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
After each speaker, local facilitators will lead live discussion groups. Snacks and drinks will be served.
The conference is sponsored at Michigan Tech by the Canterbury House Student Organization; the Diversity, Integrity and Justice Discussion Group; the Society of American Foresters; and Student Life. It is open to persons of all faiths. |
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6. Seminar Jan. 22 on Submitting a Thesis or Dissertation to the Grad School |
Are you planning on finishing your thesis or dissertation this semester or next semester? Do you help students submitting theses or dissertations? If you answered yes to either question, join the Graduate School at a seminar designed to help students,
faculty and staff better understand online submission procedures, from start to finish, of a thesis or dissertation and to answer questions.
Debra Charlesworth, of the Graduate School, will give the seminar Thursday, Jan. 22, at 4:05 p.m.
Charlesworth will introduce a new, dynamic form, which is part of the School's continuing effort to reduce the number and complexity of forms students need to complete.
Register for the event online at www.gradschool.mtu.edu/registration/events/ . Once you register, you will receive a confirmation with the seminar location and a reminder of the date and time.
If you are unable to attend, you can view similar seminars taped June 5 (student focus) and June 19 (faculty/staff focus) at www.gradschool.mtu.edu/professional/index.html#past . |
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7. Job Postings |
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 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
1/19/09-1/23/09
Administrative Aide (N7)
Controller's Office/Accounting Services
UAW Internal posting only
Faculty Posting
Tenure-Track Assistant Professor/Director of Orchestra
Visual and Performing Arts
Michigan Technological University is an equal opportunity educational institution/equal opportunity employer. |
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8. Teaching at Tech: More or Different? |
by William Kennedy, director, Center for Teaching, Learning and Faculty Development
Brain researchers have long thought that when it comes to the thinking potential of a brain, size is what matters. Recent research clearly suggests that the relationship between mental ability and brain size may not tell the whole story.
Seth Grant and a team of researchers at the Sanger Institute at Cambridge University conducted a cross-species study of neural synaptic terminals, which concluded that it's not just the size of an organism's brain that accounts for its ultimate mental capacity. The richness of the array of protein components from which an organism's synaptic terminals are constructed also may play a role.
Neural synaptic terminals are the connection points via which neural cells communicate with one another and from which they receive and send information to other cells connected to the central nervous system. Synapses are the tiny gaps between the sending and receiving terminals of networked, or potentially networked, neurons. Communication occurs when neurotransmitters spill out into a synaptic gap formed by two synaptic terminals and bind with receptors in the receiving cell's synaptic terminal. The binding has some potential effect on the receiving cell and determines whether or not the neural signal that gave rise to the release of neurotransmitters will continue to be sent on to other neurons.
Given the tendency of evolution to conserve biological processes, researchers have long assumed that a synaptic terminal is a synaptic terminal, whether that synaptic terminal was in a sea slug, a fruit fly or a Rhodes scholar. Grant's team found that the synaptic terminals of invertebrates and vertebrates are composed of very different arrays of proteins, in terms of complexity.
Grant likens the effects of the relative complexity of neural synapses to that of computer chips. "From the evolutionary perspective, the big brains of vertebrates not only have more synapses and neurons, but each of these synapses is more powerful--vertebrates have big internets with big computers, and invertebrates have small internets with small computers."*
The Cambridge group compared the chemical composition of synaptic terminals from 19 different species, from yeast to human beings. Surprisingly, researchers found that 25 percent of all of the proteins found in human synaptic terminals are also found in yeast, single-celled critters that don't have synapses. Grant says this fact suggests that all synapses may have their ancestral origins in an ancient set of proteins that evolved from the simplest of organisms.
Invertebrates and vertebrates have very similar synaptic receptor sites, but the relative complexity of the molecular machinery of vertebrate synaptic receptor sites probably allows them to carry out vastly more-complex operations than the simpler invertebrate receptor sites, which work with much simpler molecular machinery.
The protein composition of synaptic terminals within vertebrates, say between mice and humans, is nearly identical. What may differ, according to Grant, is the degree of fine tuning or levels of protein expression in neural cells, which serve regionally different functions within the brain.
In a recent interview, Grant observed, "It may be that some of the most important behavioral features of [an] animal are not because of the size of its brain or how big its frontal cortex is, but it may be more of a reflection of the chemical properties of those different kinds of synapses."
Pessimists may see another baffling level of complexity. Grant counters that these findings may give rise to unraveling a much more sophisticated neural language that enables human consciousness.
* "Evolutionary Expansion and Anatomical Specialization of Synapse Proteome Complexity," Nature Neuroscience, 11, 799-806 (2008) |
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9. In the News |
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Research Associate Professor Andrew Burton's (SFRES) work on the nitrogen cycle and its potential effect on climate is featured in this Scientific American article, "Can Nitrogen Be Used to Combat Climate Change?" |
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10. Artificial Christmas Trees Sought by Rozsa Center |
submitted by the Rozsa Center
Are you finally getting around to taking down all those holiday decorations? Are you determined not to leave them up until Valentine's Day again this year? Or are you just wondering what to do with that extra or outdated artificial tree?
The Rozsa Center is seeking donations of artificial Christmas trees for its annual Christmas Tree Silent Auction, a fundraising event for the Class Acts program. We are particularly interested in trees measuring three to four feet tall, but we'll gladly take larger trees as well.
If you'd like to donate, contact Erin Ross, Class Acts coordinator, at 487-2390. |
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