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1. Engineers Without Borders Wins Premier Chapter Award |
Engineers Without Borders (EWB) has named Michigan Tech's student chapter as one of seven winners of Premier Chapter Awards this year. The awards are sponsored by the American Society of Civil Engineers and include a $1,000 prize. Michigan Tech's chapter was selected from more than 250 student and professional chapters nationwide. Its president is Ashley Thode, a civil and environmental engineering major, and its advisor is Associate Professor David Watkin (CEE).
The award will be presented at the EWB International Conference in Denver in March. Nine students from Michigan Tech will be attending the conference, and some of them will be giving a presentation about their water treatment project in Bolivia.
Engineers Without Borders is a nonprofit humanitarian organization established to partner with developing communities worldwide in order to improve their quality of life. This partnership includes the implementation of sustainable engineering projects, while involving and training internationally responsible engineers and engineering students. The Michigan Tech chapter has active projects in Bolivia, Guatamala, Honduras and Baraga Michigan. |
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2. PANK is "Hip": Says National Writers Magazine |
submitted by Dennis Walikainen, senior editor
In its March 2010 edition, "The Writer" magazine has included PANK, the literary magazine produced in the Michigan Tech humanities department, among its "7 hip literary magazines you need to check out."
That's high praise from an important publication, according to Matt Seigel, assistant professor in humanities and editor of "PANK."
"With 'Poets and Writers,' it is one of the top publications for professional literary writers, whether they are looking for advice on placing in publications, getting jobs, working with agents, or finding what to submit where," Seigel said.
With thousands of publications to publish writers' works, it is impossible to keep track of them all, Seigel said. In a wrap-up section like that in "The Writer," writers can scan a group that is talked about by genre or what venue might publish their work. That's what editor Mary Miller did in "The Writer," Seigel said.
And Miller mentioned "PANK" in the same breath as "Open City" and "Normal School," two renowned pieces. "'Open City' is a big deal," Seigel said. "It contains the best voices of contemporary fiction."
Associate editor Roxane Gay is pleased as well. "It's nice to be recognized as an editor because we normally work behind the scenes. I'd like to hear the name PANK coming out of the mouths of more people and have its stories included among the "Best American Short Stories" some day.
"PANK" has grown from an annual print piece to a daily blog, monthly online magazine with ten to fifteen entries, and annual print publication, with hopes of becoming a biannual.
Its 240-page annual print run totals 750 copies that ship to 50 states, Canada, and the United Kingdom, according to Seigel.
"But online we are getting 800,000 hits from 75,000 people in 135 countries," he says, "and we expect to increase by 10 percent this year."
And why does "The Writer" editor Mary Miller love "PANK?"
"The blog is awesome, as is writer and associate editor Roxane Gay," Miller writes. "[It] publishes work worth rereading; although many of the writers can be considered 'emerging,' the work is always top-notch." |
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3. Nominations Open for Percy Julian Award |
submitted by the Dean of Students Office
The Dean of Students Office requests nominations for the Percy Julian Award. This $500 award recognizes an undergraduate student who has demonstrated leadership in the promotion of diversity, social equality, or racial/ethnic and cultural understanding. The student must possess a minimum 2.50 cumulative GPA.
Nominations can be made at the student awards website. You can view all student award information and requirements at www.sa.mtu.edu/awards .
The deadline for nominations is 5 p.m., Friday, March 5.
The recipient will be announced and honored at the HAANA Multicultural Dinner on April 20. For more information, contact Debbie Forsell at 487-2951 or dforsell@mtu.edu . |
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4. Missing from Dillman Lobby |
submitted by Facilities Management
Help! One of our little ones, Arboricola, grew legs and walked away from her spot in the Dillman lobby. The problem is that she is young, immature and weak. If not handled properly, given the right location, or brought out into the cold, she will surely die. In addition, she took her pot with her, and we all know how expensive those designer plant outfits can be. Arbori was wearing a burgundy outfit like many of her brothers and sisters. To see a picture of what our little one's family looks like to help identify her, click "Arboricola" above.
If you see Arbori somewhere in the building or, heaven forbid, out in the cold, please bring her back to her spot in Dillman. You'll know where she belongs because there is a sign at her spot that reads "Abori come Home." |
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5. Reminder: Family Adventure Hike at the Redwyn's Dunes |
The next Family Adventure hike (snowshoe) will be from 2 to 4 p.m., Saturday, Feb. 20, at the Michigan Nature Association's sanctuary, Redwyn’s Dunes on Great Sand Bay (3.5 miles northeast of Eagle River and 4 miles southwest of Eagle Harbor).
Meet trip leader Joan Chadde, representing the Western UP Center for Science, Math and Environmental Education, at the trailhead along M-26. Bring your own snowshoes; the group may warm up at the Eagle Harbor Inn afterwards. |
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6. Reminder: Rozsa Art Gallery Reception for Artist Chandra Dieppa Ortiz |
submitted by the Rozsa Center
The Rozsa Center is hosting an opening reception for artist Chandra Dieppa Ortiz's solo exhibit, "The Record Player Project: Fragment/Appropriate/Remix," at 6 p.m., Saturday, Feb. 20, in the Rozsa Art Gallery.
Dieppa's work is powerful and colorful--contemporary in subject matter, but timeless in its honest and unflinching observation of the human condition. Curator Michael G. Bennett of Vassar College writes of Dieppa's work:
"The works of the artist known as Dieppa reveal and render problematic any number of societal issues, but always through a visual vernacular that stresses the beauty intrinsic to even the most inhumane conditions. Like the works of the great appropriationists/collagists of the 20th century, bracketed by Braque, Picasso and other cubists at its opening, and near its close by Romare Bearden, Dieppa's art visualizes fragmented spaces, multi-dimensional collapses and detonated yet immediately almost-recognizable figures, all reconstituted by her polarizing thought and deft technique into a coherent form, like iron filings in a strong magnetic field."
Dieppa works in paintings, mixed media collage and assemblage--and explores the historical and contemporary use of storytelling. Dieppa uses musical forms such as jazz, blues, and hip-hop to create complex rhythmic compositions that create emotional environments where fragments, symbols and images play against textured surfaces.
Her work explores issues of race, class, gender and culture in the hopes of creating a dialogue between communities and generations by visualizing cultural armor. Dieppa believes that "cultural armor" protects by using love, humor, faith, music, stories and the telling of truths to empower and inspire each generation. Currently, Dieppa is interpreting the works of the late playwright August Wilson through collages that juxtapose the rhythm, dialect and "beautiful struggle" of the black experience in the 20th century.
Dieppa currently works as an adjunct professor at Massachusetts College of Art and with Boston Public Schools as a violence prevention specialist and teacher trainer. She was recently nominated for the prestigious Foster Prize from the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston.
The exhibit is free and open to the public during Rozsa Box Office hours--11:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday. For more information, contact the Rozsa at 487-3200 or www.rozsa.mtu.edu . For more information on Chandra Dieppa Ortiz, visit www.dieppastudio.com . |
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7. In Print |
Professor Raymond Shaw (Physics), is an author of a commentary published in this week's issue of the journal "Science." The topic is the need to better understand cloud processes and how that can be accomplished.
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8. New Funding |
Professor Vladimir Tonchev (Mathematical Sciences) has been awarded a €60,000 (approximately $82,000) grant from the NATO Science for Peace and Security
Programme, to direct an Advanced Study Institute, "Information Security and Related Combinatorics," to be held from May 31 to June 11, in Croatia. Information about the Advanced Study Institute is available at http://www.math.uniri.hr/NATO-ASI/index.htm .
Professor Sheryl Sorby (ME-EM) has received $274,646 from the National Science Foundation for a three-year project, "Workshops to Increase Engineering Participation in the Noyce Program." |
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9. Teaching at Tech: The Smart Phone |
by William Kennedy, director, Center for Teaching, Learning and Faculty Development
Turns out my phone is the smartest person I know. Maybe it's the people I hang around with or something. But, no matter where I am or what I want to know, I can always ask my phone the question, and within a few seconds, it will bury me with responses.
For a long time, I could take some comfort in the undeniable fact that some of the answers my phone instantly provided were probably wrong, and that I would need to do a little comparison shopping to arrive at a reasonably credible answer. My daughter recently asked me what the sum of the angles of all the intersections of lines comprising a polygon with seventeen sides might be. Being suspicious that I was being used as a human crib device, I asked her why she wanted to know. She responded that she was just curious, which neither of us believed. I sat down to reason this out with her. How hard could it be? The angles inside a triangle add up to 180 degrees; a square, 360 degrees. A pentagon, well, probably some larger number. A sixagon? Well, I'm not sure you can know that! Clearly, we needed help in untangling this mind-numbingly complex problem.
I drew a stop sign and then divvied (technical term) it up by drawing a tic-tac-toe board in the middle and then adding up all the angles formed by the four squares and four triangles that touched the outer edge of the octagon. Turns out, there's 1080 degrees inside a properly proportioned octagon, using my method. My third grade math teacher would be proud, if she were still among us. Is it possible that even math teachers might be looking down on us from a better place? But, I digress...
While I was reasoning my way through working out this analogous problem, my daughter appeared to have fallen into a light coma or hypnotic state.
Eventually sensing from my glaring, that I was done with my elaborate proof of the question she didn't ask, she inquired, "so the answer for the seventeen sided thingy is 1080, too?"
"No," I responded in a harsh tone, "I was just showing you a way of figuring out the answer for an octagon."
"But, that's not what I have do find out, Dad," she said in a tone that sounded remotely like her mother when I tell her what would be wrong with the car if it still had a carburetor.
At this rather tenuous cognitive impasse, I reached for my phone. Within a few seconds, I found a link that said you can find out the sum of the internal angles of any polygon using the formula (n-2)*180, where n is the number of sides. Turns out every deca-septic-ga-ga-giga-gon has 2700 degrees as the sum of its internal angles. If it's a regular seventeenagon, each angle would be.....where's that phone...? Turns out, it's 158.823529 degrees, according to my phone.
A week later, I asked my daughter if she knew how to find the sum of the angles inside a polygon and she said, "can I use your phone for a minute?"
I said, "what if you didn't have an internet-enabled phone, Jessica? Then what would you do?"
"I'd call you," she said without hesitating.
I was going to play the "what if you were on a desert island with no cell service" card but, I figured she was holding the "who cares what the sum of the angles in a seventeen sided polygon is anyway" card, and I didn't want to lose this hand. |
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