Michigan Technological University

Nepal is home to eight of the world's highest mountains, and one alumna from this rooftop of the world has some pretty lofty ideas.

Smriti Dahal graduated in August 2007 with a master's degree in environmental policy. Her research took her back to her native Nepal, where she studied a group of women in Gundu, a village eight miles southeast of Kathmandu.

The women were managing a small woodlot used by the entire community-and they were asserting themselves in a country hidebound by male dominance and . . .

Ravi Pandey was trying to determine if nanotubes would work as taxis to deliver chemotherapy drugs to tumors. Then he discovered something quirky about DNA that could revolutionize gene-sequencing technology.

Chemotherapy is a tried-and-true cancer therapy, but for many patients, the drugs are so toxic that the cure is worse than the disease. So, rather than dosing the entire person with healing poisons, scientists want to shuttle those drugs directly to the tumor, with carbon nanotubes serving as the shuttle.

First, however, they want . . .

Kris Bartell believes in traveling. "The world is a diverse and amazing place," he says. Experiencing it firsthand will change the way you see it and the way you live."

Kris knows what he's talking about. During his time at Michigan Tech, the fourth-year electrical engineering major has traveled to Bolivia with the University's Engineers Without Borders group and worked with a Tech professor to develop and implement a water filtration system for an impoverished Bolivian community.

He also participated in a study-abroad program in Australia, an experience . . .

John Hallquist earned his B.S. in Industrial Engineering, magna cum laude, from Western Michigan University in 1970. He received an M.S. degree in Engineering Mechanics from Michigan Tech in 1972. He continued his advanced education from Michigan Tech and earned a Ph.D. degree in Mechanical Engineering and Engineering Mechanics in 1974. John joined the weapons laboratory at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) after receiving his degrees from Michigan Tech. During the next fifteen years he worked on mathematical models that predict the effectiveness of bombs.

Marcella "Marcie" Campione may have grown up in a suburb of Chicago, but she's always heard the call of the wild.

"My family used to take long vacations in national parks," says Marcie, a fourth-year forestry major at Michigan Tech. "I love the outdoors, and I've always wanted to do something to help the environment."

So she came to Michigan Tech to study forestry, and she's planning to stay on to earn a Master's degree in silviculture, a branch of forestry focusing on the development and care of forests.

The teacher in Mary Ann Beckwith emerges as she works in her sun-lit studio on a sunny, chilly December day. The award-winning watercolor artist discusses technique and Tech students.

"The students are bright, motivated, and willing to try most of the things I teach," she says. "Once they learn that failure is sometimes the result in a creative project and that they can make the next results better, they soar."

The professor of art has won the Distinguished Teaching Award at Michigan Tech, and her paintings have garnered acclaim across the nation.