Graduate School

Kanwal Rekhi, a '69 Michigan Tech master's in electrical engineering graduate, is a Silicon Valley entrepreneur. He tells how his family had left Pakistan when he was two years old, during Pakistan's separation from India. In a sense, the upheaval was good practice. "I've always considered myself a refugee," Rekhi said. Early in his career, he was faced with negotiating a quick series of jobs, moves and layoffs, which taught him a valuable lesson.

Employers are not in business to take care of you, he realized. "So I made sure I wouldn't be laid off again."

"I'm proud to be where I am," Rekhi concluded. "And I'm very happy to be able to give back to society."

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 an outlawed, but persistent, caste system.

Dahal found the forest thriving and the women branching out into newfound leadership.

Rodwick Barton admitted to feeling a little "awkward" at the July 10 reception celebrating his brand new PhD. "I know smarter PhD candidates, others who have gone through more than I have," he noted.

By accident of birth, Barton has found himself at the center of a small celebration, but who can blame the party-goers? When he came to Michigan Tech in 2004, he set foot on the road to becoming the University's first African American to earn a doctorate in chemical engineering. Now, he is off to Seattle to take a position with Boeing.

Born and bred in Detroit, Barton earned his BS and MS degrees in Chemical Engineering from Wayne State University and worked . . .

John Hallquist earned his BS in Industrial Engineering, magna cum laude, from Western Michigan University in 1970. He received an MS degree in Engineering Mechanics from Michigan Tech in 1972. He continued his advanced education from Michigan Tech and earned a PhD 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. While at Livermore he developed a massive finite element program called LLNL DYNA 3D that modeled collisions and explosions. In 1987 John left his civil . . .