February 23, 2026

People who know Michigan Tech know that hands-on learning is a Husky hallmark. What they might not know is that one of the longest-running experiential-based programs on campus came to the College of Business 29 years ago as part of a non-negotiable package deal.

The Applied Portfolio Management Program (APMP) didn’t yet have a name when Dean Johnson, then fresh out of grad school at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, applied for a faculty position at Tech. He hit the higher-education job market with a newly minted Ph.D. and a determination to create a student investment program wherever he landed.

“I was telling people, ‘Don't hire me unless you want one of these programs, because that’s what I’m going to do,’” said Johnson, who became the College’s dean in 2016.

Johnson had helped run UW-Madison’s student investment program, one of the oldest in the country. He’d seen how effective such programs can be for nurturing smart, bold, financially savvy students ready for trailblazing careers in one of the most dynamic industries around.

Sticking to his vision paid off for both Johnson and the generations of Huskies who’ve launched careers in finance and wealth management. Find out how, and take a closer look at the program, in Impact Magazine.

Patrick Woock, the newest faculty member in Michigan Tech’s College of Business, begins teaching classes next fall. But he’s already busy laying the groundwork for the next iteration of Husky Innovate, one of Tech’s most promising student-focused entrepreneurial engines. As the program’s new director, Woock is here to help connect the pieces and strengthen the University’s entrepreneurial ecosystem, starting from the inside out.

Woock comes to Michigan Tech from Houston, Texas. When he and his wife first visited Tech, she disappeared — camera in hand — to explore the trails, parks and vistas that are an integral part of the Keweenaw landscape.

“That’s when I knew,” Woock said. “This is a place where you can be at peace. A place where you can adventure. A place where you can be a human being.”

The natural beauty that abounds in Husky Nation wasn’t the only draw. After years of building startups, leading programs and living abroad — including 15 years in Asia — Woock was attracted by Michigan Tech’s potential to expand the University’s entrepreneurial outreach. He sees strong programs, passionate students and entrepreneurial activity already happening across campus. What he’s focused on now is alignment.

Find out more about Woock’s current projects and long-term vision on the College of Business Newsblog.

Midterm grades are due at noon today, Feb. 23.

Midterm grades must be submitted for all first-year students and transfer students with fewer than 30 credits. The Waino Wahtera Center for Student Success coordinates outreach to these students based on the midterm grades submitted. This supports timely intervention for students who may be experiencing academic and/or other difficulties.

Electronic Grade Submission:

• Instructors have two options for electronic grade submission. They may submit grades by going to Michigan Tech’s Experience online service dashboard and, on the Faculty Grading Self Service card, clicking on “Faculty Self Service Grade Submission” and following the prompts. Those with larger class sizes where grades have already been totaled in Canvas may submit midterm grades via Canvas by going to the Experience online service dashboard and clicking on “CourseTools” in the Faculty Grading Self Service card and using the Grade Wizard to first extract midterm grades from Canvas and then submit them to Banner.

• If grades are submitted using Faculty Self Service Grade Submission, only the students who require a midterm grade will have a column for submitting midterm grades. For those who submit their grades via Canvas, a first-year student column has been added to identify these students in your course grade book.

• Satisfactory grades (A-C) should be entered as “SA” and Unsatisfactory grades (CD-F) as “UN”. If you are using Faculty Self Service Grade submission, you will see letter grade options (A-F) as well; UN and SA are at the bottom of the list. Canvas Grade Wizard users will only see UN and SA as options.

• Midterm grades are for full-semester courses only. Grades not turned in by the deadline will have an M (missing) grade assigned.

What does an engineering career really look like?

Do you have to become a manager to grow? What does systems engineering mean in practice? How do you move from design work to technical leadership? When should you specialize — and when should you broaden your focus?

Today, Feb. 23, GS Engineering will participate in the Career Pathway Gallery Walk, an open discussion designed to give students real-world insight into how engineering careers evolve. It’s happening between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. in the Library East Reading Room.

This is not a recruiting pitch. It’s a conversation about growth, responsibility and impact. Find out more.

Come hungry! There will be free pizza!

Overleaf continues to make progress in improving accessibility in the LaTeX editing space. Specifically, their latest release improves the output of accessible technical PDFs through simplifying the tagging process. To understand and address these improvements, they have shared two helpful resources to assist users with making accessible PDFs:

• Overleaf Blog Post: Accessible PDFs with LaTeX 
• Overleaf User Doc: Creating Accessible PDFs in LaTeX 

For assistance with Overleaf, contact the Van Pelt and Opie Library at library@mtu.edu.

Please remember to submit check requests for disbursements from the Michigan Tech Fund Endowed Funds to mtfchecks@mtu.edu by March 9 to meet the deadline for the March 25 payment date.

The Office of Alumni Engagement looks forward to celebrating Alumni Reunion 2026 from July 30 to Aug. 1, honoring the classes of 1956, 1961, 1966, 1971, 1976, 1986, 1996, 2001, 2006 and 2016.

Preliminary Schedule
Alumni Reunion’s 2026 preliminary schedule is available now on our website. The schedule is subject to change as planning continues.

College Receptions
Based on prior feedback, we have been working with the deans to modify the event formerly known as the Campus Showcase. Instead, we will be featuring College Receptions on Aug. 1 from 1-3 p.m. This event is designed to take the burden off of individuals and/or smaller units while still giving alumni the opportunity to visit colleges and departments, learn about what’s new, and chat with faculty and staff — a favorite for our visiting alumni!

Registration for Faculty and Staff
As we did last year, when registration opens later this spring, we will be collecting faculty and staff registrations through a Google Form (separate from how our alumni guests will be registering). More information will be shared when it becomes available.

Check out the Reunion website as more details get shared, including Alumni Awards winners, class giving chairs and more! Contact the Office of Alumni Engagement at 906-487-2400 or alumni@mtu.edu if you have any questions.

Outside, it may feel like an ice age — but inside the Rozsa, long-fossilized creatures are taking over! 

“Dinosaur World Live!”, winner of the prestigious 2024 Olivier Award for Best Family Entertainment, comes to Houghton as part of their third major tour of the United States. This interactive theatre show will bring dinosaurs to life onstage at the Rozsa Center tonight, Feb. 24, at 6:30 p.m. for a one-night-only performance.

Get Tickets
Public tickets have sold out for this event — however, Michigan Tech Student Rush tickets are still available! Request yours before they go extinct!

Dinosaur World Live!
Tuesday, Feb. 24 | 6:30 p.m.
Rozsa Center
Michigan Tech Presenting Series

Please join the Department of Mathematical Sciences as we welcome James Sellers, professor in the Department of Mathematical Sciences and Statistics at the University of Minnesota Duluth, as he gives a presentation on his research.

The seminar will be held on Friday, Feb. 27, from 1-2 p.m. in Fisher 133. Refreshments will be provided.

Sellers’ presentation is titled “Surprising Connections Between Integer Partitions Statistics: The Crank, Minimal Excludant, and Partition Fixed Points”.

Sellers received his Ph.D. from Penn State University in 1992 under the direction of David Bressoud. Over the last 35 years, he has taught at Cedarville University, Penn State University, and the University of Minnesota Duluth.

Sellers has published over 140 research papers in peer-reviewed journals, and he has dedicated much of his career in service to the mathematical community. This includes his work from 2011 to 2018 on the College Board's Advanced Placement Calculus Development Committee (which is the committee that writes the AP Calculus exams each year) as well as his service as Secretary of the MAA, which he completed in 2022.

During the spring 2025 semester, Sellers served as a Fulbright research fellow in Budapest, Hungary (where he enjoyed the authentic Hungarian goulash very much!). He has also held the position of Visiting Fellow at the Isaac Newton Institute in Cambridge as well as being a Fulbright Scholar at the Johannes Kepler University and Research Institute for Symbolic Computation in Austria.

When he is not working on research in integer partitions or thinking about the history of Leonhard Euler, Sellers can sometimes be found playing Candy Crush. He is always proud to share details of his progress in the game (so please feel free to ask)!

A Department of Physics graduate student will be presenting her research progress at this week's Physics Colloquium:

• Nayana Suresh Palaparambil (Advisor: Ravi Pandey)

This will be an in-person event. Palaparambil will give her talk at 4 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 26, in Fisher 139.

Event details, including the Palaparambil’s presentation title and abstract, are available on the University Events Calendar.

Please join the Department of Mathematical Sciences in Fisher 326 on Thursday, Feb. 26, from 12-1 p.m. for our Graduate Student Seminar Series.

Refreshments will be provided. Contact the math department’s graduate program assistant, Andi Schoch, via email at ajschoch@mtu.edu or in person in Fisher 318 with any questions.

Presentation 1
Ph.D. candidate Sontosh Sahani will present “High-order Bound-Preserving Discontinuous Galerkin Methods with Lagrange Multipliers for Wormhole Propagation”.

From the abstract:
Acid-induced wormhole formation in carbonate reservoirs is governed by coupled reactive transport processes that describe the evolution of porosity and acid concentration during mineral dissolution. These variables are physically constrained to remain within the interval [0, 1], with porosity exhibiting a non-decreasing behavior over time. Ensuring that numerical simulations respect these intrinsic bounds is critical for obtaining stable and physically meaningful solutions. In this work, we propose a high-order bound-preserving discontinuous Galerkin (DG) method for the wormhole propagation model that maintains these constraints at the discrete level. The formulation employs a reformulated conservative variable together with an associated auxiliary equation derived from a consistent flux construction, enabling the application of positivity-preserving corrections within a unified framework. A local correction strategy based on Lagrange multipliers and Karush–Kuhn–Tucker (KKT) conditions is then used to enforce the bounds while preserving cell-wise mass. The resulting scheme achieves high-order accuracy while maintaining the admissible range of the solution variables under practical time-stepping conditions. Numerical results are presented to verify the accuracy and robustness of the proposed approach.

Presentation 2
Ph.D. student Kamilu Adedokun will present “The RBF-FD method for solving twophase flow problems with moving interfaces”.

From the abstract:
Cryogenic rocket propellants, including liquid hydrogen (LH2) and liquid oxygen (LOX), commonly exhibit liquid–vapor two-phase behavior in propulsion systems. Resolving the associated moving interfaces with high-fidelity Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) methods is computationally intensive, creating the need for more efficient modeling approaches. This study introduces a Lagrangian vortex-sheet formulation for describing liquid–vapor interfaces that substantially lowers computational cost. In this framework, the velocity field is computed from the Biot–Savart integral, interpreted in the principal-value sense. Spatial derivatives are approximated using a radial basis function–generated finite difference (RBF-FD) scheme, allowing accurate evaluation of curvature-related terms, temperature gradients, and other physical quantities. Owing to its meshless nature, the method eliminates the need for repeated remeshing as the interface evolves, addressing a key limitation of traditional mesh- based techniques. The approach is tested on a problem to assess the combined effectiveness of the principal-value Biot–Savart formulation for velocity evaluation and RBF-FD discretization for spatial derivatives. The results indicate a great reduction in numerical error.

Zhanping You (CEGE/MTTI) was quoted by WXYZ Detroit in a story about ongoing collaborations to test innovative asphalt mixes containing recycled materials as a means to combat potholes.

The Keweenaw Report and My UP Now quoted Nich Radcliffe (VPA) in a preview of Michigan Tech Theatre’s production of “Proof” at the McArdle Theater.

Tim Scarlett (SS) was quoted in an editorial in Janesville, Wisconsin’s Milton Courier discussing the potential value of pumped underground storage hydropower facilities in abandoned mines.

In Texas, the Galveston County Daily News mentioned Kristin Brzeski (CFRES) in an editorial about newly installed wildlife crossing signs on Galveston Island aimed at reducing vehicle strikes involving “ghost wolves,” coyotes that carry endangered red wolf genetics.

Green Bay, Wisconsin’s WFRV-TV Local 5 mentioned Michigan Tech’s Mind Trekkers program, which welcomed over 1,400 middle schoolers on Feb. 19 at Fox Valley Technical College for STEM demonstrations and hands-on activities.

The Daily Mining Gazette mentioned Michigan Tech hockey defenseman Jack Anderson in a story about his third straight CCHA Defenseman of the Week honor.

Fox 2 Detroit mentioned Michigan Tech in a story about a newly released memoir written by Kanwal Rekhi ’69 (M.S. Electrical Engineering) that reflects on his journey from Michigan Tech student to Silicon Valley leader.

CISR Research Discussion with Ishi Keenum

Please join the Center for Innovation in Sustainability and Resilience (CISR) for our next spring research discussion. Ishi Keenum, assistant professor in the Department of Civil, Environmental, and Geospatial Engineering (CEGE), will give a research talk titled “Engineering Microbial Systems for Environmental Sustainability: From Antimicrobial Resistance to Freshwater Dune Stabilization”.

CISR Research Discussion with Ishi Keenum
Tuesday, Feb. 24, at Noon in the Library East Reading Room 
Add the CISR Research Discussion to Your Google Calendar.

There will be refreshments and good company; please join!

This event is hosted by the Center for Innovation in Sustainability and Resilience, a research center in Michigan Tech’s Great Lakes Research Center research institute.

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Workshop: 'Creating Personnel Documents with SciENcv'

Join Research Development via Zoom tomorrow, Feb. 24, at noon for “Creating Personnel Documents with SciENcv”. During this session, you will learn how you can create and maintain your personnel documents in SciENcv. Once you get the initial setup done, you’ll be able to easily make updates and generate biosketches and current and pending documents that are compliant with the current rules of federal agencies.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) requires that all senior personnel listed on NSF proposals use an online tool called SciENcv to prepare their Biographical Sketch and Current & Pending Support forms, which are required proposal elements.

Additionally, the National Institutes of Health and U.S. Department of Energy have new processes for Common Forms that require the use of SciENcv to produce compliant documents.

This event is for anyone interested in submitting proposals who has not yet learned the SciENcv system, or could use a refresher on system basics. The session will cover all steps, from sign-up to producing the required documents; no prior experience is necessary. It will be recorded and posted to the RD Toolkit for anyone who is unable to attend.

Please direct any questions to RD-L@mtu.edu.

Join the SciENcv Workshop on Zoom.

To have your event automatically appear, please submit them to the University Events Calendar.

Men's Basketball at Ferris State

Monday, February 23, 12–3 a.m. | Big Rapids, Mich.

Men's Basketball at Ferris State Big Rapids, Mich.

Women's Basketball at Ferris State

Monday, February 23, 12–3 a.m. | Big Rapids, Mich.

Women's Basketball at Ferris State Big Rapids, Mich.

Women's Rights are Human Rights: International Posters on Gender-based Inequality, Violence, and Discrimination Gallery Exhibit - Rozsa Art Galleries

Monday, February 23, 8 a.m.–8 p.m. | Rozsa Art Galleries, Rozsa Art Galleries A-Space

MICHIGAN TECH ART SERIES EVENT Women’s Rights are Human Rights is a fitting title for an exhibition of women’s rights and advocacy posters, as it was a term used in the women’s rights movement and was the title of an important speech given by Hillary Rodham Clinton in 1995 at the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing. This exhibition features posters created by artsit of all genders to celebrate and acknowledge the vital role that all citizens should play in protecting and promoting human rights while challenging gender inequality and stereotypes, advancing reproductive and sexual rights, protecting women and girls against brutality, and promoting women’s empowerment and participation in society. These poster images challenge patriarchal attitudes that subordinate, stigmatize or restrict women from achieving their fullest potential. These images argue for the elimination of discrimination against women and girls enabling empowerment of women and achievement of real equality between women and men that fosters societal stability and human dignity. Learn more at womensrightsarehumanrights.org Things to know ROZSA ART GALLERIES HOURS | M-F 8 a.m.-8 p.m. and Saturdays…

New Huskies Orientation Presentation Session

Monday, February 23, 8:30–11:30 a.m.

Engineering Week - Career Pathway Gallery Walk with GS Engineering

Monday, February 23, 11 a.m.–1 p.m. | J. Robert Van Pelt and John and Ruanne Opie Library, East Reading Room

Explore career paths, meet professionals, and discover opportunities and collaborations in engineering. This event is part of week long activities to explore engineering pathways, connect with leaders, and have some fun with classic engineering challenges as part of the National Engineers Week. Find out more here!

ASCII - Editors meeting

Monday, February 23, 3–4 p.m. | Fisher 0231

Come help us make The Byte, ASCII's computing newspaper. Help write articles or just get more information. Looking for journalist, editors, or anyone interested in computing.

Monitoring Plastic Additives in Coastal Urban Regions

Monday, February 23, 3 p.m. | Great Lakes Research Center (GLRC), 202

Environmental Engineering Graduate Seminar Lizzie Miller, PhD Student, Environmental Engineering, Michigan Technological University Abstract: Plastic additives are chemicals that assist in the physicochemical properties of plastic: improving durability, flexibility, flame retardancy, or resistance to UV degradation, among other benefits. Typically, these compounds bond non-covalently to plastic, increasing their susceptibility to leach into the surrounding environment, food, or drinking sources. In partnership with the San Francisco Bay Estuary Institute (SFEI), a methodology is being developed to analyze water samples for up to 120 plastic additives, including bisphenols, organophosphates, antioxidants, phthalates, and UV stabilizers, using high-performance liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry. Findings from this study will improve understanding of the fate of plastic additives in San Francisco Bay and support risk assessment and environmental management strategies.

Huskies Swim Training - Session 2

Monday, February 23, 4–5 p.m. | Student Development Complex (SDC), Pool

Huskies Swim Training is a program that provides additional attention and competitive guidance to advanced swimmers looking to focus on stroke technique and efficiency. Sessions will be designed to improve swimming through stroke drills and swimming sets focused on endurance, speed, and race strategy. Coaches will provide feedback and stroke correction in a group environment with an emphasis on promoting a love for competitive swimming and lifelong skills such as discipline, dedication, and teamwork. Come be part of the pack! Competitve swimming opportunities are now availabe to current Huskies Swim Training participants!

German Stammtisch Conversation Hour

Monday, February 23, 4:30–5:30 p.m. | Walker Arts and Humanities Center, 120C

Please join us for German conversation, snacks, games, and more! All levels of German are welcome. Every other Monday starting January 12! Walker 120C (HDMZ) 4:30-5:30pm.

AIChE General Meeting

Monday, February 23, 5–6 p.m. | ChemSci 211

Join AIChE for a presentation from Arcadis! Arcadis is the world's leading company delivering sustainable design, engineering, and consultancy solutions for natural and built assets. All are welcome!

Catch the Sun, Skip the Hangover

Monday, February 23, 5–7 p.m. | MUB Commons

Join us for a fun evening of creativity while learning some tips to stay safe during spring break. Design beautiful suncatchers, sip refreshing mocktails, and connect with friends.

Pickleball Club Weekly Practice/Meeting

Monday, February 23, 9–11 p.m. | Gates Tennis Center

Come join us at Gates Tennis Center for some Pickleball! We have equipment that is free to use and its a great way to have some friendly competition against fellow huskies. If you have never played pickleball and want to learn, then you came to the right place! We can teach you how play, so feel free to come at any time and join in on the fun.