October 22, 2019

Enterprise Day is happening from 6 to 8 p.m. this evening (Oct. 22) in Wadsworth Hall Annex and G17/19. This two-hour event is an opportunity for students to learn what the Enterprise Program is and what it has to offer.

Students can visit with program staff and various teams to explore options in sustainability and renewable energy, computer science, aerospace engineering, robotics, network security, game development, motorsports, adventure sports, mining engineering and more.

Teams participating are:

• Robotic Systems
• Blue Marble Security
• Aerospace
• ITOxygen
• Consumer Product Manufacturing
• Advanced Metalworks
• Built World
• Clean Snowmobile Challenge
• Open Source Hardware
• Wireless Communication
• MIning INnovation Enterprise- MINE
• Innovative Global Solutions- IGS
• Green Campus Enterprise
• Alternative Energy Enterprise
• Husky Game Development
• Supermileage Systems
• BoardSport Technologies
• Blizzard Baja
• Formula SAE
• Strategic Education through Naval Systems Experiences- SENSE
• General Expedition Adventure Research- GEAR
• Velovations

Encourage your students to attend Enterprise Day. Apple cider and donuts will be served to participating students.

Research subjects needed for a KIP Study. Help us learn how thermal stimuli affect your blood pressure and nervous system. The time commitment is one orientation session and two testing sessions separated by a month. Participants will receive:

• Satisfaction of helping grow the knowledge of responsiveness to thermal stimuli
• Compensation for completing the study

Exclusion Criteria:

• Ages 18-40
• Non-smoker and non-diabetic
• Not on Heart or Blood Pressure Medications
• No history of substance abuse
• Cannot be pregnant or breastfeeding
• No Chronic pain conditions

Contact Hannah Cunningham if interested.

 The A.E. Seaman Mineral Museum hosted a "Meet & Eat" lunch meeting of the Michigan Museum Association Thursday (Oct. 17). This was the last of eight such meetings held statewide to provide networking opportunities for the more than 800 association members as well as other interested organizations.

There were 17 participants from around the Western Upper Peninsula. The association played an important role in mobilizing volunteers to help in the recovery of historical items at the Houghton County Historical Society after the flood in June, 2018.

Acclaimed Dancers of the New York City Ballet at the Rozsa Saturday

Ballet at the Rozsa Center is always a major event. This year, the Rozsa is proud to host a very special performance of "Stars of American Ballet," bringing the nation's top ballet dancers from the New York City Ballet to the Rozsa stage at 7:30 p.m. Saturday (Oct. 26).

"Stars of American Ballet" travels to cities nationwide and offers top-notch choreography with principal and soloist-level dancers from major American companies. Founded and directed by New York City Ballet principal dancer Daniel Ulbricht, who works alongside Executive Director Andrew Robertson, "Stars" also sponsors dance education programs, consisting of masterclasses, pre-performance lectures and community outreach projects, to build better awareness and overall experience with the art form.

This event is made possible with funding from the Arts Midwest Touring Fund, a program of Arts Midwest, generously supported by the National Endowment for the Arts with additional contributions from the Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs and the Crane Group.

With performances billed as “An unapologetic showcase of virtuosity.” —The Boston Globe and “An intoxicating evening even for the non-dancers” — The Pittsburg Star-Tribune, the event promises sheer athleticism and beautiful artistry by principal dancers, soloists and members of the corps de ballet from the New York City Ballet: Daniel Ulbricht , Brittany Pollack, Teresa Reichlen, Ask la Cour, Unity Phelan, Adrian Danchig-Waring, Alec Knight, and Baily Jones. Featuring works by Balanchine, la Cour and Knight.

There will also be a master class for local dancers, held at the Superior School of Dance when local dancers will have the opportunity to work with "Stars of American Ballet" dancers on Saturday afternoon. For more details about the master class, contact the Rozsa Center administrative offices at 7-2856.

Tickets to Stars of American Ballet are Adult: $25.00, Youth: $12.00, and Michigan Tech Students no charge with Experience Tech Fee, and are available by phone, 7-2073, online in person at the Central Ticketing Office in the Student Development Complex or at the Rozsa Box office the night of the show.

Please note the Rozsa Box Office is only open two hours before performances. Also, in celebration of World Ballet Day on Wednesday, October 23, the Rozsa Center will offer a special limited-time “Buy One Get One Free” ticket promotion, for one day only: From 11:59 p.m today (Oct. 22) to 11:59 p.m. tomorrow (Oct. 23)  Use “BalletDay” promo code and select at least two tickets, to receive one free. This applies to both adult and youth tickets, and there is no limit on the number of BOGO tickets purchased.

The Rozsa Center for the Performing Arts is looking for volunteer ushers to help with "Stars of American Ballet" at 7:30 p.m. Saturday (Oct. 26) in the Rozsa. "Stars of American Ballet" travels to cities nationwide and offers top-notch choreography with principal and soloist-level dancers from major American companies (See story above).

 Volunteer ushers play an important role at the Rozsa, welcoming and assisting student and community visitors with every aspect of their experience at the largest performing arts venue in the region. Volunteers are needed to greet and guide guests as they enter the building, take tickets and assist with seating in the theatre, answer questions about Rozsa facilities and programs, and help create a friendly and welcoming atmosphere for all Rozsa visitors.

No previous experience necessary. Interested individuals may contact Samantha Hoover for more information, or sign up online to usher for an event at the Rozsa.

Open Enrollment 2020 will start in November. Dates will be announced once confirmed. Please watch Tech Today and your email for Open Enrollment 2020 information.

Open Enrollment for 2020 is NOT mandatory. However, it is recommended that all employees complete Open Enrollment, regardless if you are making changes to your benefit elections or not.

During Open Enrollment you will have the opportunity to:

• Enroll or change Medical, Dental, or Vision coverage for next year.
• Contribute to or change contributions to a Health Savings Account or the Health Care Flexible Spending Account or Dependent Care Account. HSA and FSA elections from the previous year will not rollover to 2020.
• Enroll or Change your optional employee life insurance, spouse and/or dependent life insurance, accidental death and dismemberment (AD&D) insurance, long-term disability buy-up coverage, critical Illness and accident insurance coverage.
• Contribute to or change contributions to Retirement Accounts
• Earn Husky Health points for completing Open Enrollment via MyMichiganTech
• Renew your Michigan Tech Parking Permit*

* After completion of Open Enrollment, you will have the opportunity to renew your Faculty/Staff Parking Permit through the Parking Portal. Online permit purchases through the Parking Portal are only available until Monday, Dec. 2. After Dec. 2 you will need to purchase your permit at the Transportation Services Office. Parking Permit will expire on Dec.r 31. Access to the Parking Portal is available outside of the Open Enrollment platform by visiting the Transportation website. Permits will be delivered to departments beginning Dec. 16. To pick up your permit prior to Dec. 16, bring your current permit to Transportation Services and exchange it for the new permit. Please continue to check Tech Today and your email for updates on Open Enrollment.

For Open Access Week Michigan Tech has launched a new website, a one-stop-shop for all of Michigan Tech’s free and open-source offerings:

• More than 6,000 open access articles in Michigan Tech's Digital Commons 
• Free data including the Keweenaw Research Center weather station, which includes live, webcam and full archival weather data and housing the Free Inactive Patent Search, a tool to search patents to help in finding inactive patents that have fallen into public domain
• Free software including the Astrophysics Source Code Library (ASCL) open repository which was started by Michigan Tech physicist Robert Nemiroff in 1999 and now lists over 2,000 codes and the Psychology Experiment Building Language (PEBL) software for psychological testing used in laboratories and by clinicians around the world. It is developed and maintained by Shane Mueller in the Department of Cognitive and Learning Sciences.
• Free hardware including hundreds of digitally manufactured designs and dozens of complex machines for everything from plastic recycling systems to water safety testing tools and open source lab equipment. • Open source courses like FOSS101 — Essentials of Free and Open Source Software — a free course offered on canvas to teach Linux commands and the Git revision control system or MSE4777/MSE5777/EE4777/EE5777 Open-source 3-D printing - teaches OpenSCAD, FreeCAD, Blender, Arduino, and RepRap 3-D printing.
• Two student organizations: Michigan Tech Open Source Hardware Enterprise, a student organization dedicated to the development and availability of open-source hardware and the Open Source Club, which focuses around developing and publishing open-source software.
• Open source outreach such as Crazy Smart Summer: Girls Build Robots To Help People

With the majority of big companies now contributing to open source projects it is clearly a major trend. All supercomputers (including our own supercomputer: Superior), 90% of cloud servers, 82% of smartphones and 62% of embedded systems run on open-source operating systems. More than 70% of ”internet of things“ devices also use open-source software. 90% of the Fortune Global 500 pay for the open-source Linux operating system from Red Hat, a company that makes billions of dollars a year for the service they provide on top of the product that can be downloaded for free.

The open-source hardware movement is roughly 15 years behind its software counterpart, but Michigan Tech is a leader in the field, and it could catch up quickly. In order to attract students that are excited about technical freedom and open source, we want to make Michigan Tech’s contributions much easier to find. If you see any free and open-source Michigan Tech offering unlisted please add it to the open edit wiki in the appropriate section.

We’re halfway through the semester and it's flying by. We hope your semester is going well so far. A way that helps us in the Office of Continuous Improvement stay on track is using a lot of visual management.

Since we have multiple student employees with different schedules, visuals that show where we are with tasks in the office is crucial. We use whiteboards to record the progress of our work, and when we need to know the status, we can just look at the boards. They provide status at a glance!  

Tools like visual management provide a great opportunity to improve processes and get everyone working toward the same goal. If you want to learn more about visual management, contact us at the Office of Continuous Improvement. You can stop by our office at 136W Wadsworth Hall or e-mail improvement@mtu.edu.

The next Materials Science and Engineering (MSE) seminar takes place from 11 a.m. to noon today (Oct. 22) in M&M 610. Pinaki Mukherjee (MSE) will present "Recent Advances in ACMAL STEM Facility."

This talk presents an overview of state-of-the-art capabilities of the aberration-corrected scanning transmission electron microscope (ac-STEM) at ACMAL, Michigan Tech.

Mukherjee, who joined Michigan Tech in January 2018, obtained his PhD in Materials Engineering from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He worked as a post-doctorate researcher at Rutgers University, The State University of New Jersey. He was an affiliate of the National Center for Electron Microscopy, at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Tanvi Bhatt, Department of Physical Therapy, University of Illinois - Chicago, will present "Perturbation Training for Fall-Risk Reduction: Inception, Evolution, and Clinical Translation" from 3 to 4 p.m. Friday (Oct. 25) in ATDC 101.

Bhatt will describe perturbation-based prevention training in inducing proactive and reactive adaptations to externally induced mechanical perturbations and present evidence from lab-based clinical trials in healthy, aging and neurological populations. Everyone welcome, students strongly encouraged to attend. Refreshments provided and no registration is needed.

Job Postings For Tuesday, October 22, 2019

Staff and faculty job descriptions are available in Human Resources. For more information regarding staff positions, call 7-2280 or by email.  For more information regarding faculty positions, contact the academic department in which the position is posted. 

Assistant or Associate Professor of Remote Sensing and Geospatial Analysis, School of Forest Resources and Environmental Science. Apply online. 

Facilities and Events Manager Memorial Union. Apply online.

Michigan Technological University is an Equal Opportunity Educational Institution/Equal Opportunity Employer, which includes providing equal opportunity for protected veterans and individuals with disabilities. Accommodations are available. If you require any auxiliary aids, services, or other accommodations to apply for employment, or for an interview, at Michigan Technological University, please notify the Human Resources office at 906-487-2280 or mtujobs@mtu.edu.

Marvelous Metals Seminar Today

Join thousands of students and early career chemists from around the world for this free event during National Chemistry Week.

Discover how chemists are developing new technologies using metals at the intersection of organic and inorganic chemistry. Enjoy a live interactive video broadcast featuring presentations and Q&A with experts in the country. Trivia and raffle prizes will also be available. 

The live stream will start at 6:45 p.m. today(Oct. 22) in Forestry 144. Contact Momoko Tajiri with any questions.

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RTC Colloquium Tomorrow

The next RTC Colloquium takes place from noon to 1 p.m. tomorrow (Oct. 23) in the mezzanine in the Rozsa Center for the Performing Arts.

This colloquium employs Jonathan Safran Foer’s bestseller "Eating Animals" as a case study to forward the rhetorical technique of “orchestrated appeals,” as a persuasive strategy for communicating vegetarianism to potentially resistant audiences.

By mapping the web of connections between food and varied life areas, rhetors can identify with values already held by audiences with diverse ideological commitments and explore alignments between existing beliefs and exigencies for change. The speakers are Oren Abeles (HU) and graduate student Emma Lozon. 

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Academic Research Program with MnDOT

The Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT) is requesting letters of interest from colleges and universities to provide academic research on a wide variety of transportation-related topics through a master contract. Contracts will include research support, implementation and technology transfer, and education activities to address specific research issues identified by MnDOT.

Michigan Tech currently has an existing master contract with MnDOT which expires on 06/30/21, but due to some changes in the way work order contracts are handled at MnDOT, we need to resubmit a new proposal to be eligible for research contracts with MnDOT. The Michigan Tech Transportation Institute (MTTI) is planning to purse a master contract renewal in cooperation with our Sponsored Programs Office (SPO) and would like your assistance in identifying those project areas of research which are of interest to you.

A comprehensive list of research topic areas is included in this Google form. Please identify those areas of research you may wish to collaborate on in the future. A response is required by Oct. 25 for inclusion in this proposal. Any questions, email Pam Hannon, or call 7-3065.

Michigan Tech was mentioned in the article "Hockey Factories: Which NCAA program has produced the most NHL talent in the post-lockout era?" in The Hockey News.

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Michigan Tech students volunteering for Make a Difference Day was covered by the Daily Mining Gazette.

SFRES Professor invited to George Mason University

Jared Wolfe (SFRES) delivered an invited lecture at George Mason University on Friday (Oc. 18) where he presented on the evolution of plumage and molt patterns in tropical birds.

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Humanities Professor Presents Work at Conference

Stephanie Carpenter (HU) presented her current work, a fictional project that imagines Shaker conversion and de-conversion in the early 1840s, at the annual conference of the Communal Studies Association, Thursday through Saturday (Oct. 17-19} in Winterthur, Delaware.

Carpenter's research toward this project was supported by a 2017 Maker-Creator fellowship from the Winterthur Museum, Garden and Library, where this year's CSA conference was held.