As part of the H-STEM construction project, a water outage spanning several hours is scheduled tomorrow (May 17) for the Dow Environmental Sciences and Engineering Building.
The water outage will begin at 6 a.m. If all goes as planned, the water should be back on by midafternoon.
The Center for Educational Outreach (CEO) will be making our annual transition to operating out of Wadsworth Hall's fourth floor, beginning today (May 16), to coordinate Summer Youth Programs (SYP).
During this transition, response times may be delayed. Thank you for your patience as we prepare for our 50th summer of high impact programming for pre-college students.
The department will return to our academic-year offices on the second floor of the Administration Building on Aug. 8 after SYP programming has concluded.
Although the early years of the pandemic are behind us and we are beginning to adjust to a new normal in our classrooms, labs and professional activities, faculty continue to report feeling exhausted and overstressed. Two recent essays in Inside Higher Ed suggest unique institutional responses: a "Chapter 11" work relief declaration and a return to values and workload equity redesign.
The Chapter 11 suggestion was made by an anonymous faculty caregiver overwhelmed by unrelenting teaching and academic demands that she could not fulfill following an official two-week hiatus necessitated by her child’s health crisis. This was not simply a personal problem; she argues that faculty are “like lemmings walking off a cliff of overwork” with the requirements for career advancement ever-increasing, an expansion of committee and administrative tasks, and constant pivots, instructional updates and altered expectations for teaching. The author proposes a Chapter 11 for faculty that would allow overwhelmed colleagues to step away from some of these responsibilities. Too often, we just watch each other struggle.
In the other article, Doug Lederman describes a state of faculty “demoralization” characterized by detachment, cynicism and dissatisfaction, provoked by a discrepancy between espoused values like equity, care and deep learning and enacted values that tend more to system preservation and economic goals. Added to this is the realization that a faculty career is changing given current and future constraints — less job security, more surveillance and accountability, diminished institutional flexibility, a paucity of faculty resources. Instead, a mythic ideal is upheld as a standard for faculty performance requiring constant availability, unquestioning loyalty, no caregiving distractions and bodies that never falter. There is considerable evidence that experiences of exhaustion and demoralization often jeopardize the progress of women caregivers in STEM, especially those with children (see, for example, these two recent publications — ”Preventing a Secondary Epidemic of Lost Scientists” and “Voices of Untenured Female Professors in STEM”). Lederman argues that these issues impact recruitment and retention, undermining institutional goals of faculty equity and diversity, and points out that campus culture has a critical impact on institutional competitiveness both for talent and institutional reputation. He urges university leadership to gather data on workplace conditions (note the ADVANCE AFEQT tool), measure workload inequities, update systems of reward and accountability, and reconfigure administrative systems to uphold core cultural values.
We hope that innovative responses like a faculty Chapter 11 or institutional reconfigurations around deep values can catalyze a shift in the culture of academe toward more humane priorities and an institutional redesign that is more inclusively responsive.
Today’s feature was shared with us by Jennifer Slack (IPEC/HU) and the ADVANCE PI team. If you have an article you think we should feature, please email it to advance-mtu@mtu.edu and we will consider adding it to the ADVANCE Weekly Roundup.
The ADVANCE Weekly Roundup is brought to you by ADVANCE at Michigan Tech, an NSF-funded initiative dedicated to improving faculty career success, retention, diversity, equity and inclusion. Past articles are available on the ADVANCE Newsblog.
To learn more about our featured topic, our mission, programming efforts, and to check out our growing collection of resources, contact us or visit our website.
Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering-Engineering Mechanics candidate Upendra Yadav will present their doctoral defense at 10 a.m. tomorrow (May 17) in person in MEEM 1021 and virtually via Zoom.
Yadav's defense is titled "Atomistic-Continuum Membrane and Machine Learning Models for Two-Dimensional Materials."
Yadav is advised by Susanta Ghosh.
Michigan Tech head hockey coach Joe Shawhan has named Arvid Caderoth and Brett Thorne the captains of Michigan Tech's 2022-23 hockey team.
Caderoth, a forward from Gothenburg, Sweden, hasn't missed a game in his career, skating in 67. He has 34 career points with six goals and 28 assists. Caderoth was named to the WCHA All-Rookie Team in 2020-21 after he led conference newcomers with 18 points. He tallied 16 points (four goals, 12 assists) as a sophomore last season and was third on the team in penalty minutes. Before coming to Houghton, Caderoth was a captain for Frölunda HC J20 in 2019-20 and an alternate captain in 2018-19.
Thorne, a junior defenseman from Halifax, Nova Scotia, has also appeared in every game over his two seasons with 67 contests under his belt. He has tallied 24 career points with six goals and 18 assists. He was Tech's second-highest scoring defenseman last season with 17 points (5 goals, 12 assists) and was second in penalty minutes.
Logan Pietila and Ryland Mosley will serve as alternate captains.
Read more at the Michigan Tech Athletics website.
Rick Koubek was quoted by WLUC TV6 in a story on the U.P. CEO Summit held last week. Koubek spoke about increasing the number of entrepreneurial opportunities available to U.P. college grads.
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Michigan Tech sound design student Sage Moser was mentioned in a University of Wisconsin-Stout press release. Moser collaborated with UW-Stout School of Art and Design students on a video game called Top Dog, creating music for the game’s environment and arena battles.
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Steven Voelker (CFRES) was mentioned by Bioengineer.org in a story about University of Utah-led study findings that tree growth rate is limited not by photosynthesis, but on how fast a tree’s cells can divide. Voelker is one of the study’s co-authors.
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Wayne Weaver and Rush Robinett (ME-EM) were mentioned by Phys.org and Bioengineer.org in a story about efforts to design a reliable and resilient microgrid for the moon. The story was originally published by Sandia LabNews.
Design Expo Still Seeking Attendee, Participant Feedback
Continuous improvement is an integral part of Design Expo. If you participated in or attended Expo on April 21, please tell us what you thought about this year’s event.
The feedback form will remain open until Friday (May 20). Your feedback will be helpful as we start planning for Design Expo 2023!
Thank you for helping us make next year's event even better!
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Lunch and Learn: Understanding BCBS Explanations of Benefits
Please join us at noon tomorrow (May 17) in the MUB Alumni Lounge as we welcome Molly Mikesch, client engagement manager for Michigan Technological University from Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan (BCBSM).
Mikesch will explain how to understand your BCBSM explanation of benefits. During this discussion, she will go through how to set up an online account through BCBSM and how employees and members can see and better understand their explanation of benefits through BCBSM. Please bring your device(s), as this will be an interactive session for all members.
Please email benefits@mtu.edu to reserve your seat today!
This Lunch and Learn counts toward Option 2 in your Husky Health Checklist.
Follow Michigan Tech Wellness on Facebook for upcoming health and wellness initiatives supported by the Benefits Office, which may count toward your 2022 Husky Health Checklist.
To have your event automatically appear, please submit them to the University Events Calendar.
No events are scheduled for today. Visit the University Events Calendar.
