August 14, 2023

It’s an exciting time as we finalize our preparations for students to return to campus. Over two days, we will welcome our first-year students as they move into their residence halls, meet new roommates, say goodbye to parents and get their first taste of college life.

Michigan Tech’s Move-In will take place on Friday (Aug.18) from 12 p.m. to 6 p.m. and Saturday (Aug. 19) from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. The two-day Move-In event has allowed us to reduce congestion and provide a more relaxed atmosphere for our new Huskies.

We will be closing some parking lots to facilitate Move-In (see below). If your regular parking lot is closed on Friday, please plan to park in an alternative location. This would be a huge help to the students and would also ensure you are able to leave campus more easily at the end of the day.

Parking Lots Closed for Friday:

• Lot 27 (Admin Visitor Lot)
• Lot 11 (Black Permit Lot next to Admin)

Recommended Alternative Parking Lots for Friday:

• Lot 33 (Meese) — To avoid traffic, this lot is strongly recommended.
• Lot 2 (Behind the Academic Office Building)
• Lot 8 (Behind Walker, accessible off of Cliff Drive)
• Lot 10 (Commuter Lot east of the Rozsa Center)
• Lot 12 (Between Highway 41 and the MUB)
• Lot 14 (Between the Center for Diversity and Inclusion and the Rozsa)
• Lot 1 — Only the west side of the lot is available, and it will be a high-traffic area for Move-In.

Open Parking Lots for Saturday:

• Lot 10 (Commuter Lot east of the Rozsa Center)
• Lot 33 (Meese)
• All other parking lots will be closed on Saturday.

Cliff Drive Traffic Changes:

• One-way operation heading eastbound

Thank You for Your Support
The Waino Wahtera Center for Student Success and Residence Education and Housing Services appreciates your support as we make these changes to improve the process of welcoming new students to campus, ensuring a great start to their Husky experience.

The Great Lakes Research Center (GLRC) is thrilled to announce an increase in student travel and research funding starting today (Aug. 14). These grants are a strategic investment in advancing science, increasing collaboration between student and advisor, and communicating the exciting research being conducted by GLRC faculty members and student awardees.

• GLRC Student Travel Grants
  GLRC Student Travel Grant awards will increase to a maximum of $1,000 per recipient for a podium presentation, and $750 for a poster presentation, at a scientific conference, meeting or workshop. The presentations must highlight GLRC-affiliated research developed by students working with their GLRC member advisor.
  
  GLRC Student Travel Grant applications are accepted anytime and reviewed on the last Friday of each month. Students are eligible for one grant per degree. Applications must be submitted at least two weeks in advance of the travel. A GLRC acknowledgment should be included on the poster or presentation. The presentation/poster may be displayed on the electronic showcase in the GLRC or posted to social media.
  
  
• GLRC Student Research Grants
  GLRC Student Research Grant awards will increase to a maximum of $1,000 per recipient. The GLRC Student Research Grants are intended to provide undergraduate and graduate students with GLRC member advisors with an opportunity to gain experience in writing competitive grants, and to perform research they would not be able to attempt due to funding limitations. The grants are also meant to provide seed research data for advisors to use in pursuing externally funded research support.
  
  GLRC Student Research Grant applications are accepted three times a year — Nov. 1, March 1 and July 1. A student is eligible to receive a maximum of one research grant per academic year. Master's and undergraduate students are eligible for one award during their degree program. Ph.D. students are eligible for up to two awards during their degree program. A final report is due within 30 days of the grant end date, including information on the next steps for the GLRC-affiliated advisor in obtaining external funding for this research.
  
  Funded students are expected to participate/volunteer for at least one GLRC activity during the grant period.

Chem Stores (UCS) will have limited staffing starting next Monday (Aug. 21) and lasting at least through the end of September. During this time we will have reduced capacity for processing non-chemical orders and for delivering chemicals to laboratories.

To maintain our priority for processing laboratory chemicals, we ask that you:

• Only place orders for laboratory chemicals, biological items and stockroom items. While stock sales will be continued, you are always encouraged to order pack or case quantities of non-chemical supplies and equipment using the University's standard purchasing methods.

• Limit requests for ordering non-chemical items as much as possible. Such requests may be delayed or refused.

• Consider picking up all your orders from our service window. Our delivery capabilities will be greatly limited.

• When possible, submit order requests for liquid nitrogen and dry ice at least 24 hours in advance of when it's needed so we can plan and coordinate a good pickup time.

As we begin the new semester, we also wish to remind new faculty, staff and students who will be placing orders through Chem Stores to review our General Ordering Procedures & Authorization requirements.

We appreciate your patience and understanding. Please contact us at chemstores@mtu.edu if you have any questions or concerns.

CRM Advance is an Ellician delivered Advancement solution for higher education. It is packed with many enhancements that will revolutionize the way we manage our alumni relationship data and streamline advancement operations, reporting and gift processing.

The Advancement and Alumni Engagement team would like to announce the conversion to CRM Advance in the coming weeks. The first official step in the conversion process has been completed. This software will replace the use of Banner 8/9 for all alumni-related data.

Things to note as we make this transition:

• All Alumni data entry to Banner Forms have ended.
  Over the next few weeks, the Advancement Services Team will be working with EAS/IT to convert and stand up our new CRM Advance system.
  
  
• Alumni data in Banner 8/9 is current only as of the close of business on Aug. 7.
  You may view data in Banner and use the Internal Query Tool, but as time passes, it will get more out of date. This is the same case with reports you may receive automatically or run on demand that are Oracle or WebFocus based. More information about the conversion of reports will be announced at a later date.
  
  
• Gift and pledge reports are not available during this time.
  These reports will be shared when CRM Advance is available. Information on major gifts will be communicated to campus partners. Questions about major gifts should be directed to Lorraine Young at llyoung@mtu.edu.
  
  Advancement staff and campus partners may enter updates for Biographical Updates and Contact Report submissions during this transition period.
  
  
• Access to MyMichiganTech for alumni has ended.
  Alumni may still update their contact information. Alumni are also still able to request an email account if they do not have one. The process remains unchanged — the alum contacts the Office of Alumni Engagement to confirm their status.

Additional information and training details will be forthcoming. 

Please submit questions to Alumni and Advancement Services at aae-info-services@mtu.edu.

Jenna Lane (Career Services) was interviewed by WJMN Local 3 in a broadcast previewing Michigan Tech’s 906 Industry Day, an outdoor job fair highlighting employment opportunities in the U.P.

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Jeff Toorongian (CTL) was quoted by WLUC TV6 in a story exploring methods being used to  integrate artificial intelligence into Upper Peninsula classrooms.

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The U.S. Department of Energy announced Michigan Tech as one of six recipients of a total $9 million in funding for technology development projects that will help model a low-carbon intermodal freight transportation system. MTU was awarded $1.2 million by the Advanced Research Project Agency (ARPA-E) to build a flexible, adaptive modeling platform that will support “long-term planning decisions on transportation mode, route, and charging.” The DOE's press release was picked up by Green Car Congress.

2023 Michigan Canvas Users Conference Presentation Proposals Now Open

Presentation proposals for the 2023 Michigan Canvas Users Conference are now open! Submit your proposal by Aug. 28.

Wayne State University is excited to host the 2023 Michigan Canvas Users Conference, a gathering of Canvas users from educational institutions across the state, on Oct. 6.

The mission of this year's conference is to explore student engagement comprehensively, incorporating diverse perspectives from faculty, instructional designers and student success staff.

Potential conversations surrounding student, faculty and academic staff engagement may include but are not limited to:

• Creating global and experiential learning opportunities
• Designing equitable and accessible courses with multiple forms of student, instructor and content interaction
• Implementing outcomes and rubrics assessment to measure program success
• Intentionally integrating AI into teaching and learning
• Identifying opportunities for innovation through Canvas Data and reporting
• Using Canvas for student and instructor support services

Learn more at the Michigan Canvas Users Conference 2023 website.

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Wondr Health Enrollment Begins Next Week

Experience the anti-diet. No points, counting calories or restrictions.

Michigan Tech is offering you a digital weight loss program where you don't have to give up the foods you love. In fact, Wondr encourages you to enjoy every single bite.

The Wondr Health digital program is based in behavioral science, and it is available at no cost to you*. Learn the science of eating the foods you love while still losing weight. Plus, you'll have more energy, sleep better and feel stronger, all while reducing your risk of diabetes and heart disease.

Space is limited. Sign-up starts today (Aug. 14) and ends Aug. 27. The program begins Sept. 11.

For details, please see the Wondr Health enrollment flyer and visit Wondr Health's Michigan Tech webpage.

* Restrictions and eligibility info can be found at Wondr Health's MichiganTech webpage.

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PhD Proposal Defense: Yifu Deng, CS

Ph.D. in Computer Science student Yifu Deng will present a doctoral dissertation proposal at 10:30 a.m. on Wednesday (Aug. 16). The defense will be held in person in Rekhi 101 and virtually via Zoom.

Deng's proposal is titled "Near-Memory Processing Accelerators for Approximate Nearest Neighbor Search over Large-Scale Datasets."

From the abstract:
Modern machine learning techniques can learn high-dimensional vector representations of various objects and serve as the foundation for machine learning-powered information processing systems. Important vector applications include approximate-nearest-neighbors (ANN) search objects for a given query, which provides objects similar to the query. Nonetheless, it is difficult to achieve low-latency ANN search with ever-growing datasets and vector dimensions. The execution time of the vector search phase must be sub-milliseconds or less for production systems. However, it takes > 100ms to query a vector on a billion-scale dataset using a CPU, and the query latency on a 100 million-scale dataset is reported to be approximately 5ms even when a GPU accelerator is used. To address this issue, this project aims to investigate the near-memory processing accelerators to reduce ANN query latency, by minimizing the data movement between processors and memory devices.

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Traveling Tech Talks Alumni Event Heading to Colorado

The Office of Alumni Engagement announced a new Michigan Tech alumni event tradition last year: Traveling Tech Talks. This series, hosted throughout the country, showcases the journeys of alumni thought leaders in a variety of fields, and provides professional networking opportunities to attendees.

The next Traveling Tech Talks event will take place in Denver, Colorado, on Sept. 7 at The Oxford Hotel. The program, “The Practice of High Performance,” will feature the 2023 NBA Champion Denver Nuggets Vice President of Sports Medicine Steve Short '10 and will be moderated by Gordon Mosher '01 '02.

Networking and arrivals begin at 7 p.m., the program starts at 7:30 p.m., and more networking will follow. Heavy hors d'oeuvres will be served, in addition to a cash bar. Smart casual attire is encouraged. Cost to attend is $15 per person, and registration before Aug. 31 is required.

We encourage all MTU faculty, staff and friends to spread the word to Huskies in their networks living in the Denver area. Keep an eye out for future Traveling Tech Talks locations and topics to be announced. Recordings of past Traveling Tech Talks events can be found on the Alumni and Friends website.

Please reach out to Assistant Vice President of Alumni Engagement Jennifer Lucas with any questions or concerns.

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Rozsa and VPA Launching Pay As You're Able Ticketing for 2023-24 Season

The Rozsa Center for the Performing Arts and the Michigan Tech Department of Visual and Performing Arts (VPA) are proud to announce the launch of Pay As You're Able ticketing for the upcoming Rozsa season, including all Presenting Series events announced earlier this month.

Michigan Tech students will still be eligible for free tickets through Student Rush, sponsored by the Experience Tech fee.

What Is Pay As You’re Able?
Pay As You're Able ticketing is designed to remove financial barriers and promote greater accessibility to the performing arts. The program allows guests to pay what they can afford for their tickets, enabling them to choose from various pricing options based on their circumstances. Pay As You’re Able applies to Rozsa, Michigan Tech Music and Michigan Tech Theatre events.

How Does Pay As You're Able Work?
Online, guests select the price tier(s) they can afford when purchasing tickets. In person, a member of the box office team will share the Pay As You’re Able pricing tiers. Guests choose the level or levels that make sense for them. The Rozsa encourages guests to pay what they can to enjoy the same high-quality experience, regardless of the amount they can afford to pay.

All eligible events will be labeled as Pay As You’re Able, with the full ticket fee listed. The full fee represents the fair market value of a ticket, and guests are encouraged to contribute what they can afford. For some, that may mean covering the full ticket fee and supporting part of someone else's ticket, paying some of the fee, or opting for the minimum price.

Why Do Pay As You’re Able?
The Rozsa and VPA are committed to creating an equitable and inclusive arts culture where everyone feels welcome. We believe that making events financially accessible to all is an important part of that commitment. Pay As You’re Able ticketing allows us to do just that.

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Pay As You’re Able Presenting Series tickets go on sale tomorrow (Aug. 15), and can be purchased online at tickets.mtu.edu, by phone at 906-487-1906, or at the Rozsa Box Office. The Michigan Tech Art, Music, and Theatre series will be announced in the coming weeks, with tickets going on sale later this month.

The Rozsa looks forward to welcoming our community to an extraordinary season of performances, made even more special by our commitment to financial accessibility through Pay As You're Able ticketing.

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.