Autumn 2008 n Volume 45, Number 2
Days of War,
Captivity, and Faith
Inside—
A Conversation with
President Mroz
Michigan Tech’s
Honor Roll of Donors
Create the Future
4 Q&A with President Mroz
Change is good when it’s
done right.
8 Days of War, Captivity,
and Faith
James Cooper ’39 survives
a plane crash and WWII
POW camps.
Michigan Tech Magazine n Autumn 2008
12A PhD at Twenty-one,
the World at Twenty-five?
Katerina Aifantis ’01 is
on her way to creating
the future.
14 Helping Troubled Students
Michigan Tech assists
students, thanks to crosscampus collaboration.
16 The Semi-Sweet Story of
Sugar-Making
Researchers study Puerto
Rico’s yesterdays and today
with an eye on tomorrow.
18 Short’s Story
The guy next door
(Kingsford, actually)
succeeds on turf and in class.
19 Blowing the Top Off
Mount St. Helens’ Secrets
Drumbeat earthquakes
drive Greg Waite.
20 Tech Students and the
Greater Good
Saving a creek, improving
accounting procedures,
analyzing dams: students
help local communities
and more.
24 Alumni Reunion
Photo Review
These are the good old days.
Back “My Father’s Hands”
Cover by Randall Freisinger,
Professor of Humanities
25 Alumni Association Notes
Awards, new board
members, news, and
HuskyLink.
29 Class Notes
Get caught up.
Michigan Technological University n www.mtu.edu
QAO
&
A Conversation with President Mroz
n a sunny summer day, Michigan Tech President Glenn Mroz sat down in
his fifth-floor office overlooking Houghton and the lift bridge and discussed
Michigan Tech’s current state and future plans.
Universities support society in a variety of ways. Given how fast our world is
changing, what do you see as Tech’s vision and purpose?
Michigan Tech must maintain and enhance the quality of education at all levels. Tech
graduates want credibility in the marketplace, and they want to know their education is
relevant to helping solve the problems that lie ahead.
Programs like Enterprise really combine the students’ in-classroom learning with
practical experiences that include research and development.
Our students will continue to apply the science and technology to help the world, but
they will also manage, communicate, and understand science and technology’s social,
economic, and ecological implications. We feel that students who have those skills are
going to be highly valued in the marketplace.
Does Michigan Tech have to change to respond to the technological challenges that exist in society?
Tech is always changing. That is the agility of Michigan Tech. We were started to
assist the mining industry, then mineral processing came in, then broader engineering and science programs. We continue adding new programs to meet the needs of the
marketplace. And we’ll continue to change, strengthening current programs and judiciously starting new programs that can pass muster with our middle name.
So, how are we positioned to change?
The greatest need in any change is having the people who know where to go, are willing to go there, and have the ability to move the organization forward. The people at
Michigan Tech are really the greatest strength for effecting change.
Recent surveys reveal that Tech people like it here, and students and alumni
would like to be here.
There’s a big change happening, where a number of companies are coming to
Houghton to establish themselves with offices closer to our talented faculty and students. GE and Ford are two, and there are more companies moving in.
Are you concerned that if Tech changes too much, we will lose the things that
matter most to alumni—a great undergraduate education, strong University
traditions, and a rich sense of community? How will these be preserved?
One of our greatest attributes has been to redefine undergraduate education in a
technological world. When you look at the research universities, we really are not like
Michigan Tech Magazine n Autumn 2008
them. When you look at teaching universities, we really are not like them, either. But
we have—maybe because of our size and location but surely because of our people—
added practical R&D experience to undergraduate education.
The people who hire our students recognize that, and they have been coming to campus in record numbers over the past four years.
And there are good enrollment projections for the fall.
That’s the interesting thing about enrollment. When you talk to students, you wonder how much they know about your institution. And students are saying, “Well I’m
coming here because of the Enterprise program.” Or, “I’ve already talked to a professor
here.” Or, “I really want to get into the Applied Portfolio Management Program within
a year.”
The students realize that these are opportunities that they just wouldn’t get at another
university.
For this fall, tuition and fees increased $805, from $9,828 to $10,633. What are
the plans to offset rising tuition costs?
Financial aid at the university has risen at a slightly faster rate than tuition, and we
need to assure affordability and assure that we can attract good students. We need to
keep going forward with philanthropic scholarships to help students out. It gets tiresome to hear that students pay a greater proportion of their education than I did, but
it’s true.
What’s the biggest challenge as president?
I think one of the big challenges is to get everyone to understand what Tech is. Had
I walked out the door in 1974 and not come back for a long period of time, I would
know what Tech was in 1974, but it is a much different institution now.
Today, we are on a path to become a technological university for the world. That
really is the aim. It’s educating people from around the world or from here and working
with our industry partners who employ people all around the world. When our graduates leave Tech, they are talented people who can operate anywhere in the world.
What’s the hardest decision you’ve had to make?
When I first came in, there were substantial budget cuts, and those effected not only
the institution but also a lot of people’s lives. Those were never made easily, but, at the
end of the day, you knew that the institution that has been around for one hundred
years needs to be around for another one hundred years or more. I needed to make
those tough decisions for the current students and the future students.
“Tech is always
changing. That
is the agility of
Michigan Tech.”
What advice would you give to students who say that one day they would
like to be the president of Michigan Tech?
Go for it. It’s a great job. A lot of what I do has to do with keeping a consistent message, keeping everyone on track, helping people understand in practical terms what
Michigan Technological University n www.mtu.edu
“Failing is not
bad. Not trying
is really bad.”
Michigan Tech is all about. Where it is going. What are the things about Michigan
Tech that line up and what things need to change. And what things will never change,
like the culture of Michigan Tech that encourages people to try new things, to not be
afraid of failure. Failing is not bad. Not trying is really bad.
opment. It supports programs that encourage students to follow their dreams. We can
attract the students who have the ability to do that and those who may not have the
natural talent for it but can develop it. A lot of schools do a program like Enterprise but
not on the scale that we do it.
For alumni, if you could recommend one book to them, what would it be and
why?
Enterprise projects are really like the students’ first jobs.
I guess it would be Good to Great by Jim Collins. It’s built on some principles that
have really helped me and the executive team. Make sure you pay attention to what you
are good at. Make sure you pay attention to what drives the economic engine of the
organization. You have to think about what you really have a passion for.
One of the principles that was key early on [and in Good to Great] was the Stockdale
principle: “You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end—which you
can never afford to lose—with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your
current reality, whatever they might be.” That may be a little negative, but it’s real.
What are some issues that alumni don’t usually read about that will be
addressed on campus this fall?
There’s the new construction. They are going to redo US 41 for safety issues [near
McNair and Wadsworth Halls]. We are looking at a new residence hall, with apartments, behind McNair.
And the Michigan Tech Enterprise SmartZone, with its business incubators, business development programs, and student programs, is something we don’t really talk
about too much. There are about thirteen companies, and they are running out of space.
We are buying the UPPCO building [in part] to provide business incubator space.
How can alumni and friends get involved to support Tech?
There are so many ways now: keeping informed about campus; serving on an advisory
board; and one critical thing is increasing our fund-raising, both on campus and with
our alumni and friends.
Can you explain the importance of growing the endowment?
If you look at the state appropriation over forty years, it’s essentially the same as it
was in the late 1960s and early 1970s in CPI [consumer price index]-adjusted dollars.
The state has been a great partner, but at the same time, the level of sophistication in
education has increased. You can just pop the hood on your car, take a look, and think
back to 1970 with a slant six and no air conditioning.
Education has gotten similarly complicated, and the student who is in the Senior
Design Expo or the Enterprise program can convey really complex material in very
simple language to people who don’t happen to be in the same discipline as them.
And what supports that effort are the outside dollars, especially the endowment. It
supports the talented faculty who are skilled in teaching as well as research and devel-
Michigan Tech Magazine n Autumn 2008
What makes Silicon Valley entrepreneurs successful is that they learn how to fail fast.
In other words, they can start on something, and, if it’s going nowhere, they know when
to shift gears and try something new. I think the only way you can learn how to do that
is by doing it. And that is why the Senior Design and Enterprise programs are so good.
The students get an opportunity to do that when their job doesn’t depend on it.
Again, the endowment supports programs like these. Universities that have endowments will excel, and universities that don’t will not.
Michigan Tech has received some remarkable gifts in recent times. What is
their impact?
We had a group of students working at a hospital with a university in Africa because
of the generosity of Frank Pavlis and his Institute for Global Technological Leadership.
And the entire Enterprise program would not exist without donors.
We’ve got the largest Peace Corps Master’s International Program in the world, and
recently, Pat Nelson [wife of Charles ’36, inventor of the paintball] and the John ’51 and
Elizabeth Widenhoefer Trust have supported it in a very substantial manner.
Dick ’56 and Bonnie Robbins have supported three chairs in sustainability, and they
were really spot on to what our advisory groups were encouraging us to do. The hiring
of those three endowed positions will really be a catalyst to hire more people in a number of departments across campus. It will strengthen programs that we are already good
at and have a passion for.
What is your hope for Michigan Tech’s future?
I would love to see Michigan Tech and the people at Michigan Tech get the recognition they deserve. The words “best kept secret” should be banished from the lexicon!
On our 150th anniversary in 2035, I would love to see a world-class faculty with
40 percent endowed positions; see us recognized as one of the best universities in the
world for what we do; see us recognized as a catalyst for education, research, and development at all levels; and be a place where people come to seek out new ideas with a
fresh outlook. n
Michigan Technological University n www.mtu.edu
Days
of War,
Captivity,
and Faith
By John Gagnon
James Cooper—
World War II navigator,
POW, and survivor.
Just don’t call him “hero.”
D
uring World War II, James Cooper ’39 cheated death. In a bomber
over the flak-fierce skies above Germany, his plane was hit by anti-aircraft fire. The bomber and its crew of ten had to crash-land in a field
in Holland.
“The day we went down, the group lost two planes. There were no survivors of the other plane. Everyone in our crew survived.”
Lucky?
“Yes, yes,” he says, even though he ended up a prisoner of war for ten
months—a time of tension, boredom, loneliness, and misery.
Cooper graduated from Michigan Tech with a bachelor’s degree in metallurgical engineering. He went to work in Arizona, then enlisted in the Army
Air Force (a precursor to the Air Force), where he was a navigator on a B-24
bomber, called a Liberator. Cooper was in the 448th Bombardment Group
that, between December 1943 and April 1945, flew 262 missions and lost
460 men.
Liberators, which carried a large payload and had a long range, were
described as “flying boxcars” because they were more square than sleek. Like
many bombers, they were dolled up with paintings of women, pictured
expansively female, on the fuselage. One of the planes Cooper flew in was
named Daisy Mae, from the Lil’ Abner cartoons. “We flew Daisy Mae several times and once came back with severe damage. The crew chief was upset
that she had lost a finger, and he painted a purple heart on her blouse.”
After training stateside, Cooper arrived in England in April 1944. He
was stationed at Seething Air Field, near Norwich, 114 miles northeast of
London.
The British had a saying for American military men. “They’re overpaid,
oversexed, and over here,” Cooper says. “We had the answer to that. We’re
underpaid, undersexed, and under Eisenhower.” Actually, he says, the Brits
treated the Americans well.
Just before his last mission, he went on a three-day pass to London. “We
saw the House of Parliament, the Tower of London, and a bar or two.”
Some of the city was laid waste by German rockets, called buzz bombs.
“They weren’t too accurate. They had a motor that went ‘putt-putt-putt.’ As
long as you could hear them, you were all right. When the fuel went, they
fell wherever they were.” He recalls seeing St. Paul’s Cathedral, unscathed,
with “nothing but rubble for three or four blocks on either side of it.”
Cooper’s first missions began in late May—two flights daily to the French
coast, pounding Germany’s defenses and taking out bridges to prevent reinforcements and supplies. He was in the air over Normandy on D-Day.
Their bomber was low enough so that he could see the smoke, the muzzle
blasts, and the ships heeled over in reaction to the guns. “You couldn’t see
the landing craft, but you could see the wakes.” The sea was choked with
thousands of vessels; the sky with hundreds of bombers. He saw only one
German fighter plane. The pilot, he says, “was probably telling what he saw.
I don’t know if anybody believed him.”
The Daily Runs
Counting the prelude to D-Day, Cooper made twelve and a half runs to
the mainland. His daily routine began at four o’clock in the morning when
they were rousted out of bed. First, they ate breakfast—fresh eggs for those
who were flying, powdered eggs for everybody else. They attended briefings
on the target, the route, the weather, reported antiaircraft fire, speed, altitude,
and timing. Then they went to their planes.
“What was the mood?” Cooper is asked.
“Quiet,” he responds.
Michigan Tech Magazine n Autumn 2008
Before climbing aboard, he and his crew huddled like a
football team and grasped hands. “I usually got on the plane
last. Maybe that was superstitious.”
Typically, they took off thirty seconds apart in groups of
up to thirty-six planes, wing tip to wing tip. “That was not
without danger,” Cooper says. Clouds and contrails sometimes limited visibility. “Every week there were one or two
collisions.” Each group formed on a gaudily painted, easily seen plane. His was yellow-and-black checkerboard and
named You Cawn’t Miss It—which is what the British used
to say when giving directions.
On their runs into Germany, they typically took off at six
o’clock and returned around two o’clock. They climbed to
28,000 feet on the way there, where the temperature was
fifty below zero. They had boots and clothes laced with wires
that plugged into the electrical system for heat. Cooper had
two pairs of gloves: heavy for warmth, nylon for manipulating equipment. They did nothing barehanded. “At that cold,”
he says, “you stuck to anything you touched.”
The crew of ten consisted of pilot, copilot, navigator, bombardier, flight engineer,
He saw St. Paul’s Cathedral unscathed, with
radio operator, and four gunners. “We were a team. Everybody had a specialty, and we
“nothing but rubble for three or floor blocks on
depended on one another.” Each man was cross-trained for at least two jobs. Cooper
either side of it.”
was trained for navigator, gunner, and bombardier.
The missions into Germany were routinely 800 miles or more. (Berlin is about 570
miles from London.) Going in, they flew at 200 miles an hour with a stiff tail wind.
They had oxygen for use above 10,000 feet and carried 4,000 pounds of bombs. They had
radar that the Germans routinely jammed with electronic noise. They always had secondary targets, but bad weather or mechanical failure aborted some flights. Sometimes,
scout planes, called Pathfinders, which had better radar, dropped flares that the bombers
zeroed in on. After the drop, away from the flak, they returned to England at lower altitudes where there was less headwind and fuel consumption. After these missions, they
were debriefed and then went to the officers’ club for dinner, drinks, and relaxation.
The Fateful Flight
On June 29, 1944, they bombed an engine plant in Bernburg, in central Germany.
On the way back, the lead plane got confused. Cooper knew they were off course but
couldn’t do anything about it. “We couldn’t leave the formation. That was a triumph of
military discipline over common sense.”
They ended up flying over heavily defended Magdeburg three times. The first time
around, he surmises the Germans “were having a cup of tea.” The second time—they
were taking aim. The third time—“They were waiting for us.” Antiaircraft fire cut a fuel
line. “We ran out of gas,” Cooper says. They jettisoned heavy equipment—including
two machine guns and the radio—to lighten the load and stretch the fuel. They made
it to the coast and realized they wouldn’t make it across the English Channel, so they
turned around and crash-landed outside of a little town called Beemster, Holland.
On the way down, the pilot, copilot, and flight engineer stayed at their positions. The
others went to the rear of the plane and sat down—feet braced, hands behind the neck,
elbows on knees. Cooper prayed. “I put myself in the Lord’s hands. Whatever the decision was, I knew there was no appeal. I’d make it or not. I accepted that.”
In Holland, they landed safely. “You hit once, and you bounced pretty hard. You hit
the second time, you were sliding.” The nose wheel failed, then the other two wheels
went, and one engine broke loose. “That slowed us, and we stopped before a drainage
ditch at the end of the field.”
He had a few cuts on his legs but otherwise was fine. He got out and used a flare gun
to try to set the plane on fire. There wasn’t enough gas left for that to work. He looked
“I usually got on
the plane last.
Maybe that was
superstitious.”
Michigan Technological University n www.mtu.edu
around and saw dykes, fields, and windmills—and three young people, one a
girl, who had retreated to the edge of the field, away from the wreck.
He swam down the ditch for two hundred yards and then crawled to a
haystack. “I couldn’t dig in. Hay is hard. I didn’t know. I’m no farmer.” He
managed to cover himself and lay there for six hours until a German soldier,
looking for him, took a rest and sat right on him. “He was more nervous
than me. He thought I had the two machine guns from the plane.”
Cooper joined the rest of his crew, all of whom had been captured. The
Americans were taken by truck and train from Holland to Stalag Luft III
(permanent camp for airmen), on the border between Germany and Poland.
Cooper says Stalag III was “decent.” There were 10,000 men in the camp.
Craving Freedom and Food
Above, top: Cooper is pictured front row, far
right, with his crew. Above: the Daisy Mae
before “she lost her index finger to enemy fire.”
10
Michigan Tech Magazine n Autumn 2008
“They locked you up and left you alone. They didn’t mistreat us, but we
didn’t get fed enough.” They walked a lot. There was a library. Some men
studied, some played cards, some gambled—all “good ways to kill time.”
It was lonely. “You were so out of touch,” Cooper remembers. But Yankee
humor was irrepressible. He tells one story: “One fellow wrote to his wife
and asked for bedroom slippers. The letter took four months to get there and
an equal time to come back. She said, ‘In your letter, you mentioned slippers.
What color do you want?’”
Cooper spent seven months at Stalag III. By January, the Russians had
advanced to within ten miles, and the Germans moved all the prisoners out.
“They figured if we joined the Russians we’d be flying again.” He and the
others endured a forced march. Starting at midnight, they plodded doggedly for twenty hours the first day. The temperature was near zero with four
inches of snow on the ground. They had warm wool clothes but not proper
footwear. “There were a lot of frozen feet and some frozen hands.”
They walked for a week to get to Spremberg, in southeast Germany, where
they were loaded into boxcars, fifty men in a car, plus a guard. Being on that
boxcar for five days “was more miserable than walking,” Cooper says.
When they boarded the train, they had a quarter loaf of black bread
and a piece of blood sausage. Inside, the men stood and sat in shifts. Most
everybody was sick. There was vomit and excrement. “It was messy.” Cooper
remembers it as the worst part of the whole ordeal.
Once or twice a day the train stopped and they were allowed to go outside. They ended up in Stalag VII-A, at Moosberg, Germany. “Things were
pretty bad there.” Not much food. Overflowing latrines. A hundred thousand men, mostly French and American, shoehorned into a camp built to
hold one-tenth of that. “We were packed in close. We were all lousy.”
They had a slice of black bread for breakfast, which Cooper found out
later was “thirteen percent wood flour”—sawdust. That spare breakfast was
followed by a lean lunch—“barley soup that occasionally had a grain of barley in it.” For dinner they had whatever they could get from the Red Cross,
typically liver pate, Argentine corned beef, powdered milk, cigarettes, a
chocolate bar, margarine, crackers, and sugar cubes.
Red Cross packages only dribbled in because, at that stage of the war,
transportation in Germany was shot up and “nobody was getting anything.”
Misery loved company, though. “We gathered strength from each other,”
Cooper says. But some men cracked. “As the British say, ‘They went around
the bend.’”
On April 29, Patton’s Third Army liberated the camp. It was at noon on a
Sunday.
Going Home
“We stepped more lively then.” There was a short battle with a German combat unit
that was stationed next to the camp. Shots were going overhead. Cooper says, “We
were sitting there playing cards. There wasn’t anything else to do.” American soldiers
prevailed in an hour. In Moosberg, “they took down a Nazi flag on city hall and raised
up an American flag. There was a lot of cheering and a few tears—from everybody in
camp. The French, too.”
Soon they were trucked to France, where there were four embarkation points for
America, all named for cigarettes: Camel, Lucky Strike, Old Gold, Chesterfield. He
sailed on a troop ship from France to the Caribbean and then on to New York. The trip
took ten days, and he entered New York Harbor on June 7, one year and one day after
D-Day. “We passed the Statue of Liberty. Everybody ran to that side of the ship.”
He had sent word to his family, via the Red Cross, that he was liberated. His wife,
who had their baby in the meantime, never got the message. “I called her from New
York. She wasn’t sure I was alive, though she was informed that I was believed to be a
POW. I didn’t talk to her too long—a lot of people were waiting to use the phone. But
all of a sudden, she was very happy.”
He got a uniform, partial pay, and some leave. He arranged for his dad to reserve a
cabin for two months at Twin Lakes, thirty miles southwest of his native Houghton.
He had dropped from 155 to 115 pounds. “A little swimming, a lot of rowing, and I got
back into good shape. Good meals and Bosch beer will do that.”
He went on to a career in the mines of Mexico. He stayed involved in an organization called the American Ex-Prisoners of War, served as national commander, and met
President George W. Bush.
He returned to Holland in 1995 for the fiftieth anniversary of that nation’s Independence Day, May 5, which marked the country’s liberation from Germany. He met the
girl who had been working in the field when he crash-landed. “We said hello,” he says.
He also visited the prison camps.
The whole experience took a toll on him. Now age ninety-two, he says, “I’m not very
patient. I don’t like loud noises or crowds.” He says crying babies disturb him. “And you
have nightmares.”
“War is hell,” Cooper says.
“It’s called ‘the good war.’”
“There are no good wars.”
“What was the feeling of the time?”
“There was a saying before the war—two people are not going to war,
me and the guy they send after me. But when it came along, we were right
there, signing up.”
“We’re spoiled. Are people losing their resolve?”
“It seems that way. But if something comes up, they would do the same.
Remember it was the Depression. There was not as much to give up.”
“Your generation is dying, and World War II is slipping from our
memory.”
“It happens in life. The older you get, you accept it.”
“Are you a hero?”
“No. We’re survivors.”
“What did it take to survive?”
“Confidence that things would turn out all right in the end. Faith in the
good Lord.”
“How are you doing these days?”
“I can’t complain. No pain.” n
“We passed the
Statue of Liberty.
Everybody ran to that
side of the ship.”
Michigan Technological University n www.mtu.edu
11
A PhD at
K
Twenty-One,
the World at
Twenty-Five?
By Marcia Goodrich
aterina Aifantis ’01 is accustomed to
being the youngest in the room.
At the age of sixteen, the Houghton High
School student sweet-talked her principal into letting her take courses at Michigan
Tech, where she promptly aced calculus and
chemistry.
“She just beat everyone in the class,” remembers Associate Professor Paul Charlesworth.
“She’s one of the finest students to ever take
my general chemistry course.”
Katerina Aifantis is shown at her PhD thesis
defense with her advisors, left: Professor
Jeff De Hosson from the University of
Groningen (The Netherlands) and right:
Professor John Willis from the University of
Cambridge (United Kingdom).
12
Michigan Tech Magazine n Autumn 2008
The next year, Aifantis went hat in hand
to Stephen Hackney, a professor of materials science and engineering, and asked
to work with him on his applied elasticity research. He hesitated, Hackney says,
until “it became clear that her math skills
far exceeded those of many graduate
students.”
Thus it came to pass that, at an age
when many teens would be obsessed
with prom dresses or hockey, Aifantis
was hip-deep in the micromechanics of
lithium-ion battery electrode materials
design. With the blessing of Houghton
High administrators and the devotion
of her mom, who doubled as taxi driver
and cheerleader as her daughter juggled
college and high school classes, Aifantis
earned high school credit while attending
Michigan Tech. By the age of nineteen,
she had fulfilled the requirements for a BS
in Engineering with a minor in mathematics and graduated (are you surprised?)
summa cum laude.
This might be a good time to pause in
our litany of Aifantis’s achievements and
acknowledge her luminous intellect, not
to mention a work ethic that could slap
together a couple of Egyptian pyramids in
a fortnight. These qualities alone, however, might not have been enough to make
Aifantis, now twenty-five, the youngest
recipient of a 1.1-million-euro Starting
Independent Researcher Grant.
Her proposal, “Probing the Micro/Nano
Transition: Theory and Experiments,
Simulation and Applications,” was among
nine thousand received by the European
Research Council from researchers on the
cusp of their careers. Just three hundred
were funded.
Making it into this elite group is more
than a matter of brains.
“She absolutely loves what she’s doing,
and that’s a big part of her success,” says
Hackney.
Also driving Aifantis is a voracious curiosity she’s exhibited since girlhood, when
she pestered her father, Elias Aifantis, to
explain his work. “He would never tell
me,” she sighs. “He kept saying he would
when I was older, but he never did. That’s
why I wanted a PhD, I wanted to know
what my dad was doing.”
The elder Aifantis is a distinguished
research professor in the College of Engineering and spends most of his time at
the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, in
Greece. He gained international recognition in the materials science community for his theory of gradient plasticity, a
branch of mechanics sufficiently complex
that its details will be left to the reader’s
imagination.
But before Katerina Aifantis could learn
her father’s secrets, she had to cross the
Atlantic, courtesy of a National Science
Foundation fellowship.
“When I went to Cambridge for my
PhD, they were working on the theory
that my dad started,” she recalls. To her
delight, her advisor, the renowned mathematician John Willis, was more than
happy to explain gradient plasticity. But
for Aifantis, the realization of this childhood dream turned out to be just another
spark in a blazing academic career that
was turning white hot.
She aims to
implant batteries
in the brains of
Parkinson’s patients
“to make their
lives easier.”
“I worked so hard at Cambridge that I
practically had my thesis done in a year,”
she says. However, Cambridge required
that she spend a minimum of three years
earning a doctorate, and no amount of the
cajoling that had worked so well in America could bend that rule.
This time, faced with Cambridge’s
equivalent of the Maginot Line, Aifantis made like a tank and drove around it.
In 2004 she enrolled at the University
of Groningen in the Netherlands, which
does not place a time minimum on PhD
completion, under the supervision of wellknown materials scientist Jeff De Hosson.
On April 18, 2005, she defended her thesis in the oldest building in a very old city.
Wearing a black skirt and sweater purchased for the ceremony, she walked down
the center aisle of a fourteenth-century
stone edifice, flanked by two lantern bearers and led by a page who presented her
thesis to twelve black-robed professors.
“I was planning on going to my defense
in jeans, not knowing how formal the ceremony is,” she confides. “When I found out,
I worried more about what I was going to
wear than what I was going to say.”
Her self-assurance was well founded.
The twenty-one-year-old Aifantis walked
away from her defense the youngest person ever to earn a PhD in the
Netherlands.
Cool. Now what?
She yearned to do college research,
but nowhere is there a big market for
twenty-one-year-old professors. So Aifantis knocked around labs in Greece, the
UK, France, and Russia before she threw
her hat in the ring for that European
Research Council grant.
Calculating the odds of winning and
concluding “What are the chances?” she
accepted a postdoctoral fellowship in
applied physics at Harvard and settled
down to research nanoelectronic systems. Then early this year, her ship came
in: Aifantis got her grant. In April, she
returned to Greece to begin her research.
Harvard has been fine, really, Aifantis
says, “but now the happy part begins.”
With her 1.1-million euros (about $1.8million), she will explore the interfaces
between different materials, including
bone and metal, which has major applications in orthopedic surgery. Aifantis will
also continue work she began with Hackney on the design of lithium ion batteries,
with the aim of someday implanting them
in the brains of Parkinson’s patients “to
make their lives easier.” She can’t wait.
So much to learn, so little time. At least
she’s getting an early start. n
Michigan Technological University n www.mtu.edu
13
Recent data indicates that student mental health issues are
indeed on the rise. In a 2007 survey of counseling center directors sponsored by the American College Counseling Association,
91.5 percent reported a “recent trend toward greater numbers of
students [nearly 50 percent] with psychological problems.”
A growing number of colleges and universities are responding
by expanding counseling services, including extended hours and
additional counselors. Even so, the average ratio of counselors to
students is 1:1,969. At Michigan Tech, the ratio is only slightly
better, at 1:1,500. With tight budgets and overtaxed staff, counseling departments are finding themselves ill equipped to handle
the demand.
Although Reader’s Digest recently recognized Michigan Tech
as the third-safest campus in the nation, the magazine’s evaluation focused on external security threats such as crime or fire.
The internal threats—the ticking time bombs of disturbed students—are much harder to assess or prevent.
Comparing Notes
HELPING TROUBLED
STUDENTS
By Jennifer Donovan and Kara Sokol
H
e sits alone in class every day, lost in his own world, not really connecting to people around him. A recent writing assignment contains graphically detailed scenarios of violence, but he says it’s
nothing more than harmless fiction…
She’s the leader of a high-profile student organization, devoting long days
to her studies and working on extracurricular activities. Previously friendly
and outgoing, lately she seems scattered and an emotional roller coaster. Her
friends complain that she’s drifting away from them…
With incidences of school violence on the rise, the challenges of dealing
with anxious, depressed, or stressed-out students are receiving priority attention on campuses. Tragedies like the Virginia Tech massacre have prompted
universities to look inward, assessing their own students as they scrutinize
their crisis and emergency intervention plans.
The question arises on the nations’ campuses—do today’s students wrestle
with more psychological problems than previous generations did, and, if so,
what can be done to prevent them from escalating into tragedies?
14
Michigan Tech Magazine n Autumn 2008
Michigan Tech’s solution is an innovative—and practical—
one. Last year, the Division of Student Affairs assembled the
Early Intervention Team (EIT), a cross-campus committee to
assess troubled students on a case-by-case basis.
Dean of Students Gloria Melton calls the creation of EIT a
vital step. “Often these students are on the radar screen of more
than one person or department for either behavioral or healthrelated issues,” says Melton. “But if we don’t talk with each other
about our concerns, we may not recognize it when a student’s life
is spinning out of control.”
EIT is quietly yet boldly addressing this communication issue.
During weekly meetings, the group identifies students of concern and works to determine appropriate assistance for them.
Faculty and staff are encouraged to share their concerns with the
group, and they are doing so in increasing numbers.
Don Williams, director of counseling and wellness services
and a member of the EIT, believes that the variety of team members is the key to helping students who might otherwise not have
sought and received help.
“We’re assessing students and providing personalized assistance, which is often broader than just counseling,” Williams
says. “For example, we’ve discussed child care services for singleparent students and health care for international student families.
It’s not just psychologically troubled students.”
Campuses across the nation are recognizing the need for
cross-departmental solutions like Tech’s EIT. Last year’s survey
of counseling directors included a question never asked before:
“What impact has the Virginia Tech tragedy had on your center?” A startling 66 percent reported a significant increase in calls
coming from faculty members and others on campus seeking
consultation about students of concern.
“There has to be a resource, an outlet for concerned faculty
and staff members,” says Williams. “A professor needs to know
exactly whom to call if he smells alcohol on a student’s breath or
is alarmed by a piece of writing.”
Helping or Intruding?
Yet these very precautionary measures raise another question:
“At what point does intervention become intrusion?” This issue
made headlines recently when a Virginia student in a creative
writing class penned a fictional account of a student’s violent
breakdown. His dorm room and car were subsequently searched,
and, after discovering three guns, he was expelled. Later, however, psychiatrists determined that the student posed no threat to
himself or others, and he maintains that his story was a simple
fictionalized probe into the topic of student violence.
As administrators tackle the legally and ethically murky process of finding new ways to prevent violence, such concerns are
bound to arise. Tech’s EIT carefully considers each student’s case
behind closed doors before deciding on a course of action, and if
they decide that intervention is required, they share details sparingly and only with essential people.
The privacy issue looms ever larger as more and more students
require counseling services. Williams says it’s essential for them
to be able to find assistance when they seek it—and not be afraid
to do so.
“Our society has become more knowledgeable about health
issues and prescription medications, which has led to more people seeking treatment for their conditions—and that’s great,” says
Williams. “But when you have increased numbers of students
taking medications, you also have increased numbers of students
forgetting to refill prescriptions and abruptly stopping medications. We would never want a student who feels unstable or suicidal to not seek us out.”
There is a fine line between safety and privacy, Williams
admits, but it isn’t preventing Michigan Tech from trying to
identify problems before they get out of hand and providing safe
and discreet solutions.
“Tragedies can happen anywhere, but we’re being proactive
and doing our absolute best to create a safe campus environment,” Williams says. “When you have a tight-knit community
like ours, where faculty and staff members are involved and make
it a point to know their students, early intervention isn’t such a
difficult task.”
Williams believes that Michigan Tech is doing the right thing
by involving the entire campus community.
“Our counselors are skilled in dealing with these sorts of
issues, of course, but we can only do so much,” he explains. “But
when you combine eyes from a variety of departments, you have
a much broader view. ‘It takes a village,’ as they say—and we’re all
in this together.” n
Michigan Technological University n www.mtu.edu
15
THE
SEMI~SWEET
OF
SUGAR~MAKING
Michigan Tech Magazine n Autumn 2008
S
am Sweitz has been a wandering scientist interested in sherds and sugar;
houses, mills, and gold mines; and history
unearthed.
Now settled in Houghton as an assistant professor in social sciences, he dreams
of expanding the reach of Michigan Tech’s
industrial archaeology program.
Sweitz is a young man with seasoned
credentials. His work has spanned four
time periods and four nations: prehistoric Mayan culture in Belize; eighteenth- to twentieth-century Mayan culture in the
Yucatan; nineteenth-century gold mining in the US; and now the twentieth-century
sugar industry in Puerto Rico.
“Everything is connected,” he says. “I am fascinated by how decisions made in one
place can affect people in another place.”
The demand for sugar in the US, for instance, changed the way social status was
achieved in some places where Sweitz has worked—from a tradition of age, gender,
lineage, and experience to a new world of occupation and income.
In pinpointing these cultural changes, Sweitz bases his inquiry on the presumption
that ordinary people matter. “One of the primary missions of historical archaeology,”
he says, “is to talk about the lives of everyday people.”
A native of Yakima, Washington, Sweitz earned a bachelor’s degree in archaeology
and history at Boston University; he skipped the master’s and earned a PhD in anthropology from Texas A&M; and he came to Tech’s industrial archaeology program in fall
2005. Since, he has visited Puerto Rico six times.
That country’s sugar economy was “pervasive,” Sweitz says, and the material culture,
which is the warp and weft of archaeology, reflects the industry’s impact on the country. One example: Overseers had fine houses, mill workers had decent houses (rock and
mortar), and field workers had simple houses (sticks and mud).
The sugar industry in Puerto Rico was based on what Sweitz calls a central, an
expansive array of a mill, a company store, and a company town characterized by both
paternalism and peonage, and segregated, “to some degree,” on the basis of race, ethnicity, and occupation.
In describing the central, Sweitz is the detached scientist. “My place is not to judge,”
he says, “but to find out what happened in the past and what changes resulted.”
The central was the product of an infusion of capital by American investors after the
US gained possession of Puerto Rico in 1898 following the Spanish American War.
Sweitz is working at Central Aguirre—the lone surviving example of a central in
Puerto Rico. Located on the south-central coast, it was built around 1900, reached its
peak in the 1950s, and shut down in 1990.
HISTORY
16
By John Gagnon
Ultimately, Sweitz’s inquiry will constitute a marriage of oral, archival, and archaeological histories—from recollections to maps to pottery.
In an even broader scheme, Sweitz’s work might affect the future spread and impact
of capitalism.
“We’re trying to understand processes—global markets and commodity exchanges—
that are still happening today in the third world,” he says. “Industry is going there,
capital is going there, and it’s changing local culture there.”
In this respect, Sweitz says, the past could inform the future, that is, ameliorate the
hardships and enhance the benefits of industry and capitalism.
“We hope to better the lives of the people we work with,” he says. “There needs to
be some outreach. By doing studies like this, we’re understanding the evolution of
not only the sugar industry but the community itself and the people in it. Aguirre is
a postindustrial community. The mill is shut down. Jobs are leaving. The economy is
depressed. The community is starting to deteriorate. These people are in a tough position and they are left to wonder, ‘What are we going to do with this mill that’s derelict?’ ‘How are we going to preserve our community?’ ‘What do we do next?’”
In turn, Sweitz asks, “How do we answer these poignant questions? How do we help
them keep their past but move on in a new direction? How can we incorporate the
past with the future? How we can help this community move on in a postindustrial
world?”
So, why does he care about a small island country and the sweet and bitter fruits of
its industry?
“Because,” Sweitz avows, “this is the story of humanity.”
He has high hopes for his labors.
He wants to establish a cooperative agreement with the University of Puerto Rico
to collaborate on this work, exchange students and scholars, organize a field school to
train American and Puerto Rican students and have them enroll in Tech’s master’s in
industrial archaeology, and establish a dual degree offered by both institutions.
“It’s exciting,” he says. “It really will expand the reach and the impact of Michigan
Tech. It will give us a presence—a beachhead—in the Caribbean and Latin America.”
Clockwise from opposite bottom: the
Central Aguirre sugar mill today; Sam
Sweitz, center, with wife, Lee, on his right,
MS student Carmelo Davila on his left, and
the Quinones family; Aguirre in the 1920s;
the Aguirre entrance; tool board left over
from another era; working-class housing;
former Aguirre worker Jose Ramon Rivera;
office building today, seen through the
industrial ruins; Carmelo Davila interviews
Felipe Quinones.
•••
Sweitz advises Carmelo Davila (pictured right), a student in the industrial archaeology program who is working on his master’s thesis. A native of San Juan, he focuses
on reconstructing the social history of Central Aguirre between the 1950s and 1970s,
with a particular emphasis on everyday life and work. He conducted eleven oral histories of residents. “They are my passion,” he says. The oral histories are evocative. “They
put people in the position of reflection, particularly on the meaning of everyday life,”
he says. Davila’s thesis is an initial step in his endeavor to develop a larger inquiry into
history, memory, and heritage. n
Michigan Technological University n www.mtu.edu
17
SHORT’S STORY
By Wes Frahm
S
ometimes what you see is what you get. Sometimes the person behind the smile
can live up to the hype.
Such is the case with Michigan Tech quarterback Steve Short. He is a special athlete—recruited in both football and basketball out of high school. He is a
team leader—one of only a handful of Tech players named captain as a
sophomore. He is a good student—one who has earned a 3.21 cumulative grade point average in exercise science.
It seems that Short has always exhibited those characteristics. He
recalls being the leader and quarterback in grade school pickup games.
“At recess I was always the quarterback,” he says. “I guess I was lucky I
could throw a little bit and run around and make plays.”
Short credits much of his development on the football field to his
father, Dan, a teacher and coach at Kingsford High School. “He
would run routes for me to throw to him. It helped that he had
keys to the gym, too.”
The 6-0, 190-pound Short turned into a two-sport star for the
Flivvers. He was named the Upper Peninsula Player of the Year in basketball as
a senior and at one point was contacted by Tech men’s basketball coach Kevin
Luke about playing hoops for the Huskies. He had his sights set on the gridiron, though.
Short played both offense and defense as a prep, leading Kingsford to the
state quarterfinals in 2004. Tech football coach Tom Kearly persuaded Short to
continue his career in Houghton.
“Coach Kearly made me feel really welcome and wanted,” says Short. “I knew it
was going to be a good fit both on the field and with academics.”
Short sat out the 2005 season as a redshirt and saw some playing time early
during his freshman season in 2006. By the fifth game of the year, he had worked
his way into the starting role. The quarterback led the Huskies to a 14-12 Homecoming victory over Hillsdale in his debut and helped Tech reel off six straight
wins to close out the season.
The undefeated streak ended with last year’s season opener, but it wasn’t without
a record-setting performance from Short. He broke Tech single-game records for
passing yards (431), total offense yards (504) and passing touchdowns (six).
Short is now 12-5 as a starting quarterback with the fifth-most passing yards
(3,150) in school history. He has two years to go, with a lot of expectations.
“Steve has a chance to be a special player in our league,” says Kearly. “He’s a
great all-around athlete, he’s really getting comfortable with our offense, and he’s a
great leader.”
The future looks bright for Short and the Huskies. Tech’s offense returns
mainly intact with Short at the helm.
“I feel like we have a really talented group of guys,” says Short. “A lot of
them have been in town all summer working out, and we’re all like brothers.
We do everything together.” n
Sherman Field now features ProGrass artificial turf, allowing the field to be used
much more—from football practices and games to intramurals, club sports, and
student groups. It is likely no one will benefit more from the new turf than Tech
starting quarterback Steve Short, who models his game after Brett Favre. “I don’t
always have the most conventional style,” says Short. “But as long as we get in the
end zone, that’s all that matters. I’m really excited about the new turf. I think it will
really benefit the offense because we’ll be able to practice on our game field, where
we couldn’t do that before.” The first football game on the new turf was August 30
against Winona State.
18
Michigan Tech Magazine n Autumn 2008
BLOWING THE TOP OFF
MOUNT ST. HELENS’ SECRETS
By Jennifer Donovan
V
olcanoes are notoriously hard to study. All the
action takes place deep inside at enormous temperatures. So geophysicists make models, using what
they know to develop theories about what they don’t
know. But making those models might also mean
getting up close and personal with the real thing.
Greg Waite, an assistant professor of geophysics at
Michigan Tech, has studied Mount St. Helens, and,
using a new seismic model, he challenges conventional wisdom about the underlying mechanism of
the earthquakes caused by an erupting volcano. Waite
hopes his research will help scientists better assess the
hazard of a violent explosion at Mount St. Helens
and similar volcanoes.
Volcanoes don’t always erupt suddenly and violently. The current eruption of Mount St. Helens
began in October 2004: a passive eruption with thick
and sticky lava squeezing slowly out of the ground
like toothpaste from a tube.
When a volcano erupts, it can also cause a series of
shallow, repetitive earthquakes at intervals so regular that they’ve been called “drumbeat earthquakes.”
Scientists believed that these earthquakes were caused
by the jerky movements of a solid plug of molten rock
traveling up from the volcano’s core, a process known
as the stick-slip model.
Modeling of seismic data collected by Waite and
colleagues dispute that explanation. “It suggests a
source with a net volume change, such as a resonating
fluid-filled crack,” Waite says.
The fluid in the crack is most likely steam, derived
from the magma and combined with water vaporized
by the heat of the molten rock. A continuous supply
of heat and fluid keeps the crack pressurized and the
“drumbeats” beating, Waite explains.
“Greg collected a fantastic data set and produced a
robust and intriguing model for the process responsible for those earthquakes,” says Seth Moran, the
principal USGS seismologist monitoring the current
eruption. “We are adjusting our understanding of the
mechanics underlying the eruption to incorporate his
results.”
As for that up-close research, Waite won’t soon
forget the day he was flying directly over the volcano
when a large chunk of the dome broke off and kicked
up a billowing cloud of ash.
“My heart jumped,” he says. “But then I realized it
was just a rock fall and not an explosion.” n
Michigan Technological University n www.mtu.edu
19
Graduate student Linda
Kersten samples Huron
Creek at the waterfront
park. Opposite, left to
right: Hugh Gorman, Alex
Mayer, and Linda Kersten
amid signs of erosion.
MICHIGAN TECH STUDENTS
and the
GREATER GOOD
The tradition of hands-on, experiential learning remains an essential element in
the Michigan Tech educational experience and the University’s strategic plan. Here,
students’ solutions for local problems may have much broader implications.
Working Together, Saving Huron Creek
By Dennis Walikainen ’92
H
uron Creek runs from Portage
Township through Houghton to the
Keweenaw Waterway. It also runs from
the copper mining days through the strip
malls and Wal-Mart of today, and it’s not
doing well.
“We wanted to preserve it before we lost
it completely,” says Professor Alex Mayer.
Beyond saving the creek, “It is also
about managing a watershed, wetlands,
storm flows, erosion, etc.,” says Associate
Professor Hugh Gorman. “Every watershed should have a management plan,
however simple.”
Huron Creek’s troubles began when it
was a water source for the Huron copper
mine. Next, the city of Houghton grew
around it, including a landfill and the M26 commercial district. Today, challenges
persist with heavy construction and possible septic problems. Local schoolteachers
have even used it as a lesson in pollution.
Enter Mayer, professor of geological
and environmental engineering, and Gorman, associate professor of environmental
policy and history. They believe progress
on saving Huron Creek has resulted from
20
Michigan Tech Magazine n Autumn 2008
early involvement of the local community
in addition to Tech faculty and staff.
“An initial public meeting on rerouting
the stream due to Wal-Mart construction
was packed,” Gorman says. “That showed
us the interest was there, and it eventually
encouraged the involvement of students,
faculty, and community members.”
Adds Mayer, “We learned as much from
the community as they learned from us.”
Since that first meeting, Gorman’s graduate students and Mayer’s senior design
students have helped with many different
facets of the project. In fact, environmental
engineering master’s student Linda Kersten ’02 has written the overall watershed
management plan, which doubles as her
thesis. Mayer and Gorman agree that the
success of the project has hinged on working across multiple Tech departments.
“You need some technical expertise,
but it is more of an iterative process that
involves many people,” says Mayer. That
teamwork resulted in state funding for
Kersten’s watershed management plan,
successfully competing against many
groups across Michigan.
Kersten has enjoyed the process
“because it presented a chance to help out
the local community,” she says. “Everyone
says ‘Think global. Act local.’ Well, that’s
what I got to do. This plan is designed to
produce results, and who doesn’t like that?”
Community interest in the creek
is partly due to where the creek ends:
Houghton’s waterfront park. “You should
have a nice-looking stream there,” Mayer
says of the common sentiment of the citizens using the park. Currently, the stream
“isn’t pristine,” in Mayer’s understated
words.
Community members, working with
the students, identified the following goals
and priorities: creating a storm-water plan,
moving away from septic systems, and
improving vegetation and access.
What’s next?
Go to the Michigan Department of
Environmental Quality and other sources
of funding with a plan to implement
these projects, Gorman says. After one
more round of public input on the plan
and submission to DEQ for approval, the
researchers will pursue, with the city of
Houghton, funding under DEQ and other
state and federal programs.
The future of Huron Creek will continue to include Tech students and faculty
working with community members.
“The students will continue monitoring the vegetation and water,” says Mayer,
“and the water quality should improve. We
can do this working with existing classes
at Tech.”
Students and community groups have
also embraced projects such as trash
cleanup.
Saving Huron Creek combines Michigan Tech expertise and hard work with
community concern and involvement: a
new dimension of “town and gown.” n
Michigan Technological University n www.mtu.edu
21
MICHIGAN TECH STUDENTS
and the
GREATER GOOD
IT Oxygen Breathes Life into Projects
Dam(s) Lucky
by Dennis Walikainen ’92
by Marcia Goodrich
T
F
he Village of Lake Linden had
“They get paid,” Maatta says.
problems: It was using ancient
“We wanted to run it as an actual
software for its water- and sewer-billbusiness, so we pay the students, who
ing, and it had an accounting system
typically work on projects ten hours
with flaws revealed when an employee
per week.” Thanks to a five-year,
was charged with embezzlement.
$1.2-million grant from the Herbert
Send in the students.
H. and Grace A. Dow Foundation,
Michigan Tech’s IT Oxygen Enterthe enterprise can run as a comprise team created a new accounting
pany and take on more business. The
system and developed a mechanism
team has current projects for the Boy
for checks and balances. And they
Scouts of America and the Nature
did it with little cost to the village.
Conservancy.
(Enterprise teams are student-run
Also, a grant from IBM has
businesses supported by clients whose
allowed the team to use business
problems they solve.)
modeling to analyze some of Tech’s
The new system features an audit
own administrative processes. John
trail and streamlines the process of
Soyring ’76, vice president of soluupdating customer accounts. Previtions and software for IBM, was
ously, staff had to input 550 entries
instrumental in the grant.
one at a time every month. Now, they
“It’s many Tech offices working
can be batched, and what once ate up
together,” Frendewey says. “The stuthree days takes about an hour. The
dents had to present their findings
process should go even faster with a
and did a great job.”
bar-code system allowing clerks to
Maatta became advisor of the IT
scan the bills with the payments.
Oxygen
Enterprise after he retired
IT Oxygen students left, top: Brandon Karis, and bottom,
So far, so good on the first run,
from
IBM
and joined the SBE
Daniel Volans. SBE faculty members right, top: Bob
according to the project’s developfaculty.
Maatta; and bottom, Jim Frendewey.
ment leader, Randy Enk, a 2008 com“It’s always great when you see
ments what they are studying in the
puter engineering graduate. “They
students step up into leadership posiclassroom,” says Maatta. “The students
seem happy with it. They like the incredtions,” Maatta says. “You can see their
learned how to develop and apply a meth- confidence grow over time, and you never
ible time savings.”
odology and how to handle changing
Enk likes what he’s discovered. “I
know who is going to be a leader.”
requirements.”
learned about the life cycle of a project,
The faculty and students don’t want
The Lake Linden folks are pleased. “The the enterprise to get too big, according to
from start to finish, and the importance of
thoroughly looking at all the special cases students have learned something about
Maatta, but “we would love to see a stulocal government,” says Fisher, “and our
before you design it. We did a lot of ‘I
dent spin off his or her own business from
council and office staff have learned some- this and become an entrepreneur.” n
wish I’d thought of that before.’”
thing about bright students and modern
Enk started his career with Sentry
technologies. And these types of packInsurance in Wisconsin, and the experience with this project has piqued his inter- ages are very expensive and usually require
est in management as well as the nuts and maintenance contracts.”
“It’s a great combination of students,
bolts of writing code.
too,” adds Frendewey. Computer science,
Overseeing the project are Bob Maatta
computer engineering, business, and com’68 and Jim Frendewey ’73 of the School
puter network and system administration
of Business and Economics. They are
working closely with Village of Lake Lin- majors are part of the thirty-odd-member
team, which enjoys one big advantage over
den Councilman Ed Fisher and Village
other enterprise groups.
Clerk Bob Poirier. “This really comple-
22
Michigan Tech students worked with
Stanton Township, analyzing the
Redridge Dams and learning civil
engineering principles while saving
the township headaches and money.
Michigan Tech Magazine n Autumn 2008
aced with more state-mandated
spending than it had in its bank
account, Stanton Township never expected
that a team of Michigan Tech students
would ride into town and save the day. But
they did anyway.
It seemed like a heck of a deal. For one
dollar, the township got a pair of historic
dams, a reservoir, and a stretch of one of
the Keweenaw’s great steelhead streams.
For a township looking to boost recreation, it was hard to turn down such an
opportunity. A few years later, however,
the Stanton Township Board felt that
their gift horse was probably Trojan.
“I don’t think the board knew what the
potential liability was,” says former Township Supervisor Marvin Heinonen.
Houghton County’s Salmon Trout
River is slowed in its rush toward Lake
Superior first by an 1894 timber crib dam
and then by a much larger 1901 steel dam.
In 2001, the Michigan Department of
Environmental Quality, concerned that
the dams might fail and flood the coastal
village of Redridge, ordered the township
to finance an engineering study. Based on
its findings, the township removed the top
section of the timber crib dam in 2004 to
drop the water to a safer level. The total
price tag: about $100,000.
“Our budget for the whole year is
$200,000,” Heinonen notes.
More bad news awaited Stanton
Township’s 1,268 residents. In 2005, the
DEQ called for more action, including
the removal of both dams, which had been
listed in the National Register of Historic
Places. This time, cost estimates ranged up
to a million dollars. Heinonen was losing
sleep.
Then Stan Vitton ’76/’79, an associate
professor of geotechnical engineering, read
an article in the Daily Mining Gazette,
and the township’s luck began to change.
“I called Ken Vrana and asked if we could
take on the Redridge dams as a Senior
Design project,” Vitton recalls.
Vrana leads an ad hoc group studying
the issues percolating around the Redridge
dams. With the blessing of the township,
he invited Vitton’s students to conduct
their own engineering analysis.
What they found couldn’t have been
more at odds with the earlier study. “The
wood dam was completely different from
what the drawings said,” says civil engineering graduate Cindel Zimmerman ’08.
It was, in fact, a rock-fill and wood dam,
with a huge heap of stones holding back
the river just behind the timber face. “This
dam,” Vitton predicts, “shouldn’t have any
problems.”
The students ran a stability analysis of
the steel dam as well. Though they discovered some corrosion and deterioration
of the steel and concrete, they found it to
be 40 percent stronger than necessary to
withstand the worst-case scenario, a hundred-year flood.
“We’re just delighted,” says Heinonen.
“We’ve received over $100,000 worth of
work on this project from Tech. They’ve
done everything from soup to nuts.”
The Senior Design project lays the
foundation for the dams’ recertification in
2009. Plus, Vitton’s team built safety barriers at either end of a trestle crossing the
top of the steel dam, which soars eighty
feet above the water.
Another senior working on the project, Scott Nowack, has a soft spot for the
Salmon Trout, having fished its steelhead
run.
“I love going out there,” he says. “It was
great to work on something that had a
direct bearing on the UP. ”
Zimmerman concurs. “I loved it,” she
says. “We had to figure what was out there
before we did any design work. We got to
meet the community members, hear their
stories, hear what happened to the dam.
Then we made them so happy. It was very
rewarding.”
“The university and the students
engaged hand in hand with the township,
doing thorough engineering research to
determine what risk there might be, and
then addressing those risks,” Vrana says.
“It doesn’t get much better than that.”
The students’ work also bought the
township the time it needed to survey its
residents and gain a sense of the considerable value of the Redridge dam area to
the community. It also allowed fisheries
experts to point out that the steel dam had
probably protected the Salmon Trout from
lamprey eels, which infested Lake Superior decades ago and parasitize native fish.
Heinonen reports that he’s sleeping better at night. “We’re extremely elated out
here in Stanton,” he says. “And I’ve told
other townships, if you get a chance to use
those smart students over there at Tech,
feel free to ask.” n
Michigan Technological University n www.mtu.edu
23
Alumni Association Notes
Alumni Reunion 2008
New Board Members Named
Mark Garver ’06 is a project administrator with PB
Americas on the construction management team
for the O’Hare Airport modernization project. He
also manages all accounts payable and expenses,
comanages the vehicle fleet, and monitors all direct
expenses. At Tech, Garver was active with Sigma Tau
Gamma fraternity, Interfraternity Council, FIRST
Robotics, Sailing Club, Undergraduate Student
Government, and Memorial Union Board, among
other organizations. Garver also interned at Troy
Design and General Motors, and he received his BS
in Business Administration.
A colleague says of Garver, “We are gaining both a
motivated and organizationally skilled individual on
the Alumni Association Board.”
Daniel S. Batten ’88/’90 is regional IT applications
manager-Americas, for Textron, Inc. Previously, he
was global program manager with GMAC Financial
Services, leading teams in manufacturing and financial services. Prior to working for GMAC, Batten
was a global senior manager for Delphi Corporation,
involved in supply chain, financial, and human
resource services. While at Delphi, Batten was honored with the Excellence in Achievement Award.
Batten’s community service includes leading a $5million fund-raising drive for his church and volunteering for Junior Achievement and the Boy Scouts
of America. Batten received his AAS in Mechanical
Design Engineering Technology and his BS in
Business Administration.
He recently received his MBA through Northwood
University and says, “I’ll enjoy the opportunity to give
back to Michigan Tech.”
Food, fun, friends, football, and
more food. Alumni reconnected
and savored the campus and the
Keweenaw (including the Sturgeon
River via canoe) over four days of
near-perfect weather. See you next
year, August 6–8, 2009.
24
Michigan Tech Magazine n Autumn 2008
Edwin Eiswerth ’77 is the fire chief for Peachtree City
Fire and Rescue. Eiswerth leads the operations of the
department’s emergency services and is responsible
for budgeting, hiring, developing, and training staff.
Prior to working in emergency services, Eiswerth
was in the US Air Force and retired with the rank
of lieutenant colonel. Eiswerth has been active with
the International Association of Fire Chiefs, Metro
Atlanta Chiefs Association, and Fayette County 911
Center Board of Directors. He also helps out with the
Boy Scout Explorer Post. Eiswerth was involved with
Air Force ROTC and Phi Kappa Phi fraternity and
received his BS in Forestry.
A colleague says of Eiswerth, “He is completely loyal
to Michigan Tech, Air Force ROTC, and the Air
Force, as well as his friendships.”
Mission Statement
Board of Directors
The mission of the Michigan Tech
Alumni Association is to provide a
mutually beneficial link between
Michigan Tech alumni and a) the
University, b) other alumni, and
c) Michigan Tech students (future
alumni).
Executive
Directors
President
Mark C. D. Mitchell, MD ’77
Vision
Treasurer
Jacque Smith ’85
Daniel F. Batten ’88, ’90
Edwin F. Eiswerth ’77
Lisa A. Fernstrum ’91
Mark A. Garver ’06
Kevin T. Grzelak ’89
David Heiden–MTSF
Sally P. Heidtke ’81
Linda D. Kennedy ’91
Tanya J. Klain ’90
Alexis J. Lee ’05 (AJ)
Ryan D. Menze–MTSF
Lori Ann Muhlig ’01
Paul J. Ninefeldt ’96
To possess an environment
and spirit in the Michigan Tech
Alumni Association that results
in a significant number of alumni
forming lifelong relationships with
the University and other alumni.
Past President
Romuald J. LaPointe ’92 (Rom)
Vice President
Paul Ninefeldt ’96
Secretary
Lisa Fernstrum ’91
Left to right:
Ed Eiswerth ’77,
Mark Garver ’06, and
Dan Batten ’88/’90
joined the Alumni
Association Board at
the reunion.
Paul G. Nygaard ’93
Johnny G. Peavey ’74
Derhun D. Sanders ’97
Jacque C. Smith ’85
Richard G. Timmons ’69
Karin J. Van Dyke ’78
Brenda Rudiger–Alumni Relations
If you have a question or suggestion,
please contact the Alumni Relations
Office at 877-688-2586 or email
alumni@mtu.edu.
Michigan Technological University n www.mtu.edu
25
Alumni Award Winners
Above: Benjamin Hall ’05. Right,
left to right: Matt Merkle, Katherine
Hall, John Hall ’75, Sarah Hall,
Melissa Hall, and Joe Hall at the
Alumni Awards Dinner.
Benjamin J. Hall ’05
Outstanding Young Alumni Award
(Presented Posthumously)
Jason M. Cousineau ’98
Outstanding Young Alumni Award
Jason Cousineau earned a bachelor’s degree in
Benjamin Hall graduated with a bachelor’s degree
mechanical engineering and has engineered a distinin social sciences. He served as the cadet battalion
guished career.
commander in the Tech Army ROTC program and
He has worked at Engineered Machined Products,
was commissioned a second lieutenant in the US
Inc. of Escanaba since graduating, is a senior prodArmy.
uct development engineer, and is the technology lead
A paratrooper and an army ranger, Hall was
on several products. EMP is a leader in the design,
deployed to Afghanistan with 503rd Parachute Infan- manufacture, and assembly of advanced thermal and
try Regiment, 173rd Airborne Brigade. Hall was
oil management components and systems. Cousineau
killed in action on July 31, 2007. He was posthuholds several patents, including two for an advanced
mously awarded the Bronze Star for heroism and the filtration system that continuously filters engine oil
Purple Heart.
and automatically ejects used filter media.
Born in Texas, the son of army colonel and Tech
Cousineau has been published by the Society of
alumnus John Hall ’75, Hall moved around a lot as
Automotive Engineers and was honored by Design
a child but throughout his life remained fixed on
News Magazine for his contributions to global
achievement. At Tech, he majored in social science
engineering. He also earned a bachelor’s degree in
and earned many awards in the ROTC program. He engineering management at Lake Superior State
earned the rating of Distinguished Military Graduate, University.
and ranked among the top cadets across the nation
For Tech, Cousineau has participated as an industry
when he graduated.
advisor and sponsor on several Senior Design projects
He continued to excel while on active duty. He
as well as a graduate research advisor for the mechanearned the Army’s Combat Infantry Badge and
ical engineering department.
Expert Infantry Badge; was one of only twenty-two
soldiers in the 173rd Airborne Brigade to be awarded Dawn M. (Zarling) Plitzuweit ’95
the title of True Blue; and was instrumental in creat- Outstanding Young Alumni Award
ing a new infantry company, called Destined, in his
Dawn Plitzuweit, who has excelled in women’s basregiment.
ketball as both player and coach, earned a bachelor’s
His family remembers him as “giving and humdegree in biological sciences.
ble—the type of guy people were drawn to.” Hall is
While playing for Tech (1990–95), she was
survived by his parents, two sisters, and a brother, and named twice an All-America, twice an All-America
is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
Honorable Mention, and twice an All-Academic
26
Michigan Tech Magazine n Autumn 2008
player. As a player, Plitzuweit led her team to three
titles in the GLIAC and four appearances in the
NCAA Division II tournament. She holds career
records at Tech for rebounds, assists, and steals.
She also received academic honors, and, at the invitation of the president, was the speaker at her own
commencement. That same year, she was named the
NCAA Woman of the Year in Michigan. She is the
first person to be honored by the Molten/Women’s
Division II Bulletin as both an All-America Player
(1995) and Coach of the Year (2006).
As well, she has been named Coach of the Year in
the conference, the state, and the nation. Plitzuweit
has been an assistant coach for Tech, the University
of Wisconsin-Madison, and the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay. She was the head coach at Grand
Valley State University for four years and won the
NCAA Division II national championship in 2005–
06. She has been associate head coach at the University of Michigan since 2007.
She is a member of the Michigan Tech Sports Hall
of Fame and the Varsity Club.
Sarah A. Rajala ’74
Distinguished Alumni Award
Sarah Rajala ’74, left, shares a moment with Terry Smythe,
middle, and Philip Smythe.
Terry Smythe
Honorary Alumni Award
Terry Smythe is a long-standing friend of Michigan Tech. She is the founder and volunteer coach of
Sarah Rajala, who has pioneered the way for
the Michigan Tech Rowing Club, which began in
women in electrical engineering, graduated with a
1995 with shells donated by Jim Dreher ’62. Smythe
bachelor’s degree in the field.
is an accomplished rower in her own right, attending
She was recently named dean of Mississippi State
two Olympic Trials and competing all over the world.
University’s Bagley College of Engineering. Prior to
In 2006, she brought home five gold medals from the
this, Rajala headed the Department of Electrical and
Masters World Rowing Championships.
Computer Engineering at MSU. She earned both
She has been chair of the Presidential Advisory
master’s and doctoral degrees from Rice University,
Council for Women’s Athletics at Michigan Tech,
taught at North Carolina State University and Purwhich mentors Tech women and brings speakers and
due University, and served as an adjunct research facpresentations to campus. Smythe was instrumental
ulty member at the Wake Forest University Bowman
in developing the Tech employee wellness program,
Gray School of Medicine.
which today is known as TechFit. She was also a
Rajala joined the faculty at NC State in 1979,
member of the Tech Tennis Advisory Council.
where she was the first female professor in the
Smythe serves as fitness director for Keweenaw
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.
Memorial Medical Center and has collaborated on
She is a member of the Society of Women Engiseveral Senior Design projects with the biomedical
neers; a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and
engineering department and has led many Summer
Electronic Engineers; and president and fellow of
Youth explorations. She teaches spinning and indoor
the American Society for Engineering Education. A
rowing classes at Tech and is often on campus as a
native of Skandia, Michigan, she was only the third
motivational speaker and presenter.
woman—and the only one in her class—to graduate
Smythe has received numerous awards locally and
from Michigan Tech with an electrical engineering
nationally for her work promoting fitness and rowing
degree. She was a member of three honor societies:
in the community, including sitting on the MichiMu Beta Psi (music), Tau Beta Pi (engineering), and
gan Governor’s Council on Physical Fitness, Health,
Eta Kappa Nu (electrical engineering).
and Sports. There is no end to Smythe’s influence
At Tech, Rajala is a member of the Presidential
and enthusiasm. One admirer sums it up by saying,
Council of Alumnae and the Electrical Engineering
“When the bull comes at her, Terry grabs the horns.”
Academy and was the first alumna to receive Tech’s
Outstanding Young Alumni Award (1986).
Michigan Technological University n www.mtu.edu
27
Heneses Share Their Good Fortune
R
ichard Henes says his greatest fortune is his
wife, Elizabeth, but he’s also had a successful career and become a philanthropist. He is
gratified to help out others. “What else is there to do
with money once you have it?” he asks. “There’s no
sensible alternative.”
Henes’s road to success began at Michigan Tech,
where he majored in mechanical engineering—a discipline that was a good fit because, as a youth, “I fixed
everything there was to be fixed,” he recalls.
A native of Menominee, Michigan, he graduated
with a bachelor’s degree in 1948. After earning a law
degree from the University of Michigan, he worked
as a patent lawyer in Milwaukee for a year and then
moved to Phoenix, where he worked as an engineer.
In 1958, he founded Henes Manufacturing Company, then Henes Products and Henes Stamping.
His products ranged from electronic instruments
to semiconductor parts to aircraft parts. One major
development was a water-fueled gas welder. His patented products also included exercise equipment, a
gas generator, a pressure-operated valve, and a cover
for pickup truck beds. “We had success, but nothing
earthshaking,” he says.
Where Henes really excelled was as a real estate
investor. He moved to Phoenix when the population
was 100,000. The key to that real estate success: “Buy,
28
Michigan Tech Magazine n Autumn 2008
hold, and sell when the time is right. Being in Arizona didn’t hurt.”
Now, at age 80, he is retired on all fronts except
real estate, spending many hours per day on his computer conducting business and managing investments,
including those for Michigan Tech.
The Heneses provide annual support of an
endowed chair and an endowed scholarship. They also
have provided for additional faculty positions, as well
as the Seaman Mineral Museum, through their estate.
Of the endowed chair, Henes says matter-of-factly,
“We’ll continue that. There should be several chairs
before we’re through.”
The Heneses set up their mechanical engineering
endowed chair in 2002 and say the basis of their support was department chair Bill Predebon’s “description of the necessity for doing it.” The Heneses
welcomed the opportunity, continuing long-standing support that has earned them membership in the
Hubbell Society for their lifetime giving and in the
McNair Society for their estate gift commitments.
Their support is grounded in four considerations:
Henes’s Tech education, a memorable professor, hard
work, and vision.
First, Henes says that Tech gave him “incentive to
go ahead and the urge” to be a mechanical engineer.
Second, R. Rex Seeber (1899 alumnus), chair of
mechanical engineering at the time, took him under
his wing and counseled him. “We had talks. Consultations. He was brilliant, kind, and straightforward.”
Also, hard work was Henes’s nature. Where did
that ethic come from? “I wonder about that myself,”
he says. “I don’t know, but I was pretty much driven.”
Lastly, he foresees an enlightened generation to
come. He believes the biggest challenge facing America’s youth is to be as good as the people coming out
of India and China. “We’re going to have to work
hard to keep up with them, and I hope we do.”
Henes says alongside this successful man is a
woman. For he says about his wife, “I give Liz the
credit for a lot of what I’ve accomplished. She’s a
wonderful person. It’s easy to get along in life when
you have somebody like her beside you.”
And it’s easier for Michigan Tech to achieve its
goals with partners like the Heneses.
That’s the view of Predebon, who says the Henes
endowed chair proved vital in retaining Professor
John Sutherland, one of Tech’s most productive and
highly regarded faculty members.
Predebon says that Sutherland is renowned in the
field of environmentally responsible manufacturing.
He has conducted research at a high level, attracted
significant research funds, collaborated with other
faculty, and mentored many graduate students.
Sutherland was being courted by others offering
him an endowed chair, a common way in academe to
attract established faculty and those “on the rise.” The
Henes chair induced Sutherland to remain at Tech.
“The timing was just right,” Predebon says.
Sutherland is the director of Tech’s Sustainable
Futures Institute, excelling at interdisciplinary inquiry
in addition to collaboration with other universities.
“Often, you search around the country for the best
person to fill an endowed chair,” Predebon says. “We
already had the best in our department, for which I
am very grateful. John is a special person.”
For his part, Sutherland is personally gratified to
fill the Henes chair. “It’s one of the highlights of my
professional career,” he says.
He also recognizes the value for the institution.
“This is exactly the type of support we need to continue our tradition of excellence at Michigan Tech.
The chair supports students and helps promote our
activities across the US and abroad. The Henes’s commitment helps us to stay at the forefront of sustainable manufacturing research and to continue to build
our reputation in this area.” n
The Henes’s endowed scholarship helps more students
attend Michigan Tech.
Give every
year. Make
a difference
every day!
Jen Jung, Student Caller
“As a student caller in the University’s telemarketing center, I get to talk with many alumni and
friends throughout the year. I bring them up to date
on campus news and encourage them to support
the University.
“My involvement with the annual Telefund program is especially important to me because I get
to see firsthand how private support impacts students. I’m a member of the varsity volleyball team,
Blue Key, and the Lode staff. These organizations all
receive support from alumni and friends each year,
and it really helps.
“The 2008-09 Michigan Tech Annual Fund effort
has just started. So, when you receive your call
from a student, I hope you will respond with a contribution. On behalf of all current Michigan Tech
students, thank you. Your generosity makes a difference for all of us.”
If you don’t want to wait for your call, simply go
to www.mtf.mtu/give. Or call the Michigan Tech
Fund (toll-free) at 877-386-3688. You can also mail
your gift to the Michigan Tech Fund, 1400 Townsend
Drive, Houghton, MI, 49931-1295.
Again, thank you for your investment in Michigan
Tech and our students.
Michigan Technological University n www.mtu.edu
29
Class Notes
Presidential Council
of Alumnae Update
PCA members are recognized for achievements such as educational excellence, professional accomplishments, past student service, current community services, University support,
and other personal success. The PCA advises the President on
campus climate issues and provides suggestions and support to
enhance the University’s environment for students, especially
women. Current students are also identified as Women of Promise (bottom right).
2008 Inductees
Cathy J. (Johnson) Colman ’80 Computer Science
IT Director, Quality, Process and Support Solution Center, 3M, St. Paul
Nancy M. (Maloney) Grimm ’95 Rhetoric and Technical Communication
Director of the Writing Center, Michigan Tech
Lou Anne (Szewczyk) Koerschner ’81 Chemical Engineering
Sales and Marketing Director, 3M, St. Paul
Dianne M. March ’86/’92 Computer Science
Cofounder/Software Consultant, SRT Solutions, Ann Arbor
Linda J. (Neal) McInally ’79 Chemical Engineering
Supply Chain Executive Director, Specialty Chemicals Business,
Dow Chemical, Midland
Brenda J. (Taylor) O’Brien ’84 Civil Engineering
Engineer of Construction and Technology
Michigan Department of Transportation, Lansing
Karen A. (Mikkola) Swager ’92/’94 Metallurgical and Materials Engineering
Manager of Mine Strategy and Execution
Mosaic Phosphate MP Inc., Mulberry, Florida
Amy L. (Grisdale) Trahey ’94 Civil Engineering
CEO/Owner, Great Lakes Engineering Group, Lansing
(pictured, top right, with President Glenn Mroz)
Alumni banquet, 1911. Seated in
the middle on the right is President
(“Professor”) Fred McNair, with
beard.
For more about the PCA, visit www.pca.mtu.edu.
Online Alumni Community Enhanced
More than 10,000 alumni and friends have reconnected via
HuskyLink, Michigan Tech’s online community, since its launch
in early 2007.
HuskyLink members can reconnect through the exclusive
Michigan Tech alumni directory that allows users to find former
classmates or fellow alumni who live in their area.
The customized My Profile section, Friends List, and Blogs
provide new ways for alumni to communicate with each other.
Class Notes allow members to post announcements and stories which could also be published in this Michigan Tech Magazine. Special Clubs and Groups pages allow members to enhance
their HuskyLink experience by connecting alumni with common
campus experiences, and you can also subscribe to the TechAlum
newsletter.
Get connected today! http://www.huskylink.mtu.edu/join
30
Michigan Tech Magazine n Autumn 2008
1960s
Janet Murgittroyd ’63 retired
to travel, gardening, kayaking, sailing, and bridge. She
would love to hear from fellow
“toots.” (And you can do
that through HuskyLink
www.huskylink.mtu.edu.)
Alum Publishes Textbook
Eustace L. Dereniak
’63 has published
Geometrical and
Trigonometric Optics
with Teresa D. Dereniak.
From Cambridge Press:
“An ideal textbook for
advanced undergraduate level
courses in geometrical optics,
this book will also interest those
wanting to learn the concepts
and theory of geometrical
optics. Each chapter contains
worked examples, and there
are exercises to reinforce the
reader’s understanding of
material.” Eustace is currently a
professor at the University
of Arizona.
Michigan Technological University n www.mtu.edu
31
1970s
1980s
Phillip Holmblade ’71 recently
retired from the architectural
and engineering company of
SSOE, Inc., Troy, MI, after 29
years, most recently as senior
vice president/co-owner in the
retail division serving as a principal project manager. Phillip
is currently enjoying not having to drive to Troy every day
and looking forward to playing
more golf. He hopes to be able
to become more active in sup-
porting the youth of his area to
seek engineering as a career.
Aubrey Freeman ’72 has
accepted a position as an
adjunct instructor at Kaplan
University. He is teaching an
online class in effective writing
and a class in technical writing. Aubrey is still with Unisys
in the Twin Cities as a technical writer.
Sally Heidtke ’81 retired from
P&G after 24 years and is
now vice president of human
resources for UP Special
Delivery, a regional transportation company in Iron
Mountain, MI. She is also a
diversity consultant/trainer
with Legacy Unlimited, a
global consulting community.
John Miller ’85 recently retired
from the US Army at the rank
of Lt. Col. and began his second career with EDS, leading
the database team as serviceoriented architecture program
manager supporting the US
Army Accessions Command.
Jamie Holden ’86 was recently
named associate general counsel for Coachmen Industries,
Inc., located in Middlebury,
IN. Coachmen is one of the
country’s leading manufacturers of recreational vehicles and
systems-built housing and is
listed on the New York Stock
Exchange. Previously, Holden
served as general counsel for
Rhino Linings Corp. in San
Diego. He and his family
reside in Granger, IN.
Michigan Tech Love Story
Robert VanDuyn ’80 writes—
“Jan and I got a postcard from Tech
asking us to share our Valentine story.
I guess its because we met and got
married while both at Tech.
“Eventually we got engaged and
were married in August of our
senior year. We both graduated
in 1980.
“In the end, I think she has spent
“Jan and I met in Bently Beale’s COBOL more time helping me out, or
perhaps she would put it slightly
class in the EE building in the large
differently.
But we have had
lecture hall on the left. (I assume
twenty-seven great years together,
its still there.) Jan was sitting about
and two wonderful sons and a
halfway down on the right, one seat
foster son as well.
in from the aisle. She was wearing a
“Hopefully
we can make it up to
white shirt, blue jeans, and blue knit
Tech one of these days.”
shawl. She had a yellow notebook
and on the cover was written
‘Computer.’ As a comp. sci. major, I
felt I might be able to “help” this
young lady out.
32
Michigan Tech Magazine n Autumn 2008
Jim ’94 and Kimberly Allison
announce their fifth son,
Daniel John, on 11/8/07 in
Wichita, KS. Daniel is happy
and healthy.
Shelley (Williams) Bolbrugge
’94, Ashleigh Bolbrugge,
and Harry announce the latest addition to their family,
Maddigan Lottie, on 9/28/07.
Pippin ’94 and Janice Brehler
announce the birth of Lisette
Eleanor on 2/8/08.
Jeanette (Foley) Albright
Christopher Gillanders ’90
’95, Aaron Albright, and big
announces Grace (3) and
brother, Ethan, welcomed
Elizabeth (5) in fall 2007.
Grace Denise on 3/8/08.
Philip Van Riper ’90 started
Deb Zwitter ’95 has recently
work at Goodyear Tire and
begun her new career at LSI
Rubber in Akron as a senior
Corp. in Fort Collins, CO,
development engineer in the
where she continues to work in
engineering mechanics group
the field of signal integrity for
performing FEA on tires.
high-speed interfaces.
Wendy Peffers ’92 announces
Michael Erickson ’96 and
Taryn Elizabeth Peffers, born
Stephanie (Stodolak) Erickson
4/21/05, and Lainey Quin
welcomed their first child,
Peffers, born 6/11/07.
Colton Michael, on 11/19/07.
Karen (Mikkola) Swager PE
James Foster ’96 announces
’92 has been promoted to
the birth of Peter Frederick
director, operations strategy, for Foster on 5/5/08.
Mosaic Fertilizer and is located Brian Van Gheem ’96
in Mulberry, FL.
announces the birth of Daniel
Andrew Tabar ’92 was hired at
John Van Gheem on 3/25/08.
Qualcomm in San Diego as a
Brian has recently taken a
senior systems engineer in the position with Midwest ISO as
IT department supporting the a senior operations engineer.
monitoring tools.
Kristi (French) Zakrzewski,
PE ’96 and Brian Zakrzewski
’99 announce the birth of
Anja Michelle and Eli Ryan
1990s
on 12/6/07. Kristi has also
accepted a new position as an
associate engineer at CH2M
HILL in Okemos, MI.
Kevin Britton ’97 received
a Master of Science in
Engineering from Purdue
University in May 2008.
Tonya (Treichel) Albers ’98
announces the birth of Nora
Catherine in September 2006.
Laura Hoeflein ’98 and Michael
Hoeflein announce the birth of
Cecilia Therese on 11/9/07.
Brian Spolnicki ’98 announces
the birth of Melissa, born June
2007.
Heather Bartel ’99 and Rick
Bartel have relocated to Mesa,
AZ. Heather is a senior vendor management specialist for Kelly Services at Intel
in Chandler, and Rick is a
program manager for TRW
Automotive in Mesa.
Jason Groendyk ’99 and
Stephanie Groendyk announce
the birth of Carey Sanford
on 9/27/07 and Christian
Matthew on 1/18/05 in
Phoenix, AZ.
James ’99 and Sarah Truax
’00 announce the birth of
Wyatt John Donald Truax
in Brockton, MA. His middle names are in honor of
James’ dad and an uncle (both
Michigan Tech graduates).
Michigan Tech Alum Named
NASA Flight Director
Jerry P. Jason ’92 is one of four new
flight directors named by NASA. He
joins a select group of individuals
who lead human spaceflights from
Mission Control at NASA’s Johnson
Space Center in Houston.
Theresa Jenkins ’97, front, a teacher in
the Nanjing International School, China,
was invited to the Olympic torch-lighting
ceremony in Nanjing and is pictured with
representatives (from her school) of the
other four continents. Behind her, left to
right: Australia, Asia, Africa, and Europe.
Jason earned a BS in Metallurgical
Engineering from Tech. He joined the
NASA staff in 1998 and has supported
twenty-eight space shuttle missions.
Jason recently served as assistant to
the Johnson Space Center director.
A flight director is responsible
for managing and carrying out
shuttle flights and space station
expeditions. Flight directors also
are involved in developing plans for
Constellation Program exploration
missions.
Only seventy-seven people have
served as NASA flight directors,
or are in training to do so, in
the nearly fifty years of human
spaceflight.
Michigan Technological University n www.mtu.edu
33
2000s
Jesse Gwidt ’00 and Karen
(Bell) Gwidt ’00 announce the
birth of Kristina Margaret
Gwidt on 12/23/07.
Molly (Renn) O’Brien ’00 and
Erich O’Brien ’00 announce the
birth of Kendra Shannon on
12/27/07. She was welcomed
by her big sister, Kaitlyn
Rose (2).
Postcard from Iraq
Alum Oversees Reconstruction, Helps Girls’ School
1st Lt. Jennifer Alecci ’00 is stationed in Taji, north of
Baghdad, Iraq, and was supervisor of forty-eight construction
projects totaling more than $122 million. She helped turn
“rubble and dilapidated buildings into usable facilities.”
She also helped the Taji Girls’ School with donations of soccer
balls, school supplies, and shoes, learning Arabic to introduce
herself. After visiting one “extremely reserved” classroom, she
left, but looked back in and “caught the girls smiling, talking,
and enjoying the supplies we gave them. I smiled and waved,
and they did the same. It’s something I’ll never forget.”
Zachary ‘99 and ’01 and
Elizabeth (Tiefert) Owens ’00
announce the birth of their
first child, Sawyer Westbrook,
on 3/28/08.
Tim Klein ’01 and Angie
(Gialanella) Klein ’01 announce
the birth of Caleb Ryan Klein
on 2/2/08.
Michelle Manarolla ’01 and
Kevin Ford ’04 announce their
engagement and plan to marry
in June 2009 in northern
Michigan. Both are currently
living in Middletown, CT.
Daniel Siderius ’01 completed a PhD in Chemical
Engineering in 2007 and
joined Washington University
in St. Louis as a postdoctoral
research associate. He resides
in St. Louis County, MO.
Andrea (Dreyer) Zuehlk ’01
married Matt Zuehlk on
6/17/06 in Bloomfield Hills,
MI.
Aaron Griffith ’02 married
Jennifer DeMull in Grand
Rapids, MI, on 11/17/07.
Amanda McMahon ’02 and Ravi
Patankar announce the birth
of Viveka Denali Patankar on
2/23/08.
Jacey Radel ’02 announces
the birth of Caiden Alan on
12/15/07.
Angelina Sclafani-Murphy ’02
is an intelligence support officer/assistant Hertfordshire
Police Authority, Three Rivers,
UK, and is married to Gary
Murphy, clinical scientist,
Health Protection Agency
Center for Infection, virus reference division.
Emily Miller ’03 is a senior
mechanical engineer at
Cardinal Health and lives in
San Diego.
Jennifer Muraske ’03 has a new
job as accountant for the town
of Snowmass Village, CO.
Emily Coles ’04 announces
the birth of Carson Guenther
Coles on 4/13/08.
Tony and Megan (Schaller)
Moraska ’04 celebrated their
marriage 6/9/07 in Milwaukee
with family. Last October,
Tony’s career took them to
Coeur d’Alene, ID. Tony, an
environmental engineer, is currently a regional sales manager
for Blue Water Technologies,
which provides water filtration
systems to wastewater treatment plants in the US and
Canada. Megan, a biomedical engineer, started her own
company, Moraska Consulting
Group, Inc. She provides project management expertise
to large health care organizations around the country.
Tony, Megan, and their black
lab puppy, Miller, enjoyed
their first summer in the great
Northwest!
Aaron Linford ’05 married
Claire Adams ’05 on 7/7/07.
Edward Oom ’05 began work
with Canadian Pacific Railway
in Milwaukee in March
2007 as a yard clerk and was
promoted to project engineer in Franklin Park, IL, in
November 2007. Project categories include track maintenance, bridges and buildings,
and signals and communications on the Chicago Service
Area from Chicago, IL, to
St. Paul, MN, on former
Milwaukee Road track.
Emily ’05 and Andrew Whaley
’06 announce the birth of
Grace Beth on 2/5/08.
Melissa (Trahan) Ward ’06 and
Adam Ward ’05 and ’07 were
married on 9/8/07.
In Memoriam
The Michigan Tech family
extends condolences to the
relatives and friends of those
who have passed away recently.
1934
Jerold B. Van Faasen PE
1936
Roger Conant
1937
Emil T. Macki
Dr. F. John McMulkin
Paul N. Selsback
1939
Robert P. Klenner Sr.
1940
Dr. Donald R. Douslin
1941
Arthur J. Klenner
1942
Albert L. Horujko
1943
Elenora D. (Bryus) Taylor
Frank E. Blake
1944
Harold W. Fitzner
Roger J. Storves
1945
George E. Baldwin Jr.
1947
Adrian J. DeVriend
George A. Kaiponen
Roy P. Tidman
1948
John L. Bottum
James W. Crawford
Elmer R. Drevdahl Jr.
James C. Mallory
Edward J. Powlenko
Dave E. Wick
1949
Glenn P. Barr
Thomas M. Harrison
Bert C. Prisk
1950
Theodore R. Edwards
Robert J. Ramuta
Lawrence J. Sundlie
William D. Wade
Edwin R. Wyma
1951
Alvis W. Jacobs PE
Michigan Tech Magazine n Autumn 2008
1972
Richard G. Carver
Christine I. (Federighe)
Johnson
1973
Cheryl A. (Barber)
Rockabrand
1960
Edwin A. Goulette
Gary H. Keppen
Earl J. Stukel
1977
Richard S. VandeVusse
1961
Bruce A. Marsh
Herbert R. Usitalo
1980
Thomas C. Meier
Frank C. Murtland III
1964
Richard I. Grass
Richard S. Jones
1982
Wilhelmina H. Yonkman
1965
Dr. David S. Canavera
1966
Konstantine P. Fedeyko
Raymond M. Humphrey
1952
Richard C. Ahlberg
James F. Lahr
James T. Orsborn
1953
Dr. Melvin L. Anderson
Douglas I. Fales
1954
Jay B. Coon
Robert J. Wellington PE
1955
Robert J. LaLuzerne
1956
David S. Coyle
Ernest J. Wiedenhoefer PE
1967
Nareshchandra N. Mody
1968
Lance S. Rudisill
The Fine Print
Michigan Tech Magazine
(USPS 345-980)
Published by
Michigan Technological
University
1400 Townsend Drive
Houghton, MI 49931-1295
Postage is paid at Houghton,
Michigan, and additional
mailing offices.
University
Marketing and
Communications
Additional Photography
Katerina Aifantis
Jennifer Alecci
James Cooper
Richard and Elizabeth Henes
Theresa Jenkins
Kali Jeter
NASA
Sam Sweitz
Jan and Robert VanDuyn
Stan Vitton
Greg Waite
Executive Director
Bonnie B. Gorman
Senior Editor
Dennis K. Walikainen ’92
Designer
Clare Rosen
Photography
Joe Pyykkonen
1988
Martin R. Albar
Dennis Corbett
1990
Loralee O. (Ollanketo) Larson
2000
Troy D. Mikula
2002
Jeffrey A. Call
1971
Francis J. Marier
Design and Production
Arlene Collins
1986
Cynthia J. (Little) Bellefeuille
1999
Jacob B. Himes
1970
W. Michael Osterby
Vice President for
Advancement
Shea McGrew
1983
Charles G. Hernden
1995
Severi R. Haataja
1969
Alan J. Kent
Dr. Ben A. Moller
Ellsworth A. Nadeau
2008
Brian L. Beachy
1957
James E. Smart
Creative Director
Bill Tembreull
34
1958
William C. Aldrich
Robert W. Ehrlich Jr.
Fred A. Kisabeth
William C. Pruess
John G. Veeneman
Contributors
Jennifer Donovan
Wes Frahm
John Gagnon
Marcia Goodrich
Brenda Rudiger
Kara Sokol
Dennis Walikainen
Correspondence
University Marketing and
Communications
Michigan Technological
University
1400 Townsend Drive
Houghton, MI 49931-1295
Email: dkwalika@mtu.edu
Fax: 906-487-3553
Address Changes
Email: gccolaro@mtu.edu
Mail: Alumni Records Office
Michigan Technological
University
1400 Townsend Drive
Houghton, MI 49931-1295
Michigan Technological
University is an equal
opportunity educational
institution/equal opportunity
employer.
Michigan Technological University n www.mtu.edu
35
Michigan Technological University
1400 Townsend Drive
Houghton, MI 49931-1295
My Father’s Hands
By Randall Freisinger, Professor of Humanities and
2008 Distinguished Teaching Award Winner
My father’s hands, both of them, lacked
fingertips and nails. The fingers were elliptic,
pink, and smooth, no telltale prints
for him to leave as clues at crime scenes
for prying forensic eyes. I used to lie
awake nights and try to imagine the moment:
his hands, masculine and whole, holding
the dynamite caps out an open window to show
his friends below. Those hands,
about to explode and leave him exposed
mimosa-like to the world, unable to learn
the simplest alphabet of touch, unable to play
a game of catch with his sons. Is that why
he turned to tools, the feel of cold, hard,
unreciprocating steel, the pliant, undemanding
attitude of wood? How often I tracked him
down to his basement shop and saw his tapered
stumps bleeding, his eyes fierce slits through squall
clouds of cigarette smoke, his lathe
raving like a crazed evangelist coercing
miracles from crippled and knotted planks
of pine. When the stroke routed language
from his brain, we could always find him
on trips to Wal-Mart pacing the aisles in Tools,
his pared fingers in silent conversation
with sets of chisels and drill bits and clamps.
In his casket, no longer able to hide with sleights
of hand his scarred fingers now dovetailed together,
he smiled. That smile, wired and screwed
into place, bore the slightest trace of pride.
As if, like Noah, he rode the rising waters of his death
in a fine ark of his own making, all gopher wood
and sealed with the pitch of darkness.
First published in New Letters: A Magazine of Writing & Art
(Vol. 73, No. 4, 2007)