Fall 2010 n Volume 47, Number 2

Moments in Time

1904The Clubhouse/Gymnasium is built. In 2010, as the ROTC Building, it will be the oldest structure on campus.

1885 Michigan Mining School established.

1927 Ella Wood, the first female faculty member, taught geography, political science, and history.

1949 Married student housing, aka

“Trailertown” or “Vetville,” catered to returning GIs and their families.

1905Tech receives its first private gift, $2,000 for Chemical Sciences.

1948 The April 1 Michigan Tech Lode is printed largely in Finnish.

1955Chemistry professor Myron

“Doc” Berry arrives at Tech. In later years, upperclassmen would play “Another One Bites the Dust” to freshmen heading to their first chemistry exam.

1973 Bosch Brewing Company closes one year shy of its centennial, breaking the hearts of generations of students and alumni.

1985 Dean of Students Linda Belote announces that beer kegs will not be allowed at K-Day.

1987Library installs two computers for student use.

1993 NMU hockey coach Rick Comley says presence of Pep Band negates home ice advantage; WCHA rules that a school’s band cannot perform at away games, except during postseason.

1974 Soichiro Honda gives away a motorcycle at commencement.

1968 Students claim the new Chem-Met Building is sinking; President Ray Smith provides “photographic evidence.”

1959 Harold Meese is named dean of students.

1965 Hockey great Tony Esposito celebrates Tech’s second National Championship. Tech would earn three under the leadership of the legendary John MacInnes.

1965 WMTU goes on the air.

4 The heavy bridgecelebrates its golden anniversary

8 Coming to AmericaInternational grad students at Tech

14 One good turn leads to anotherTech’s generations of caring

17 Slick trickResearcher designs super foam to mop up oil

18 Photo essay: Ties that gently bind

23 Octave DuTemple:the accidental adventurer

25 2010 Alumni Association award winners

28Alumni Association notes

31Tech alum three-peats at Jeopardy!

32Class notes

Cover,insidecoverWe looked back over the years and selected a few moments to remember at Michigan Tech. It was great fun; our only regret was that we didn’t have space to publish more.

Special thanks to Professor Emeritus Jack Jobst, whose research uncovered many of the moments in time.

Photos courtesy of the Michigan Tech Archives and University Marketing and Communications

Clare Rosen, design and illustration

Marcia Goodrich, editor

Feedback

Your letters to the editor are available at mtu.edu/magazine/fall10/stories/letters.

2001 Football team defeats Northern Michigan for the first time in 46 years, though they didn’t play each other for 29 of them.

2003 RIAA sues computer science student for $98 billion for illegally downloading music.

2006 Tech breaks the Guinness world records for largest snowball fight, most people making snow angels, and largest snowball.

2010 Michigan Tech launches Generations of Discovery Capital Campaign.

2009Women’s basketball team achieves back-to-back regional championships in 2009 and 2010.

1994 Tech closes because of the cold for first time in 108 years.

Richard Drenovsky, “Mr. D.,” retires after 26 years in Dean of Students Office.

1998 Board of Control approves switch to semesters to begin in fall 2000.

Be part of Tech’s history: 125 years and countingMichigan Tech is celebrating its quasquicentennial, and you’re invited to help build the University’s historical record by sharing your stories. Go to www.mtu.edu/125 and post your memories. While you are there, you can read other people’s recollections. Do it for fun, for old friends, and for posterity. In another 125 years, all those great stories really will be history.

www.mtu.edu/125

By Dennis Walikainen Photos by Ryan Schumacher

Since 1960, locals have loved it and loathed it, tourists have walked it and photographed it, and everyone in the Copper Country—including students running late for class— has waited in line on it at least once.

THE HEAVY BRIDGE

LENGTH OF BRIDGE UPPER LEVEL

1,310 feet

LIFT SPAN

260 feet

WEIGHT OF LIFT SPAN

4.5 million pounds

TOWER HEIGHT

188 feet above piers

Fifty years of (mostly) smooth operations

NUMBER OF VEHICLES CROSSING EACH DAY

22,500

WEIGHT OF STEEL

7,000 tons

COST TO BUILD

$11 millionWOULD BE $80 MILLION TODAY

WEIGHT OF CONCRETE

35,000 tons

Three Michigan Tech alumni were on the engi-neering team that helped build the Portage Lake (don’t say “lift”) Bridge, which marked

its fiftieth anniversary in June. John Michels ’51 of Ontonagon was a project engineer and remembers it as “quite a stressful engineering feat, especially erect-ing the steel.”

The civil engineer, who worked with Tom Wiseman ’49 and Don Kero ’58, says the 2,200-ton center span was assembled on barges in Hancock and floated down the canal, pulled by tug boats. It was like threading a huge needle, with only four inches of clearance at either end of the lift span. The fact that it fit perfectly, including the expansion joints, was a relief to all involved, Michels said.

A crew of about one hundred worked on the bridge each day, including Bernard Gestel of Dollar Bay, who patrolled the waters in his boat to retrieve anything that fell in the water, humans included. Deep-sea divers toiled two hours on, four hours off. There were surprises: while workers were dredging the lake bottom, they unearthed a sunken scow, a hundred feet long and loaded with sandstone.

The lift bridge had three big advantages over the old swing bridge, says Michels.

“It was functional: you couldn’t gain a large enough horizontal clearance for lake shipping with the swing bridge,” he says. “It was also necessary for railroad traffic, and it was located at the shortest distance between the two towns.”

That railroad bed (abandoned in 1982) would play a big role in the design and construction. It is the heaviest lift bridge of its kind (some 4.5 million pounds), in great part because of that deck.

“And the railroad is located more toward the west side,” Michels recalls, “so the counterweights that balance the lift span are all heavier on the west side to account for the weight difference.”

More delicate balancing is evident, according to Michels.

“The balancing chains are composed of steel blocks, and they offset the weight of the lifting cables,” he says. “And the weight of the cables shifts from the lift span to the tower as it opens.”

SmoothoperatorsHelping control the traffic via waterway, railway,

or roadway has always been the responsibility of the bridge operators. Wayne Poisson worked the controls from 1963 to 1988.

He recalls one especially close call in the winter.“The ore boat Wilfred Sykes was coming through,

and it was snowing very heavy,” he says. “I couldn’t see him because of the snow, and he couldn’t even find me on his radar, it was so thick. I looked up, and all of a sudden he was right at my door. I got the

The high life: John Michels (right) and Bernie Smith establish the layout of the machinery on top of the tower, 200 feet above the lake, in 1959.Photo provided by John Michels

Design engineer comes back to “his bridge”

After fifty years, Tom D’Arcy is back in town. The design engineer for the approach spans and the lift span of the bridge, this June he is visiting the Keweenaw to help celebrate his creation’s golden anniversary.

“Structural engineers love bridges,” he tells a crowd come to hear his stories about the link between Houghton and Hancock. “Our designs are exposed for all to see.”

D’Arcy was a young engineer with the firm Hazelet and Erdel when he was assigned the task of designing the world’s heaviest lift-span bridge. He remembers receiving some hard-knocks learning as he undertook the project. At a meeting in Lansing filled with gray-haired state engineers, his youthful—and in his opinion excellent—ideas were shot down one after another. On the long ride back home, he asked his mentor, “When are ideas accepted, regardless of age?”

“When you are the oldest guy in the room,” his boss answered.This day in the Keweenaw, in this room, D’Arcy was among the oldest,

and the audience was rapt as he discussed the bridge that can mean more than just safely transporting people and vehicles.

“Bridges connect places, towns, even countries,” D’Arcy says, but he also stressed the importance of building and maintaining those personal bridges that connect people’s lives.

And, like the Portage Lake Bridge, D’Arcy says, if we make them strong, they will endure as they mature and age. n

bridge up just in time. I don’t know how he didn’t hit me.”Poisson misses the work and camaraderie, particularly the signals that

the boats and bridge would exchange: three long and two short signaling the master salute, “especially the old steam whistles,” he says. “I would answer them anytime, day or night.”

Today, five operators share the duties in eight-hour shifts, according to Bob “Butch” Paavola. These days, most of his traffic is sailboats, and August is the busiest month. “We get the tugboats and the Ranger, too.” But ore boats are rare. “The thousand footers are too big,” Paavola says.

It takes only five or six minutes to lift the span, although it seems much longer to motorists. And, there’s no truth to the rumor that the operators wait to raise or lower it until traffic is heavy by Keweenaw standards—during the “rush minute” just before 8:00 am or after 5:00 pm.

By mid-December, traffic flows freely. The sailboats are in dry dock, and, as the last boat, a Coast Guard cutter, goes through, the operators’ jobs are done for the season.

PostscriptMichels returned to the Keweenaw recently and, thanks to Paavola, was

able to visit the new control room and journey to the top of the towers. He was impressed by all the new machinery and undaunted by the heights.

Fifty years after he finished looking at blueprints, he says, “The height doesn’t bother me.”

After all, he built it. n

“I got the bridge up just in time.

I don’t know how he didn’t hit me.”

—bridge operator Wayne Poisson

Operator Butch Paavola, left, discusses the ups and downs of the bridge with Tom and Marie D'Arcy.

By Marcia Goodrich

In 2008, as Kaixian Yu’s plane was landing at Houghton County Memorial Airport, his life was taking off. He had been accepted into Michigan Tech’s PhD program in mathematical sciences. He was excited about working with his advisor in a field he loved. And, he had studied English for ten years at home in China and passed the language competency test with flying colors.

What could go wrong?

Comingto America

“I couldn’t find anywhere to live,” says Yu. “We spent five days looking. Then, when we finally found a place, I was trying to set up the cable and Internet, and the people at Charter couldn’t understand me.”

“It was very difficult,” he says quietly. Then he perks up. “Fortunately, people here are really kind and so nice. They understand that English is not your mother language. I’m not so afraid now of making mistakes.”

Yu is one of nearly five hundred international graduate students enrolled at Michigan Tech. If it weren’t for them, Tech’s phenomenal growth in research and graduate education would have been stunted at best. Over the last several years, fully 40 percent of Tech’s master’s and PhD students have come from beyond American borders.

That’s more than double the national average of about 16 percent, according to the Council of Graduate Education. Dig a little deeper and that discrepancy disappears, however; fully half of all engineering grad students in the US are international students. This helps explain why they are drawn to Tech, says Thy Yang, the University’s director of International Programs and Services.

“Most international students studying in the US pursue degrees in STEM [science, technology, engineering, and mathematics],” she says. “And our STEM programs have a strong reputation overseas.”

The influx of international students to US schools is due in part to the value other cultures place upon educating their children, she believes. “They want their children to have the highest level of education so they can have a better career. Jobs in STEM are also jobs that pay well, and many employers have trouble filling jobs in these fields.”

Jacqueline Huntoon, dean of the Graduate School, agrees. “Most US students are not interested in studying STEM,” she says. “It’s not sexy, not perceived as having great value.”

Many Americans graduate from high school lacking the math and science skills needed to succeed in STEM undergraduate programs, let alone as master’s and doctoral candidates. With the US educational system yielding only a trickle of potential STEM graduate students, American universities must look elsewhere, says Huntoon. “We couldn’t have the research program we do without international students,” she states flatly. “Graduate students do 75 percent of the grunt work involved in research. And it’s not just here at Michigan Tech. Any institutions with vibrant research in STEM have a lot of international students. There aren’t enough domestic students to go around.”

All those international students provide domestic students with some key insights, says Michigan Tech President Glenn Mroz. “Bringing the world to Michigan Tech gives US students the opportunity to learn firsthand what international competition looks like, and a chance to see just how hard people elsewhere are willing to work. It’s a win-win for all students.”

Of the hundreds of international graduate students coming to Michigan Tech, each has his or her own reasons for leaving home to spend years among strangers. Many seek a better understanding of the United States and its people.

However, graduate school can sometimes be a tough place to get to know the natives. “I wish there were more American students here,” says Abhilash Kantamneni, who is working on his doctorate in physics. “In my department, there’s only about one American for every four international PhD students.”

After earning his bachelor’s degree in India, Kantamneni was accepted to graduate programs at the University of Southern California and the Illinois Institute of Technology, as well as at Michigan Tech. All offered what he wanted most: research opportunities and the chance to work with cutting-edge technologies. He chose Tech in part because it seemed to offer total immersion in Americana. Other schools have thousands of Indian students to pal around with, and Kantamneni was not looking for a home away from home. “I wanted to experience more cultures,” he said.

Indian students also have potent economic motives for getting a graduate degree. American students can usually find good jobs with a bachelor’s degree. “But in India, if you want good career growth, you need to study as much as possible,” says Kantamneni. “You need at least a master’s to advance.” Competition is murderously intense to get into the top Indian schools, so US universities offer another route to the coveted graduate degree.

PhD student Lei Zhang left her home in China at the urging of her entire family. “We think we can learn more here. The culture is different, the education is different. And I want to make myself different. There are so many students in China, and if I go the same way as everyone, I will have an ordinary life. That’s why I make the effort to study hard and work hard.”

Zhang chose Michigan Tech because it is nationally ranked in her field, materials science and engineering. She also chose Tech because of Houghton. “Everybody likes large cities, but I

can’t focus myself as well in a large city. And, it is very safe here.”

What about Houghton’s intimidating winters? “I knew that before I came here,” she shrugs. “My hometown is in the north of China, colder than here. I like it.”

The weather was also no big deal for Margus Paesalu. While the vast majority of Tech’s international students come from China and India, the rest are drawn from more than seventy other countries. Paesalu is Estonian and one of the first participants in ATLANTIS, an exchange program for forestry students from Scandinavia and the US.

“Part of why I chose Michigan Tech was the latitude and the Finnish,” says Paesalu, who studied at the University of Helsinki and the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. “Everyone thinks I’m American originating in Scandinavia.”

He came to the United States for curiosity’s sake and for the challenge. “This is a country I heard a lot of but had never been to,” he says. “Your president is in the news all around the world, all the time. And a native-speaking environment is more demanding.”

What he found was a new way of learning. “The biggest point is the hands-on experience,” says Paesalu, who is earning an MS in Forest Ecology and Management. “When I came here, I had to design my own project. I’m ordering supplies, estimating costs, and then showing my supervisor.” Both independence and collaboration are valued, he says. Education is more a dialogue, “not just watching a PowerPoint and switching your brain off.”

Along with that practical approach to education comes a more collegial relationship with the faculty. “My advisor here is really friendly. He’s always there for me. It’s really motivating and very much welcome,” Paesalu says. Faculty in Scandinavia are also very supportive, he says, “but in parts of Europe, if you are a professor, everyone is below you.”

Daniel Yeboah of Ghana, who is working on his master’s in applied ecology, has had a similar experience. “In Ghana, we always had to address professors using their title. Here, our professors prefer to use their first name. It takes away fears, makes them more approachable. And it gives you an opportunity to ask more questions.”

Yeboah was inspired to come to Tech after meeting University faculty and students back home. He had dreamed of furthering his education in a place that addressed issues on the forefront of natural resource management and valued dynamic thinking. “I saw that in the Michigan Tech people.”

There are major advantages to studying in the US, and particularly to studying at Michigan Tech, according to Parinya Chakartnarodom ’08, who earned a PhD in Materials Science and Engineering. A Royal Thai Scholar, his government supported his graduate studies abroad. In return, he is now serving on the faculty of Kasetsart University in Bangkok, one of Thailand’s leading universities.

“At Tech I had access to a lot of equipment, including an X-ray diffractometer, a scanning electron microscope, a transmission electron microscope, and an atomic force microscope,” he says, adding that the department’s technical staff were a great help. “I couldn’t have finished my research without their advice.” Chakartnarodom also praised the thoughtful, one-on-one instruction he received, both in how to conduct research and how to teach. Plus, the local hospitality made his years away from home easier to bear. “Not only did the people at Michigan Tech teach me a lot, my landlord and my neighbors were very nice to me. They taught me a lot of life’s experience. I can’t imagine doing it without a good neighbor.”

International students bring a variety of gifts to the University. Not the least of them are exotic cuisines.

“When we have cookouts, they bring good food, that’s for sure,” says Greg Odegard, an associate professor of mechanical engineering–engineering mechanics. “My students bring this chicken thing from India that blows away my burgers and hot dogs.”

Great picnic fare is just a bonus, he is quick to add. “I’ve been amazed at the work ethic they’ve shown.”

“The Indian grad students that come here aren’t offered the kind of financial support that American students have,” he says. “Many have to work full

“It’s a huge responsibility. When I flew here, my dad told me, ‘Remember, you are representing

your family and your country.’”

time in jobs completely unrelated to their studies. Plus, they are taking classes and trying to do their research.”

But, he stresses, American students can be equally committed. “I have domestic students who work harder than anyone,” he says.

“International students tend to bring lots of energy and enthusiasm,” says Sarah Green, chair of the chemistry department. She also stresses that generalizations are dangerous; like American students, she says, “they are all individuals, all different. Some have turned out to be terrific teachers, and others are completely focused on their research.”

This is true in part because a broader range of international students is now coming to the US. Thanks to expanding economies at home, a new generation of middle-class parents is now willing and able to help pay for their children’s education abroad. As a result, international students no longer depend on a thimbleful of scholarships available only to the rarefied ranks of the super-smart.

“The first wave of Chinese students who were allowed to study in the US was absolutely the top

pick academically,” says Green. “That demographic has broadened over the years. China now has some very good universities, and we now compete with European universities as well for the best students.”

Also, as China has adopted capitalist ways, so have its young people become more like their American counterparts. “They are more focused on economics and jobs,” she says. But whatever their nationality, those who are just in it for the money probably won’t do well in grad school. “The need to learn new stuff is what drives scientists. Getting a PhD is hard work. If you are going to grad school just to get a better job, this isn’t for you.”

Mechanical engineering professor Amitabh Narain has advised students from China, India, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, and Uruguay in his twenty-seven years at Tech. There are differences between domestic and international students, he says. “Their work ethic is very good, but they require engagement. You need to be involved with them. Americans are more likely to take an idea and run with it.”

However, foreign students’ math skills can be outstanding. “I just finished writing a final report on a $700,000 grant and two successful new proposals

Graduate students Margus Paesalu of Estonia, Abhilash Kantamneni of India, Lei Zhang and Kaixian Yu of China, and Daniel Yeboah of Ghana Ryan Schumacher photo

totaling $400,000. About 60 percent of the work was computational in nature and was handled by foreign graduate students,” Narain says.

Like Green, Narain has seen a change in student preparedness as more and more international students come the United States.

“We have had an exponential rise in grad students, and a lot of them are self supported” and not dependent on research grant funding for their tuition, he says. “They knock on my door and say they will be willing to take on a project at no cost to me. That lets me put a trained person to work immediately, which is a good thing. But not all of them are capable of doing the work.”

And then there is the subject of accents. In all fairness, says Narain, he gets more gripes from students on his own lilting speech than do his graduate students who teach classes. “We do have a responsibility to be understandable to our students,” he says. “But for students to expect all accents to be their own is extreme.”

Accents not withstanding, virtually all Indian students who come to the United States are able to carry on a conversation with ease. With India’s dozens of languages and dialects, English has become the nation’s common tongue. On the other hand, few Chinese students coming to Tech have had a chance to master English.

That’s one big reason Chinese students work so hard, says math student Kaixian Yu. “The Americans speak English, and we don’t,” he says. “We have to spend more time figuring out what the book says. What does this word mean? This sentence? And then, what is this knowledge? It’s not double the time, but we spend maybe one and a half times more than Americans.”

Foreign students face additional challenges stemming from America’s post-9/11 immigration and security climate. Many don’t return home during their entire time at Tech for fear that their

visas will be revoked when they try to come back to the US. That climate also prevents students’ families from coming for a visit.

“I have a daughter and a wife in Ghana,” says Yeboah. “The US Embassy in Ghana is making it difficult for them to come here. To be away from my family for two years is very difficult, and it could be an obstacle to continuing my PhD studies. To wait another four or five years? That would be terrible.”

The loneliness can be compounded by cultural differences. Ghanaian society is community-based, Yeboah says. An American would be hard-pressed to go to a village and not be swept up immediately into community life. In the United States, everyone is friendly, but the social unit is the family, and not having family nearby can be tough. “It’s a bit of a hard time, to live alone in the basement,” he says.

Finally, international students are sometimes surprised to discover that, in addition to succeeding in their studies, they are expected to be standard bearers for an entire nation.

“It’s a huge responsibility,” says physics student Abhilash Kantamneni. “When I flew here, my dad told me, ‘Remember, you are representing your family and your country.’ If I’m bad at anything, people typecast all Indians. It’s a lot riding on your shoulders.”

Nevertheless, coming to America can be well worth the labor and the tears. “The grad program of American universities is world-class,” says Narain, who earned one degree in India before getting his MS and PhD in the US. “The one-on-one interaction that goes into our graduate education makes it very difficult for others to compete.”

Indeed, Yeboah doesn’t miss a chance to champion the education he is receiving half a world away from home. He tells his countrymen, “Go to the place where you get the best, so you can be the best.”

“You can talk with your advisor a lot and learn much more here. That’s a fact,” Yu says in near-perfect English, two years after he had to enlist a friend to order his Internet service. “We should face that. This is the place to learn what’s going on.” n

Many international graduate students are attracted to the STEM disciplines of science, technology, engineering, and math. So, the last place you might expect to find them at Michigan Tech would be the humanities department. And yet humanities chair Ron Strickland is hell-bent on upping their numbers.

“It lets us draw top-notch students from a much larger pool,” he explains. “You can recruit well-prepared students from many different countries, particularly from Eastern Europe and Africa. They have excellent educational preparation.”

With their emphasis on cross-cultural communication, the humanities programs have a vested interest in global diversity. “We need a breadth of perspective, so it makes sense for us to recruit globally,” says Strickland. “It’s important to cultivate a climate of intellectual diversity that enriches everyone’s experience.”

This year, he hopes to lure students from Germany, Poland, and Ghana. It takes work. “In the humanities, you have to actively recruit them and not wait for them to come to you,” he says.

Economics professor Gary Campbell directs the master’s program in applied natural resource economics in the School of Business and Economics. He has found that international students invigorate the classroom experience. “Our foreign students bring different perspectives on resources,” he says.

“If you have students from Venezuela, America, and Mozambique in class, you get more insights.” Students from socialist countries, for example, will have vastly different points of view on privately owned mineral rights than their Americans counterparts.

These same students also bring strengths in science and engineering. “We’ve had three students from Mongolia who have received a good education in technical issues but came here for economics and finance,” says Campbell. “So, with their tech background, they are comfortable here. They feel that they fit in.”

Strickland came to Michigan Tech from Illinois State University, where he was the graduate director for his department. There, he boosted the number of international grad students from eleven to fifty, largely by recruiting from West Africa, Europe, and Southeast Asia. With so many new and different faces in the halls, the community became more comfortable for everyone, something that he hopes will happen at Michigan Tech.

“One thing that happens when you have a wide variety of students is that diversity becomes the norm,” he says. “Even if you have a number of African American or Latino students, they can feel isolated. But if everybody’s different, nobody’s different.” n

From Mozambique to Mongolia

Grad programs inbusiness and humanitiesdraw international students

Ron Strickland, right, and Gary CampbellChee Huei Lee photos

By Jennifer Donovan

“It’s easy to make a buck.  It’s a lot tougher to make a difference.”—Tom Brokaw

The timing couldn’t have been better. It was late afternoon, a crisp hint of fall in the air. As Codie Tucker walked out of the R. L. Smith Mechanical Engineering-Engineering

Mechanics building, her stomach growled, reminding her that it had been a long time since lunch.

“Have a sub, and come to a Circle K meeting,” a stranger urged, holding out a tantalizing, wax paper-wrapped sandwich. “Sure, why not,” Tucker replied. She had no idea what Circle K was, but she was starving.

Three years and countless community service hours later, Tucker is president of Circle K, a service club of college students affiliated with Kiwanis International. She walks dogs at the Copper Country Humane Society, adopts highways, reads Dr. Seuss books to kids at the Portage Lake District Library, and arranges self-defense workshops. And like the Circle K’er who lured her to her first meeting with a free sandwich, she makes sure to feed her student volunteers.

One good turn leads to another

The Tech tradition of service

“Good snacks do help,” she says with a grin. “When we adopt a highway, we have a cookout by the side of the road before we start cleaning it up.”

But free food is not Tucker’s primary motivation. “I just love volunteering,” she says. “It makes me feel so good inside.”

There is a tradition of community service among students at Michigan Tech. From Make a Difference Day to alternative spring breaks, from raking leaves for neighbors to baking bread for Little Brothers Friends of the Elderly, organizations and individuals stream through the Student Activities office in the Memorial Union, looking for volunteer projects that match their academic interests and private passions. Established just three years ago, the community service program headed by Rachel Wussow has grown and hired student coordinators such as Lindsey Reeder and Briana Drake to help their peers focus their desire to do something for others.

“It’s the nature of this university,” says Dean of Students Gloria Melton. “Our students want to apply what they are learning.”

Les Cook, vice president for student affairs, agrees. “Throughout history, higher education has embraced the notion that you give back. Creativity and innovation are key elements of a Michigan Tech education, so students are always looking for new ways to put their creative and innovative ideas to work for the good of the community and the world. The principle of service learning—learning by doing—is built right into the curriculum.”

That eagerness to help others has a global slant. Despite its small size, Tech consistently places more Peace Corps volunteers overseas through its Master’s International degree programs than any other university in the country. In addition, D80—an umbrella program sheltering a dozen or more international service organizations such as Engineers Without Borders (EWB)—has been growing like wildfire since it was established just three years ago. The organization is named for the development challenges facing the 80 percent of the world’s population who are not typically considered by those creating infrastructure, goods, and services.

“To be concerned about the welfare of others is a hallmark of this generation,” says Kurt Paterson, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering and director of D80. “And Michigan Tech is just the right size: large enough to create all kinds of opportunities for students and small enough to be fairly nimble about working together across disciplines to change the world.”

Paterson has asked hundreds of D80 students why they devote so much time and effort to making the world a better place. About one-third of them offer pragmatic reasons: “I need the leadership skills and project management experience.” The rest are more idealistic. “I want to make a difference,” they say. “I feel we have an obligation to give back.”

“There is a culture of making a difference here,” says Paterson. “It’s very different from my own experience as an engineering student twenty years ago.”

Andrew Wiegand, a mechanical engineering undergraduate, explains it this way: “School often leaves me with a sense that something is missing; sure, school is fun and there is a lot one can do, but without giving back to the community, I feel like my life is not complete.”

Has a volunteering spirit always been a linchpin of life at Michigan Tech? Ellen (David) Nelson, who graduated in 1979, recalls ushering at hockey games and playing bingo with senior citizens. At first, she says, she did it because it was required by a service organization she belonged to, Alpha Phi Omega. Then she discovered that it was fun.

“I met a lot of interesting people who truly appreciated our help,” she recalls. “Community service added depth to my Michigan Tech experience.”

Above, Codie Tucker and friend at the Copper Country Humane Society. Jeremiah Baumann photo

Below, Ellen Nelson and daughter Rebecca fold clothes the fun way at a local thrift shop. Ellen Nelson photo

Since she graduated, Nelson and her husband, Dave Nelson, who also graduated from Tech in 1979, have continued giving back to their community, the mountain town of Evergreen, Colorado. They have served on the board of Team Evergreen Bicycle Club, and Ellen has been active in several community theater companies.

Growing up in a house where service was a way of life, the Nelsons’ two children followed in their parents’ footsteps. Scott, who graduated from Tech in May 2010, and Rebecca are both active in local theater. Rebecca and her mother helped found a local chapter of National Charity League and together served meals at shelters in Denver, volunteered for Special Olympics events, worked aid stations at races, and sorted clothes for a local thrift shop. They won the group’s annual Mother/Daughter Award for the most combined community service hours three times.

Adam and Melissa (Trahan) Ward of State College, Pennsylvania, came to Michigan Tech more than twenty-five years after the Nelsons, graduating in 2005 and 2006. They accumulated a similarly long list of campus community-service credits and the same lifetime commitment serving their community and the greater world. Adam helped found an Engineers Without Borders chapter at Tech, and both have remained active as mentors to new generations of EWB student volunteers at several universities.

“I have always had a desire to use my skills to help communities solve problems that they recognized but were financially or technically unable to solve,” he explains.

Both Adam and Melissa majored in civil engineering. “Suddenly the equations I had studied for four years were coming to life and enabling me to help people who really needed it,” says Melissa.

Melissa Ward’s sorority required that she do community service, though Alpha Sigma Tau mandated only four hours per semester. The majority of members were already heavily involved in service organizations, Ward pointed out. It was the University itself that fostered a climate of volunteerism, she said.

“Being involved just seemed like the norm for students at Michigan Tech. At its roots, engineering is about solving problems and helping people, so I suppose it makes sense that Michigan Tech students seek out ways to do just that.” n

Tech places more Master’s International

Peace Corps volunteers overseas than any other

university in the US.

Melissa (Trahan) Ward and friends during an International Senior Design trip to Bolivia. Photo provided by Melissa Ward

By Marcia Goodrich

Assume for the sake of argument that you wanted to mop up a really, really big oil spill. Say it’s in a massive body of water teeming

with life that abuts hundreds of miles of white-sand beaches and sensitive wetlands. What would you look for in a detergent?

First of all, it should be a super-foamy surfactant, says Gerard Caneba. That foam should be stable, able to hold up its suds in the face of lots of gunk. It should also be really safe, so that fish, turtles, jellyfish, and toddlers wouldn’t sicken or die if they were to accidently swallow the stuff.

It would be nice if it were cheap too.“We’re working on something like that,” says

Caneba, a professor of chemical engineering at Michigan Tech. “We think it could be used in the Gulf. This is the most stable foam around. If you want an analogy, bubble gum is made of this.”

Caneba’s surfactant is a simple chemical, vinyl acetate-acrylate salt, transformed from a polymer dubbed VA/AA using a process he developed: free-radical retrograde-precipitation polymerization. The FRRPP-made foam is so stable that it can push crude oil off the surface of water onto a solid structure. Any remaining oil is broken into tiny droplets that could be gobbled up by microbes. “It’s not a true emulsifier,” Caneba explains. “It doesn’t keep on creating contaminated water with emulsified crude oil.”

So far, toxicity tests on the vinyl acetate-acrylate salt have shown no ill effects. It is inexpensive, about two dollars a pound. It’s easy to make, and it’s amazingly efficient. “You can push one volume

of oil with one volume of a 1 percent solution of the surfactant,” he says. “You could move the oil somewhere and then suck it up.”

Caneba had originally developed VA/AA and the vinyl acetate-acrylate salt to recover petroleum from existing oil fields. Now, as the Gulf of Mexico slowly recovers from the worst oil spill in history, he hopes VA/AA and its chemical cousins may some day have another application: making the water safe again, for both people and pelicans. n

Slick trick

GlossarySurfactant:atwo-sidedchemical,onewater-lovingandoneoil-loving,thatreducesthesurfacetensionbetweenoilandwater.InthecaseofCaneba’svinylacetate-acrylatesalt,theoil-lovinghalfdoesnotadherewelltotheoil,sothefoamcanpushtheoilawayfromwater.

Free-radical retrograde-precipitation polymerization (FRRPP):anovel,efficientprocessforsynthesizingmanydifferenttypesofpolymers.Canebahasauthoredascholarlybookonthesubject,Free-Radical Retrograde-Precipitation Polymerization (FRRPP):Novel Concept, Processes, Materials, and Energy Aspects,publishedin2010bySpringer.

VA/AA:Vinylacetate-acrylicacid-basedblockcopolymer,aprecursortothevinylacetate-acrylatecopolymersaltsurfactantoriginallydevelopedbyCanebatorecoverpetroleumfromdepletedoilfields.

Gerard Caneba with a vial of his super-stable foam. The bubbles form polygons that hold their air for many hours. Ryan Schumacher photo

Ties that gently bind

By Marcia Goodrich

Michigan Tech attracts great people because of its quality research and educational programs. What keeps many of them here is a

unique quality of life. Here are three faculty members and a research scientist whose avocations tie them to the Copper Country at least

as securely as their professions.

Hobby farmerJohnGierke’84’86’90wantstomakeonethingperfectlyclear.Thellamaswerenothisidea.

Ofallthecrittersonhisfamily’stwenty-acrehobbyfarm,theyarethecrankiestandlivehereonlyatthebehestofhiswifeanddaughter,saystheprofessorofgeologicalengineering,whoresearcheswaystoprovidepeopleindevelopingcountrieswithbetteraccesstocleanwater.“IfIfigureitout,I’mgoingtoimplementitatmyfarm,”hesays.

AshortdrivefromMichiganTech,theGierkeshavethreepigs,fivesheep,twodogs,fivechickens,andtwoelegantbutmercurialllamasnamedStuartandTina.TheyalsohavefouracresofU-pickblueberriesandagroveofappletrees.Whentheblueberriesripen,itgetskindofhectic,“liketheopeningdayofdeerseason,”saysGierke.Butmostofthetime,theatmosphereispastoral,exceptwhenthepigssenseamealcomingandgetrowdy.

Asfortheotheranimals,thechickenslayeggs,thedogsarecordial,andthesheeptagalongafterGierkeinthepasture,jostlinghislegsandbeggingforhandouts.

Thelateafternoonlightwashestheirwoolybacksinamber,andthecallofahermitthrushfloatsoverfromthewoods.“Wereallyenjoyithere,”saysGierke,bywayofunderstatement.Mariusz Nowak photos

Apple cider makerAnd pluck till time and times are done The silver apples of the moon, The golden apples of the sun.

—from“SongoftheWanderingAengus,”byWilliamButlerYeats

AengusmayhavebeentheIrishgodofyouth,love,andpoetry,butthepoorbesottedfellowstillonlyhadtwokindsofapples.JimPickenshashispickofdozenswhenhepresseshissignaturecider.

Pickens,aprofessorofforestresourcesandenvironmentalscience,researchestechniquesforimprovingtheprofitabilityoftimberharvestingandforestmanagement.Healsomakesgallonsofcidereveryyear,andasfarashe’sconcerned,themorekindsofapples,themerrier.“I’vegottenortwelvevarietiesinmyyard,”hesays.Healsogathersplentymoreinnearbywoodsandfields.Somearewild,someremnantsoforchardslong-abandoned.SomecomefromfellowappleaficionadoJimEngel

’82,whoselectscuttingsfrompromisingtreeshefindsinthewoodsandgraftsthemontorootstock.

YoucanmakeciderjustaboutanywherewithabagofsupermarketGoldenDelicious.ButtogrowandgathervarietiesrangingfromMcIntoshtoWilliam’sPridetowildmysteryfruit,youneedahappyconfluenceofweatherandopencountry.Andofcourse,plentyofapples,whichPickensfindsjustbeyondhisbackdoor.There’sastandofsugarmaplesouttheretoo,whichhetapsforsyrup.Butthat’sanotherstory.

Matthew Peterson photos

MusherL.BradKingresearchesspacepropulsionsystems,thoseexoticenginesthatkeepsatellitesinorbitandpowerprobesoninterstellarjourneys.Heloveshisdayjob,butwhatreallykeepsKingintheKeweenawarethewinters,thewilderness,andhisnineAlaskanmalemutes,wholikenothingbetterthantopullhimandhiswife,Karyn,throughthewoodsonasnowyevening.

“No,wedon’trace,”saysKing,anassociateprofessorofmechanicalengineering–engineeringmechanics.“Theseareold-fashionedworkingdogs,andwedoitpurelyfortheloveofthesport.

Kingbecameenamoredofsleddogswhenhewasakid,buthisfamilyonlyhadone.“IalwayssaidthatwhenIgrewup,I’downmyownteam.”

WorkingatMichiganTechhasmadethatpossible.“Byprofession,Ilovetodoengineeringandscience,andbyupbringingIliketodothingsinthewoods,”saysKing.“Therearenotalotofplaceswhereboththosethingscometogether.”

Todd King photo; page 18 photo by Brad King

Winter surferMichaelDziobak’78’85startedkayakingLakeSuperior’swinterywavesin1988.Aboutsevenyearsagoheswitchedtoasurfboard,tacklingthebreakersofNovember“togetreadyfortheevennicerwavesthatcomeinDecemberandJanuary.”

“It’sreallynotmuchdifferentfromsurfingwarmerclimes,minusthejellyfishandsharks,”saystheMichiganTechresearchscientist,whostudiesthelong-rangetransportofairpollutantsatremotesitesaroundtheworld.

Itsurelooksdifferent,whichbegsthequestion:whywouldanyonesurfinweatherthathangsiciclesonyoureyebrows?

“Itisveryhardtoputsomethinglikethatintowords,butIthinkIhaveanirresistibleurgetomakephysicalcontactwiththerawpowerofthenaturalworld,”saysDziobak.“Andreally,it’snowherenearascoldasitlooks;modernneopreneistrulyamiraclefabric.”

Greg Maino, Juskuz Photography photos

By Marcia Goodrich Photo by Adam Johnson ’98

If Octave DuTemple were to tell you everything he knew, he’d have to kill you. Fortunately, he’s so accustomed to keeping secrets that he’d be hard-pressed to break his silence now.

DuTemple’s circuitous and covert career is characterized by second chances, near misses, and ultimata veiled as polite requests. Born in 1920, he was swept from a working-class childhood to Michigan Tech, to the inner reaches of the US nuclear weapons program, and finally to leadership of the American Nuclear Society. In the meantime, he became an accomplished commercial pilot and flight instructor.

DuTemple was born and raised in the small town of Hubbell, where local mining operations processed their ore. “My father worked in the smelter and then the reprocessing plant for C&H,” he says. Closed since 1970, the Calumet and Hecla Mining Company was once the region’s largest copper mining operation.

His father wasn’t the only wage earner in the family. DuTemple pitched in when he was in grade school, working for 10 cents an hour helping a neighbor roof his house. “I used to haul the shingles up to the roof,” he says. “I tried to work ten hours to make a dollar a day, but I never quite made it.”

He excelled in high school and was awarded the thousand-dollar, no-strings-attached C. H. Benedict Scholarship, a fabulous sum for 1937. C. Harry Benedict, who funded the scholarship, was the head metallurgist at C&H and lectured at what was then the Michigan College of Mining and Technology. After his death in 1963, the University renamed the Ores Research Building the Benedict Laboratory in his memory.

While he could have gone almost anywhere, DuTemple opted to enroll at Michigan Tech. Thanks to the scholarship, he was also able to bring along his friend Paul Hainault, who later taught at the University. “I gave him money to start his first year, and then his family got together and helped put him through,” DuTemple says.

Before enrolling in college, however, the 16-year-old DuTemple joined the Army Reserve, a decision that would come back to bite him, albeit lightly. “I fudged my age,” he remembers.

He majored in chemical engineering but drifted away from his studies. “I should have graduated in ’41, but I had so many incompletes. I goofed off, I guess,” he says. “The main reason was that I lost my mother; she died when I was a freshman, and I didn’t have her to prompt me.”

After leaving school, DuTemple learned to fly at Tech’s pilot school, eventually becoming an instructor and earning a commercial license. Pan American hired him as a pilot in January 1942, and he studied celestial navigation and again was asked to serve as an instructor. It was a pretty good life, says DuTemple. Unfortunately, his considerable skills and reserve status finally attracted the attention of the army, which gave him the choice of teaching wartime pilots at the Roscoe Turner Aeronautical Corporation voluntarily—or involuntarily.

DuTemple pondered the matter deeply for a second or two and graciously opted to volunteer. He taught both flight and ground school at Roscoe Turner, in Indianapolis, then navigation at Ball State University, before finally being called to active duty in 1945 as an aviation cadet. “I had to go through all the training again,” DuTemple said, still awed by logic that would require a commercial flight instructor to take flying lessons. Meanwhile, he helped out his instructors by signing their logbooks so they could get their commercial pilot licenses.

Though technically a cadet, DuTemple sometimes got to fly. There were a few harrowing moments, even though he never saw combat. “I remember the first time I landed a Sikorsky flying boat. It was at Coral Gables, Florida, and I thought I was a submarine,” he said. “Another

Octave DuTempleThe accidental adventurer

• “We were five or six thousand feet over the Atlantic, and suddenly all

four engines went dead.”

•

time, we were about five or six thousand feet over the Atlantic Ocean, and suddenly all four engines went dead. The pilot threw a switch behind my head. And threw it again. And finally, the engines all started. By then we’d dropped about two thousand feet.”

After his discharge, DuTemple was tapped to deliver a PT19 aircraft to Argentina. Footloose and adventuresome, he ended up flying around Latin America for a year. “That was really fun,” he remembers. “In Brazil, we wouldn’t drink the water, so we’d buy beer. After we’d get up in the air, we’d drink it. We flew about three hours; by that time we were sober, and we’d land. We got by all right.”

In the spring of 1947, he returned to Michigan Tech, ready to put his goofing-off days behind him. However, reentry into the chemical engineering program was far from certain. “[Department head] Dr. Cole said the faculty was split on whether to let me in or not, and he cast the deciding vote in my favor,” DuTemple said.

Cole’s trust was vindicated. DuTemple completed his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in 1948 and 1949, even as he filled in at his other alma mater, Lake Linden–Hubbell High School, teaching physics and chemistry for an instructor who was out sick with tuberculosis. After graduation, DuTemple took Cole’s advice and agreed to interview with Argonne National Lab. He was given directions that could have come from a John Le Carré novel: proceed to the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago and walk around. “I did, and after I got there, someone came up to me and asked, ‘Are you Mr. DuTemple?’ I said yes, the next thing I knew we went behind an exhibit, though a plywood door, and down the steps. In the bottom of the museum was a whole group of people working.”

He earned his security clearance and was assigned to the atomic weapons program. “When I left Argonne, the head of our operation said I was never to discuss what I did with anyone, and of course, I never have,” he says.

However, he does reveal that he was once given the chance to maneuver a nuclear sub. “There was a guy who sat next to me and told me what to do. He said, ‘You are either a pilot or you’ve done this before,’” DuTemple remembers with some satisfaction. “We are out in the North Atlantic, about a fathom above the sea bottom. It was nerve-racking, so I brought her up. That was my experience with a nuclear sub.”

After ten years at Argonne, he was recruited for a newly created position: executive director of the fledgling American Nuclear Society. “I turned them down about three times, and finally Dr. Norman Hilberry of Argonne said I should go.” So he did. “I’d been in the army long enough to know that if a superior officer tells you to do something, you do it.”

Hilberry’s advice proved sound, both for the society and for DuTemple. During his thirty-two-year tenure, the American Nuclear Society grew from about 2,000 members to 17,000. He launched Nuclear News, which grew to be the most important journal in the nuclear industry. In 1963, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara invited him to join the Defense Orientation Conference Association, which allowed him to keep abreast of programs and policies relating to national security. He traveled the world, making fifteen trips to China alone. His efforts on behalf of the peaceful use of nuclear energy gained him international recognition, and he was named an honorary member of the Chinese Nuclear Society. His only regret, he says, was that never learned to speak Mandarin.

Retired since 1990, DuTemple remains a staunch advocate of nuclear energy. Eventually, the United States will have to restore its nuclear power program, he cautions, “or we’ll freeze in the dark.”

Among his awards and recognitions, DuTemple has received the University’s highest honor, the Melvin Calvin Medal of Distinction, the Board of Control Silver Medal, and an honorary Doctorate in Engineering from Michigan Tech. The American Nuclear Society renamed its headquarters in his honor. But perhaps the most distinctive monument to his career is an unlikely object of outdoor art, just outside the Lake Linden Village Hall.

The huge propeller caught DuTemple’s eye during his travels, when he was visiting a soon-to-close American air base in northern Africa. “We were going to be kicked out of Libya, and I wanted that propeller,” he explains. “I used whatever influence I had through the air force. They asked how I’d get it to Lake Linden, and I said, ‘You guys are going to fly it up there.’ And they did.”

When pumped for more stories about his career, however, DuTemple graciously demurs. “I did lots of interesting things in my job, but I don’t think we’d better talk about them,” he says. “A lot of that material is still secret, and I’ve forgotten most of it anyway.” n

• The US should

restore its nuclear power program, says DuTemple,

“or we’ll freeze in the dark.”

•

Teresa Schissler-BoichotOutstanding Young Alumni Award

As a student, Teresa Schissler-Boichot loved to venture to the shores of Lake Superior and watch the northern lights dancing across the sky. They were the

backdrop to a college life from which she fashioned a stellar career.A native of Lansing, Boichot graduated in 1998 with a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering. She worked for six years at Caterpillar Inc. in Peoria, Illinois. She then went to Patten Industries, a Caterpillar dealer in heavy equipment and engines, in Elmhurst, Illinois. There, she led 125 employees as the product support manager for the engine division, which has $32 million in parts and

service sales. She also started up a Six Sigma Department the following year as Patten’s Six Sigma Master Black Belt.

In 2007, she joined National Management Resources, a firm in LaGrange, Georgia, that supplied landscaping, custodial, and maintenance services to

colleges and universities. As executive vice president of operations, she oversaw 650 employees working with twenty institutions in ten states.

She is now an independent senior sales director for Mary Kay Cosmetics, a company that has $2.7 billion in wholesale sales worldwide, and she has her own consulting firm in LaGrange, Boichot Consulting LLC.Boichot says Michigan Tech prepared her well for the real world. “I didn’t

realize how well until I left,” she says. “I went to another school for a master’s degree and I appreciated Michigan Tech even more.”

She has been closely involved in the Society of Women Engineers. As a student, she was president of the campus chapter; as a professional, she has participated in national conventions, conducting a presentation on how women can market themselves.

Underscoring this leadership—and her overall career success—is an ethic of hard work and determination. “I try to do my best in everything. Set high goals. Reach them. Set more high goals.”

She learned that at Michigan Tech, where she had to study very hard. “Looking back, I wouldn’t want it any other way,” she says, “because then you can be proud of your degree.”Joanie Clay photo

The 2010 Alumni Association

Award winnersCreating the future through an

ethic of excellenceBy John Gagnon

Robert FreimuthOutstanding Service Award

Robert Freimuth has traveled far in a distinguished career in the automotive industry, where he has had wide-ranging responsibilities. “The common thread

has been working with others to get things done,” he says. “It’s a people business.”Freimuth brings that standard to Michigan Tech, where he has coordinated GM’s relations with the University; supported Career Fairs; fostered research;

hired hundreds of students; and championed campus leadership and honors programs. He also has helped Michigan Tech establish signature programs, including the YES! Expo in Detroit, the Enterprise Program, FutureCar, and Partners for the Advancement of Collaborative Engineering Education, an industry-university initiative.

He served on the Alumni Association Board of Directors from 1986 to 1992 and is a charter member of the Corporate Advisory Board for Institutional Diversity. He is also a member of the McNair Society,

which recognizes those who include Michigan Tech in their estate plans, and the Presidents Club, which recognizes those who provide annual support to the University.

“My input has always been welcome,” he says about his service. “It makes you want to do more.”A native of Calumet, Freimuth joined General Motors after graduating in

1977 with a BS in Business Administration. He has spent his entire career with GM, most recently as manager of GM’s Global Manufacturing System for Future

Programs.His career was made possible in part by an education that gave him an “excellent

background” in business, marketing, economics, and labor law. Freimuth rounds out those assets with “an appreciation for other points of view.”

He draws on that strength to practice his “passion” for good leadership, or, as he says, “helping organizations be effective.” To share that passion, he teaches an MBA-level leadership class, passing on the lessons he has learned both in his career at GM and in his service to his alma mater. The two most fundamental qualities of a good leader, he tells his students, are “integrity and listening to people.”Robert Freimuth photo

Richard HenesDistinguished Alumni Award

Richard Henes, who earned a BS in Mechanical Engineering in 1948, is recognized for his generosity, loyalty to his alma mater, and vibrant leadership.

Henes fashioned considerable success from diligence and opportunity. In 1958, after working as an engineer and lawyer, he established what was to become the Henes Manufacturing Company in Arizona. Its products ranged from electronic instruments to pickup truck beds. “We had success,” he recalls, but he really prospered in real estate in the then-burgeoning Phoenix area. His guideline: “Buy, hold, and sell when the time is right.”

His timing was excellent, so excellent that it allowed him to become a philanthropist, a role he says is the only “sensible alternative” to the accumulation of wealth. Accordingly, Richard and Elizabeth Henes became stewards of Michigan Tech. Over the course of ten years, the couple established the Henes Endowed Scholarship; the Henes Chair in the Department of Mechanical

William PredebonHonorary Alumni Award

William Predebon, professor and chair in the Department of Mechanical Engineering–Engineering Mechanics, has been a

devoted and dependable leader on campus for more than thirty years.He earned his bachelor’s degree from the University of Notre Dame in

1965 and his master’s and doctorate from Iowa State University in 1968 and 1970, respectively. He joined ME-EM in 1976. He has been chair of the department since 1997 and has transformed the program.

Under his watch, ME-EM has made great strides in conducting interdisciplinary research, growing the doctoral program, and expanding research funding. “Our competition is now global, no longer just national,” he says. “Our educational and research programs must adapt. More than ever, research opportunities are pervasive and essential.”

He also has brought diversity to both the faculty and student body. “Diversity,” he says, “is something that should be part of our fabric.”

Predebon has received numerous honors, including membership in Michigan Tech’s Academy of Teaching Excellence; the Outstanding Service Award for his work with the student chapter of the Society of Automotive Engineers; and the Distinguished Teaching Award. As well, he received the Distinguished Faculty Award from the Michigan Association of Governing Boards of Colleges.

He has been deeply involved in the University’s fundraising efforts; has advised both the Nordic and Alpine ski teams and Delta Sigma Phi fraternity; and has chaired the building committees for both the Dow Environmental Sciences and Engineering Building and the Great Lakes Research Center.

His research has involved experimental, analytical, and computational elements. He has been granted two US patents. He is a captain in the US Army Reserves and is a member of four honor societies.

His leadership informs his vision for the department. “The world is changing,” he says, “and we need to respond to its challenges and opportunities.”Ryan Schumacher photo

Engineering–Engineering Mechanics; and the Henes Endowed Professorship in the Department of Mathematical Sciences. As well, they have provided annual support for the University and have included the Seaman Mineral Museum in their estate plans.

Their stewardship is based on an appreciation for a Tech education (It gave him training and incentive); an especially helpful professor, R. Rex Seeber (“He was brilliant, kind, and straightforward”); hard work (“I was pretty much driven”); and his vision of educating an “enlightened generation” (which, he hopes, will maintain America’s place in the world).

Richard and Elizabeth Henes are members of Tech’s Hubbell Society for their lifetime giving and the McNair Society for their estate gift commitments. Richard Henes is also a Golden M member of the Alumni Association; a member of the ME-EM Academy, which recognizes excellence and leadership; and a member of Tech’s Generations of Discovery Capital Campaign Committee.Photo provided by Richard Henes

AlumniAssociationnotes

Always here“A part of me will always be here.” This unattributed quote, from page

nine of the 1977 Keweenawan, is one I think almost all of us can relate to as Michigan Tech alumni. We arrive as young adults, curious about the world and anxious to find our place in it. We leave educated, accomplished, and more aware of the world around us. And for most of us, there is something that eventually draws us back, that small part of us we left behind.

The Tech experience is different for each of us, but few can spend several years in the Copper Country and not be affected by the place itself. Weather not encountered in most of the country, a beautiful outdoor environment, a university that continually strives to improve the student experience, people who care about Michigan Tech and want it to succeed in its mission to create the future.

During my tenure as president of the Alumni Association, I’ve had the opportunity to meet a number of people who come back to Tech because of that part of themselves they left behind, people who care enough about Michigan Tech to devote a significant amount of their time and treasure to make a difference. The Board of Directors of the Alumni Association is a group of such people, and I would like to acknowledge and applaud their contributions. These committed folks return to campus twice a year without recompense, to develop and direct the policies and programs of the association.

In just the past few years of my term on the Board, the directors, in conjunction with Director of Alumni Relations Brenda Rudiger and her staff, have developed a Young Alumni Homecoming event, a network of regional alumni leaders, a new Alumni Humanitarian Award, an Explore Your Network mentoring program, and new events and activities for Alumni Reunion. New programs in the works for 2010 include rewriting the Association’s constitution, developing an on-boarding program for new Board members, rethinking our mission and vision statements, and moving into the Alumni House on campus.

Many others in the Tech family contribute to the University in a myriad of ways. I encourage you to reconnect with Michigan Tech and make a commitment to the next generation, perhaps by making a donation to the upcoming capital campaign, Generations of Discovery. If you believe a part of you is always here, you’ll want to be part of it.

Thanks to Brenda, Brent, Danielle, Tanya, Matt, and Kay, the people who make it all work. Without them none of the work of the Alumni Association would be possible.

Mark Mitchell ’77President, Michigan Tech Alumni Association

Alumni events October 1–2Houghton—Homecoming, including Alumni

Broomball Invitational October 2

October 9Sault Ste. Marie—Pregame dinner, Hockey Huskies

vs. Lake Superior State

October 9Saginaw—Football Tailgate, Huskies vs. Saginaw

Valley State

OctoberTBA Grand Rapids—West Michigan Chapter

Oktoberfest

October 23Nationwide—Michigan Tech alumni Make A

Difference Day

October 29–30Madison, Wis.—Pregame event, Hockey Huskies

vs. Wisconsin

November 12–13Duluth, Minn.—Pregame dinner, Hockey Huskies

vs. Minnesota-Duluth

November TBDGrand Rapids—West Michigan Chapter Griffins

Hockey gamewatch

December 29–30Detroit—Great Lakes Invitational Hockey

Tournament

January 30Grand Rapids—West Michigan Chapter brunch at

Marie Catrib’s

February 4–5 Anchorage, Alaska—Pregame event, Hockey

Huskies vs. Alaska-Anchorage

February 9–12 Winter Carnival

February 18–19Denver—Pregame event, Hockey Huskies vs.

Denver

February 26Minneapolis—Pregame event, Hockey Huskies vs.

Minnesota

A number of chapters have regular networking events for area alumni. Join your chapter’s Facebook fan pages for details.

For up-to-date listings of regional alumni events, visit http://mtu.edu/alumni.

Help us recognize outstanding alumni and friends

Know a great Michigan Tech alumnus/a or friend of the University? Here’s a chance to help get them the recognition they deserve.

The Alumni Association is seeking nominations for the 2011 Outstanding Young Alumni Award, the Outstand-ing Service Award, the Distinguished Alumni Award, and the Honorary Alumni Award.

Also, a new Humanitarian Award has been created by the Alumni Association. It will highlight the positive impact our alumni have through their voluntary ser-vice to the community, state, or country, or to an important social cause.

Please consider nominating deserving individuals for the 2011 Alumni Associa-tion awards. The recipients are honored each August at the Alumni Reunion.

Award descriptions and nomination forms are available at http://alumni.mtu.edu/awards or by contacting the Office of Alumni Relations, 906-487-2400 or alumni@mtu.edu. The nomination dead-line is December 1.

Elmer (Bud) Rieckhoff ’60, right, of Carson City, Nevada, and Mark Jarmus ’80, of Fort Wayne, Indiana, toured the Keweenaw Waterway aboard the Agassiz, Michigan Tech’s research vessel, during Alumni Reunion 2010. The free tours featured talks by Tech Professor W. Charles Kerfoot on his Great Lakes research. Chee Huei Lee photo

Join Michigan Tech’s online community

As a Tech grad, you can join over 13,000 alumni and access the

entire alumni directory and group directories; register for events;

update your info; and share your news and photos.

huskylink.mtu.edu/joinYour access code (first-time number) is located above your name on the address label on the back cover.

What are you waiting for?

Get connected. Get involved.

Will you answer the call?September marks the beginning of the 2010–11 Michigan Tech Annual Fund and Telefund program. Michigan Tech students will begin calling alumni and friends to encourage your support of and involvement in the University.

Perhaps it’s been awhile since you’ve been back to campus. The phone call from a student is an opportunity to bring you up to date on campus news and events. They can also answer many of your questions or point you in the direction to find more information.

If you’ve moved or changed jobs recently, our student callers can update your contact information. The best way to keep you connected to the University is to make sure we have your current information, so you will continue to receive important communications from the University and your academic department.

Michigan Tech’s student callers are a vital component of the University’s fundraising operation, securing more than $400,000 in commitments for the Annual Fund and numerous additional University programs.

Life is busy, and we know that your time is valuable. But when the phone rings and you see it’s Michigan Tech calling, will you consider answering and saying hello to the student on the other end of the line?

Their call is important.

Social networks abound for Michigan Tech alumniWith the explosion of the social networking sites, Michigan Tech alumni have many opportunities to connect with fellow alumni, current students, and the University.

As part of Michigan Tech’s exclusive online alumni community, huskylink.mtu.edu, you can• Search the Alumni Directory by major, class year, employer, location, etc. Find your old friends and make new connections.

• Share your news with a class note that may also be included in this magazine.• Update your profile with the most recent contact and employer data. Stay connected to Michigan Tech to receive invitations to local alumni events and activities.• Sign up to be a mentor. The value students receive from alumni who share their knowledge is incalculable. Acting as a mentor provides a great opportunity to interest students in pursuing a career in your industry and profession.

This interconnected network of experienced professionals represents 170 industries and 200 countries. Find and collaborate professionally with alumni from around the

world by joining the more than 3,600 alumni and students in the Michigan Tech LinkedIn group.

Join the more than 4,300 alumni who are fans of the Michigan Tech Alumni Association Facebook page and get current information, Tech Trivia, and alumni events in your news feed. Many Michigan Tech alumni chapters have special pages featuring regional news and events to

help local area alumni get connected.

 Share your experience. Become a mentor.

The value students receive from alumni who share their knowledge is incalculable. Being a mentor is

also a great opportunity to interest students in careers in your industry

and profession.

Visit www.mtu.edu/mentor to find out how you can get involved.

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For more on Watson, read the IBM press release:www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/27324.wss

ANSWER: THIS TECH ALUM IS A THREE-TIME JEOPARDY! CHAMP.QUESTION: WHO IS KRISTIAN ZOERHOFF?

By Marcia Goodrich

The last time Kristian Zoerhoff ’97 had entertained a crowd was as a deejay for WMTU. Sitting alone in a darkened booth playing music for invisible listeners didn’t quite prepare him for the dazzling lights and the flock of TV cameras on the Jeopardy! set.

“And then there’s that pesky audience,” he remembers. “I was absurdly nervous.”Now a computer engineer for IBM, Zoerhoff has been a Jeopardy! fan since he was a kid sitting

cross-legged in his living room shouting out answers to Alex Trebek’s clues. He auditioned for the college tournament when he was an electrical engineering major at Michigan Tech but didn’t make it past the first round of try-outs.

Zoerhoff put Jeopardy! on the back burner for fifteen years. He and wife Kirsten (Dieringer) ’97 ’99 settled down just outside Chicago, in the small town of Gilberts, with their young daughter.

Then in February 2009 Zoerhoff decided to give it another shot and took the show’s online test. This time, he earned an audition, and in January he flew out to Los Angeles for a day to face the lights, the cameras, and the audience. Five shows—a week’s worth—are taped in a single day, a potential marathon for winning players. It wasn’t until the games aired in March that Zoerhoff could reveal that he’d made it onto three shows and won $36,900.

If it weren’t for the classical music and literature categories, he might still be pressing buzzers in California. Zoerhoff aced the science and Bugs Bunny questions and, surprisingly, a category that required contestants to complete palindromes. “As an engineer, you have to think forward and backward, and that turned out to be pretty handy,” he says.

As fans know, Jeopardy! isn’t just about being smart. “Timing has a ton to do with it, because if you ring in early you are locked out for a quarter of a second, which is death,” says Zoerhoff. “A lot is based on your reflex time. Once you get one or two in a row, you get on a roll, and your brain starts firing at just the right time.”

Being a contestant was a once-in-a-lifetime thrill, says Zoerhoff. But since he returned home, Zoerhoff has had another chance to play. When his coworkers found out he’d been on Jeopardy!—and won—they asked him to match wits with a machine.

IBM is building a massively parallel computer called the DeepQA system. Named after IBM founder Thomas J. Watson, scientists hope it will be able to understand complex questions and answer with the precision and speed of the brainiest Jeopardy! contestants.

Thus it was that Zoerhoff went head to head with one of the world’s smartest computers. Which begs the question: Does DeepQA know who created the voice of that wascally wabbit?

Sorry, says Zoerhoff, that’s a secret. We’ll just have to wait until Watson faces Trebek to find out if the world’s smartest computer draws a Blanc. n

UEC Electronics president honored in SBA contest Rebecca Ufkes BSME ’87, president of Hanahan-based UEC Electronics, was named first runner-up in the US Small Business Administration’s annual National Small Business Person of the Year contest. Philip Ufkes BSEE ’86 is the firm’s vice president. UEC Electronics, founded in 1995, helps clients develop product ideas by applying manufacturing, hardware, software, and mechanical and electronic design. The company has grown from a home-based consulting firm with one customer to an 80,000-square-foot campus with ninety-five employees. Ufkes turned to government contracting when her largest client fell upon tough times. She became the first graduate of the navy’s Manufacturing Technical Assistance Production Program. Her company soon became a prime defense contractor. Revenues grew from $9.7 million in 2007 to $13.4 million in 2008. Employment rose steadily each year, despite the recession.The National Small Business Person of the Year is selected from the fifty-three state small business winners, including the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and Guam. Before becoming the runner-up in the national contest, Ufkes was selected as the Small Business Person of the Year for South Carolina.

Alum: Melting oceanic “fire ice” will turn up the global thermostatAs the author of Cold, Clear, and Deadly: Unraveling a Toxic Legacy, Mel Visser ’59 uncovered the reasons for the buildup of persistent organic pollutants in pristine environments like the Arctic and Lake Superior. Now the chemical engineering alumnus has sounded a warning on climate change with his new book, The Climate Trap: A Perilous Tripping of Earth’s Natural Freeze Protection System.“For many years, I wondered why Earth cooled slowly as it entered into an Ice Age, then suddenly heated up rapidly,” he said. “Without some unexplained major source of energy released by some triggering event, Earth should have cooled down and joined Mars as a frozen sister.”He theorizes that energy came from methane hydrate, also known as “fire ice,” the same chemical that blocked BP’s attempt to funnel off the Gulf oil spill. “It is also the compound that is now, as the Arctic Ocean warms, decomposing to release methane. There is more carbon tied up in ocean floors as methane hydrate than in all the world’s coal and oil combined,” Visser said. “The story, like most deeply hidden stories, is unbelievably simple when finally uncovered. I have had it reviewed by oil executives and geology professors who find it amazing.” The Climate Trap is available on Amazon.com.

Classnotes

Pasty Picnic 2009

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Book chronicles thirty years of Isle RoyaleVic Foerster’s ’74 book, Naked in The Stream: Isle Royale Stories, was published in April 2010 by Arbutus Press. Written after thirty years of visits to Isle Royale National Park with fellow alumnus Ken Glupker ’73, the book is an intimate, ongoing story of how a Great Lakes wilderness affects the people who venture to America’s least-visited national park. The moody, beautiful illustrations are by Joyce Koskenmaki. The book is available on Amazon.com.

SME announces appointmentsSoil and Materials Engineers, of Plymouth, recently announced the appointments of four Michigan Tech alumni, all civil engineering graduates. They include senior associates Laurel Johnson ’93, Lou Northouse ’97, and Joel Rinkel ’94; and shareholder Paul Schmeisl ’04.

Boyd Norton’s ’60 newest book (his 15th), Norton’s Outdoor Digital Photography Handbook, is available on Amazon.com.Pete Davis ’65 ’67 retired after twenty-nine years as a wildlife biology consultant in the Denver area. He has moved to St. Francis, Kansas, to get away from the city and to hunt pheasants and train dogs.Michael Russo ’69 was named executive secretary of AEEC (formerly the Airlines Electronic Engineering Committee) on August 1, 2008.

Rowland Gray ’78 retired from Ford Motor Company in 2007. He returned to work for the army in Warren as a program quality manager for heavy and light tactical vehicles.

Scott Weil ’87 was named Inventor of the Year at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, a US Department of Energy multi-program laboratory in Richland, Washington. Weil is an ME graduate and earned master’s and PhD degrees from Carnegie Mellon University in metallurgy and materials science and engineering.

Shelley (Williams) Bolbrugge ’94 and family have relocated to Washington, DC. Shelley now works for the US Department of Transportation–National Highway Traffic Safety Administration as a rulemaking engineer in the Office of Crash Avoidance. The family lives in Alexandria, Virginia.

Dannett Rice ’01 welcomed Naomi Marie on November 10, 2007, and had twins Joshua David and Faith Elizabeth on November 3, 2009.Amanda McMahon ’02 announces the birth of Rohan Jakob, born April 28, 2010. He joins big sister Viveka Denali.Lacey Mason ’04 is working at the Institute for Fisheries Research (a cooperative effort of the Michigan Department of Natural Resources and the Environment and the University of Michigan) as a computer research specialist (GIS analyst).Audrey and Jim Goetzinger ’04 announce the birth of Lucy Marie on May 9, 2009.Robert Sandoval ’05 graduated from Northwestern University in June 2010 with a PhD in Chemical Engineering. He is now working as a senior engineer at Dow Chemical Company in Midland.

1950s Hockey great Ray Puro honoredRay Puro ’53, named MVP of Michigan Tech’s hockey program in 1952–53, has been inducted posthumously into the Sudbury Sports Hall of Fame.A 1950 graduate of Sudbury (Ontario) High School, he received a full hockey scholarship to Tech and was the leading scorer for two seasons.After earning a BS in Metallurgy, Puro was employed by INCO Metals in Manitoba. He passed away in 2006 at the age of 77.

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Correction

Thephotoonpage9ofthespringMichigan Tech Magazine wastakeninAnchorage,Alaska,notFairbanks,asthecaptionstated.Thankstoallwhocaughttheerror.

In memoriamThe Michigan Tech family extends condolences to the relatives and friends of those who have passed away recently.

1941

James B. HamiltonJohn W. Helms

1942

Sidney S. AllenRobert G. BrownClifford G. CarterJoseph E. Francis

1946

Lee D. Carr

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Peter N. Handberg

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Harold J. ClearyAndrew DykemaWalter E. JenningsWilliam J. McHughRobert W. PoullWilliam A. Van Dell

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Howard J. Barrons PEFrederick A. FellnerMartin J. MarinRobert J. Simonson

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Clyde Y. CundyRobert G. LaForrestPaul G. Michels PEHarvey B. Sauder

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Charles E. AllowayBobby D. CollinsArthur D. KelloggDonald C. Krautter

1952

Raul D. Sundstrom

1953

Prof. Howard B. AndersonJames A. WhalenJoseph de Bastiani

1954

Virginia L. Hockings (Doane)Chauncey L. Martin

1956

David W. JohnsonDonald H. ScottLarry V. Suboski

1957

Richard V. Trax

1958

James C. EschweilerRev. Peter C. Torola

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William L. JohnsonRobert L. Sajdak

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Albert F. Kaiser

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Robert A. Sega

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Thomas C. CavisThomas E. Dostert

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Gerald L. HerrimanRichard L. Hodges

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Ronald G. RajalaJohn L. Stadler Jr.

1966

Amritlal Kanjibhai

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Frank P. HendersonJohn H. LonskeyMarvin L. ManninenRev. Dr. Michael L. Peterlin

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Parkash C. GuptaWarren D. KetolaLarry V. Neidlinger

1971

Dorothy H. (Hutchins) Klingbeil Linda R. (Robertson) Stuffle PE

1973

Michael L. CruceDr. Ronald A. Liston

1974

James W. BullimentCurtis L. Swanson

1976

Kim E. Brown

1979

Scott M. EkonenRandy L. LaPeer

1983

Aaron M. Simons

1990

Helen R. (Shepherd) Schesniak

2009

Kyle J. Newbury

“A conservative way to make substantial gifts”Dave McBride started McBride Construction in Petoskey after graduating in 1982 and has been in business ever since. He credits his Michigan Tech business education with providing him the tools he needed to succeed. He also credits Tech for opening his and his wife’s eyes to the benefits of giving. “Joy and I were able to develop an estate plan in mid-career that includes deferred-payment charitable gift annuities,” he says. “This is an excellent way to make gifts that will significantly benefit Michigan Tech and the community it serves. At the same time, we have the flexibility to later receive income from them. Gift annuities are a conservative way for us to make substantial gifts.”

David ’82 and Joy McBride

Make a gift that will bring a lifetime of

benefits With a charitable gift annuity, you make an irrevocable gift to the Michigan Tech Fund and receive a fixed income for life. You also receive a valuable income tax deduction in the year you make the gift, and a portion of your payment may be tax-free. Then, after a lifetime of payments to you, Michigan Tech will benefit from your wise and generous planning.Gift annuities have even more advantages if you choose to wait to receive the annuity payments. In exchange for deferring your payments, you receive a higher payment rate and a higher income tax deduction.

Call the Office of Gift Planning direct at 906-487-3325 or toll-free at 877-386-3688, or send an email to giftplan@mtu.edu,

for more information and a personalized illustration.

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When inspiration meets innovation; like what you’ll find at Michigan Tech. 130 innovative degree offerings, the Enterprise Program, and hundreds of internships and co-ops with some of the world’s top companies, corporations, and organizations. We do that.

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