Michigan Technological University

The impressively adventuresome MTU architecture lines the Portage Waterway, a handsome sight from M-26 heading to Lake Linden out of Hancock.

Michigan's most remote state university is also one of its best. In fact, Michigan Tech is a well-regarded nationally as a major public technological research university.

With 445 faculty (including non-tenure-track teachers) and 1,221 staff, Michigan Tech is by far the largest employer in a county of some 35,000 residents. That's not even counting the revenue created by students (6,957 in fall of 2010). Well over half of Tech's student body is male; 71% are Michigan residents. 56% of undergraduates are in the School of Engineering. Attracting a more diverse student body and faculty is a high priority. Some 16% are graduate students comprise 16%; minority and international students —20%.

It's impressive that over 90% of Tech's undergraduate classes are taught by tenure-track faculty; that the grade point average of student athletes is higher than the average GPA; that average ACT scores for incoming freshmen in 2010 were 26.1, compared with a national average of 21; and that its program in scientific and technical communication is one of the top in the U.S.

One of the many amusing, elaborate snow sculptures Michigan Tech students spend hours making for the Winter Carnival competition.

Engineering and forestry are the fields for which Tech is best known nationally, but there's an increased emphasis on a broader range of subjects in the sciences, technology, humanities, arts and business. Tech has also played a big role in developing Michigan high school talent in science, technology, the environment, and the arts, through its Summer Youth Program (906-487-2219 or http://www.youthprograms.mtu.edu/).

Michigan Tech has various peculiarities: its 5,600 undergrads are 75% male, the 925 campus is one of the country's most remote, and its waterfront architecture is uncommonly daring. Most impressively, it's a highly regarded university, with outstanding forestry and engineering programs.

Michigan Tech began, aptly enough, as Michigan Mining School in 1885, when copper mining in the region was huge. The main campus is sandwiched between U.S. 41 and the Keweenaw Waterway. The long, pedestrian-oriented campus interior, where College Avenue ran until 1970, is quite pleasant, with winding walkways and lots of landscaping to soften the distinctive, tall instructional and research buildings. Tech's tall buildings make an aesthetically striking skyline when seen from M-26 across the Keweenaw Waterway between Ripley and Dollar Bay.

The view of campus from the highway includes a lot of parking lots. Motorists pass McNair and Wadsworth Halls, a quarter-mile of student residences. Behind McNair stands the University's newest student apartments residence, Hillside Place. Across the waterway on M-26 east of Hancock is the university's Mont Ripley ski hill, with 19 runs and a 440-foot vertical drop. Lighted for night skiing in winter, the steep white hill is a dramatic sight from campus and town. With over 200 inches of snow a year up here, augmented by snowmaking equipment, ski season usually lasts almost a third of the year.

When school is in session, the food court and interesting campus bookstore in the red brick Memorial Union Building, as well as the new Library Café and Fusion, a smoothy shop, are good places to catch the multicultural, international flavor of campus life, noteworthy for how hard students work. There is a branch of the bookstore, which also features Michigan Tech clothing and souvenirs, in the Student Development Complex and Ice Arena up the hill on MacInnes Drive, just half a mile from campus. (In summer the SDC bookstore is open weekends, but the store and food court in the Memorial Union are closed.

The Michigan Tech/Copper Country Archives in the Opie and Van Pelt Library is the campus location most visited by outsiders. The ongoing used book sale at the Library usually offers good reading for little money.

Another popular campus destination, the Seaman Mineral Museum, is temporarily closed while the University builds it a new home on Sharon Avenue in Houghton, adjacent to Michigan Tech's Advanced Technology Development Complex.

There's a good birds'-eye campus map at mtu.edu/tools/map.html.

Metered parking is available by the Memorial Union Building just past the splashy, glass-walled library. In summer visitors can park for free in the Rozsa Center lot at the entrance to town.

South of U.S. 41 and up the hill from the stoplight at MacInnes Drive are the School of Forest Resources and Environmental Science and Tech athletics facilities including the Student Development Complex (SDC) with its big Huskies logowear shop (800-850-0688) and MacInnes Ice Arena. The Huskies are one of the Midwest's older hockey teams, along with Minnesota, Wisconsin, and others. The season runs from October into March, and tickets (around $10) are usually readily available. Visit Sport Select for a schedule. MacInnes Drive is named for John MacInnes, beloved hockey coach from the mid-1950s into the 1980s, and the nation's winningest coach at the time of his retirement.

Past the SDC, where MacInnes Drive becomes Sharon Ave., the university has a cross-country ski complex with a warming house and 35 km of lighted trails (some for snowshoes, too) in a beautiful wooded setting. The main loops are regularly groomed and allow skating or traditional skiing. Well-behaved dogs are allowed on designated trails. (Skijoring is popular here.) Ski equipment or snowshoes can be rented at the SDC.

Since 1922 students have enjoyed a Winter Carnival, a celebration of Tech's snowy climate that fills hotels. It's held in early February. Campus fraternities, sororities, and other campus organizations build large, ambitious "snow statues," as part of the festivities. There's fierce competition for the best. It helps that so many students have engineering backgrounds. Students are given a limited amount of time per week for four weeks to create huge, often intricate scenes for that year's theme. The all-nighter on Wednesday night before judging is a snow statue competition compressed into about 16 hours. During the all-nighter, students also put on the finishing touches on their month-long statues, so the fine details like ship's rigging and banister rails won't be degraded by the sun before judging. Students are out with floodlights and irons (for creating the transparent detail on things like ship rigging and banisters). Statues completely constructed overnight are judged in a separate category, which allows smaller groups to compete.

Often it's the coldest, stormiest time of the year, and the campus buildings create a big east-west wind tunnel. The all-nighter is often an exercise in sisu, that Finish quality combining stamina, guts, and not complaining. On the weekend, the sculptures bring U.P. residents from far and wide to stroll down College Avenue and through the campus to view the impressive constructions. A professor who attended Dartmouth, home of a more famous winter carnival, says Tech's is definitely better.

Another unusual student tradition is broomball, played on an open-air ice rink visible from U.S. 41 in front of Walker Hall. Players in special shoes, not skates, use brooms to propel a softball-sized ball into the other team's net. The action, as in ice hockey, often gets fierce and draws appreciative crowds.

A campus tour geared to prospective students is at 9 a.m. and 2 p.m. weekdays. 888-688-1885. Clearly signed from U.S. 41 as you enter town.

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