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A campus tour geared to prospective students is at 9 a.m. and 2 p.m. weekdays. (906)487-2335. Clearly signed from U.S. 41 as you enter town.
Michigan's most remote state university is also one of its best. In fact, Michigan Tech is one of the top public technological universities in the country.
With 437 faculty (including non-tenure-track teachers) and 1,218 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 (6,758 in fall of 2007). Well over half of Tech's student body is male; 67% are Michigan residents. 55% of undergraduates are in the School of Engineering. Attracting more women engineering students and faculty is a high priority. Now nearly 25% of the engineering undergrads are women. Graduate students comprise 14% of the student body; international students 10%.
The admissions office likes to tout the facts 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 2007 were 25.6, compared with a national average of 21.2; and that its program in scientific and technical communication has been #1 in the U.S.
Engineering and geology 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, communication, business, and forestry. 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).
Michigan Tech began, aptly enough, as Michigan Mining School in 1885, when copper mining was huge here. 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 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 Wadsworth Hall, a quarter-mile-long dormitory. 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, 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 has lasted almost a third of the year. (But 2006-07 was quite different, and who knows what the future will bring?)
When school is in session, the food court and interesting campus bookstore in the red brick Memorial Union Building are good places to catch the multicultural, international flavor of campus life, noteworthy for how hard students work. (In summer the bookstore is open weekdays, but the food court is closed and the campus pretty empty, except for Summer Youth participants.)
The Seaman Mineral Museum and MTU/Copper Country Archives (see below) are far and away the campus buildings most visited by outsiders. The ongoing used book sale at the Van Pelt Library usually offers good reading for little money. 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 new library addition. 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 forestry school and Tech athletics facilities including the Student Development Complex (SDC) with its a big Huskies logowear shop (487-2969) 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 mtu.edu for a schedule. MacInnes Drive is named for John MacInnes, beloved hockey coach from thee 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 trails (some for snowshoes, too, and some lighted) 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 homecoming for alums 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 when students put on the finishing touches, 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 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 much 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.
See also the university's impressive A.E. Seaman Mineral Museum and the MTU Archives/Copper Country Historical Collection. (—April, 2008)
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