The Under Graduate Student Government began setting up for the April elections last week with only a few sign ups. The USG Elections Chair, Paul Valencia, has decided to move the closing of the nominations by a week. Nominations for the upcoming year’s E-board members will close next week Wednesday, March 24, at 5:00 p.m.
“Because of the few sign-ups, I think it would be best to move the entire elections schedule by week,” says Paul Valencia. “This should give us time to receive more applicants and more time to organize.”
Student voting will begin on April 1 at 9:00 a.m. and will close on April 5 at 11:59 p.m. On April 7, the election results will be presented during the USG meeting that day which will be held at 7:00 p.m.
Positions are divided up into two different branches; executive and legislative. Open positions in the executive administration for next year include president, vice president, secretary, and treasury. In the legislative organization, students may run as an executive officer or as a representative. Four of the nominees will be chosen by electors for the position of executive officer and six students from each class as representatives; senior, junior, sophomore, and freshman.
Requirements and roles for each position will vary. The president presides over all USG meetings and serves as the lead speaker of all meetings. The vice president assists the president in carrying out assignments and other responsibilities. These assignments include the management of committees and the taking up of the president’s roles should they be absent. The treasurer manages and organizes the budget for the organization. They also give suggestions about spending procedures during meetings. The secretary records minutes, schedules and informs members of meetings, and sends out important notices.
Representatives and officers have the responsibility of attending the general meetings which are held every Wednesday at 7:00 p.m. They must also sit on at least two committees as put out by the committee chairs. Lastly, members must attend two office hours per week for the organization.
Candidates must hold a minimum 2.00 cumulative grade point average in order to be considered for nomination. A typed biography will also be required of each candidate by Mar. 25 at 5:00 p.m. There will be four brief questions that each candidate will be required to answer within their bio that will display their interests and goals within USG. Candidates are required to attend a meeting where they will submit their papers to the current USG officers.The meeting will highlight the rules and guidelines for the elections.
Officers will speak about campaigning and ballot requirements amongst other things. Pictures of all canidates will be taken at the gathering.

Stress is a common theme in an average college student’s life, but it appears as if Michigan Tech will be taking a big step towards decreasing that stress. How, you may ask? At the recent Board of Control meeting, the chairman of the Finance & Audit committee announced that Michigan Tech will be upping financial aid by roughly 10 percent for the 2010-2011 school year. Currently, financial aid is $38 million. This increase will raise it to approximately $41.3 million.
This proposed increase couldn’t come at a better time, as students today are suffering from the ill-effects of Michigan’s budget shortcomings. Many students were relying on the Michigan Promise Scholarship and Michigan Competitive Scholarship to help make ends meet, but with almost no warning, that scholarship has been pulled out from under their feet, so to speak. Almost 2,000 Michigan Tech students were affected by that decision.
This isn’t the first time in recent history that Michigan Tech has attempted to make things somewhat easier for their students financially in response to the state decisions. When the scholarships were cut in the fall, Michigan Tech picked up the slack, and covered the scholarships for the first semester for students.
What exactly does this increase mean for students though? Will it mean an increase in tuition? Where will the funds for this be coming from? Michigan Tech students are full of questions, praise, and hesitance when it comes to this matter.
Fourth-year Biomedical Engineering student Dan Hirst praised the decision, saying “I believe that increasing financial aid would be a good idea. Many students struggle with the constantly increasing tuition and by providing more funding to the financial aid program will help them further their education at Michigan Tech.”
It was felt by first-year students Joe McSweeney and Mike Verbeke that a boost in financial aid would allow for them to focus more on their schoolwork and less on their financial situations, and being sure that their educations were being funded.
To the 91 percent of students who receive financial aid, this glimmer of hope for a greater amount of aid is quite a blessing. However, one must look at the other side of the equation. Money must all originate somewhere. Where will the university be getting these funds from? Will tuition rates increase yet again? Third-year Accounting student Steele Lindbloom wasn’t as optimistic as Hirst and McSweeney in his response to the decision. “It is an interesting move, but who are the people paying for that increase? The students who aren’t obtaining as much financial aid? Are they going to have to increase tuition even more just so they can attempt to recruit even more students?“
Lindbloom brings up very good points; however, the answers to these questions may only be evident as time passes. If our tuition is raised, yet our financial aid is raised, and they balance out, there shouldn’t be a problem. An increase in incoming first-years is a positive for all aspects of campus, as more students leads to more state funding, and more monetary flow.
How effective will this actually be in drawing in prospective students? Well, to get a taste of it, we asked Stephanie Munch, a senior at Calumet High School who is currently deciding between a few different schools in Michigan, whether or not a slight increase in financial aid at Michigan Tech would help to sway her decision.
“I do think it would help my decision because I’m considering multiple colleges and if one school has that advantage over the other, it would be very beneficial. The Michigan Promise Scholarship money would have helped out a lot of people, and since it has been taken away, I feel that colleges should attempt to compensate for it,” Munch shared. For anyone, though, that feels as if the university doesn’t keep them as their first priority, think again. Reassuring words were spoken at the meeting by President Mroz. According to Michigan Tech News article, he stated, “People are our priority. We want every student who values what Michigan Tech offers to come here. Today the board has sent a message that we will go out of our way to make it financially possible.”

As anyone who has been following the news lately will no doubt be aware, the American auto industry has recently been experiencing some less-than-ideal times. Certainly, this is a matter of potential concern for many Michigan Tech students, particularly those in engineering departments. Traditionally, General Motors, Ford and Chrysler have been present and recruiting at the Career Fair; at this spring’s event, only Ford was present.

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Last Saturday, a gathering of 200 Air Force and Army ROTC Cadets and their dates celebrated the spring 2009 Military Ball. They came together on the seventh floor of the Best Western North Shore Grill Restaurant. Every spring, Air Force and Army ROTC Cadets join forces to put the event together.

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At its regular meeting just prior to Spring Break, the Board of Control approved for more than $24 million in funding for several projects, including a new student residential apartment complex, the construction of the Great Lakes Research Center, an expansion of the Keweenaw Research Center near the Houghton County Airport and a $1 million renovation of the John MacInnes Ice Arena.

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Think twice this week before you throw away a recyclable, because the Students for Environmental Sustainability are out in full force to stress the importance of environmentally-friendly practices. This week is Earth Week and a chance for the SfES to send a green message to Michigan Tech and the community.
According to the SfES, their main purpose is to “serve as a resource organization for environmental sustainability on the MTU campus [and] to raise awareness of environmental sustainability on Michigan Tech’s campus and in the surrounding community.” Each year the SfES puts on several events and activities during Earth Week to educate Tech students and faculty about sustainable practices and the importance of being green.

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It was only a matter of time before Dr. Patrick Martin moved into the Chair of the Social Sciences department after being at Michigan Tech for 32 years. His appointment to the chair came after former chair Bruce Seely was appointed to the dean of the College of Sciences and Arts. “Pat will bring drive and energy to the department. No department will have a stronger advocate,” said Seely in a Feb. 11 Tech Today article.
After a search committee screened about a dozen candidates, the field was narrowed to three candidates. “It was reassuring to win the nomination, especially against such qualified candidates,” said Martin. “It shows that we have a good setup now, and keeping me here maintains stability that is badly needed.”
After getting his Ph.D. from Michigan State, Martin wanted to leave Michigan, but a one-year appointment in archaeology at Michigan Tech brought him to the far northern reaches of the UP. Needless to say, he has been here a little more than a year, working his way up from being the only archaeologist in the whole department to being Chair.
When Martin first came, he had to justify every dime of spending within the department, but through the years, he has been instrumental in garnering more funding for both undergraduate and graduate work. As a result of the additional money toward the Social Sciences department, the number of undergraduate students has doubled from 40 to 80, and there are currently 30 graduate students. Martin has a particularly vested interest in graduate students, and he will continue to teach and mentor them. He said that graduate work is an important part of bringing in better faculty who want to be involved in research and teach from a perspective of knowing and experiencing the latest happenings within the field. “It is a way of reproducing ourselves,” said Martin, who also added that research brings in additional money that is hard to come by in this slumping economy. The state wants to put a freeze on University tuition rates and provide national stimulus money, which means that research money is even more important.
The Social Sciences department has an interesting role in that it hosts more University-wide courses than most others on campus, and more teaching is done by the deans and chairs than in most departments.
“It is difficult to balance several programs, teaching and research, particularly with the added bureaucracy within the University,” said Martin. Bureaucracy is everywhere, but Martin said that students used to have to fill out just six forms between entering undergraduate study and leaving with a doctorate. Now there are nearly 50 forms that a student has to fill out. Managing all these forms in addition to his other duties is challenging but rewarding, according to Martin.
In the future, Martin’s biggest and most urgent objective is to shape the faculty in such a way that helps the department grow. Much of the faculty now is close to retiring, so it is crucial to hire faculty who are engaged in the discipline that they teach who can relate well to students. Martin will be in a position to ensure this happens for three years, the duration of the chair appointment.

Executive Board elections for the Undergraduate Student Government may have been flawed, this according to an internal e-mail leaked by an anonymous source and later verified by Paul Valencia, USG Elections Committee Chair.

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It’s what can turn any mundane broomball match into a frenzy of excitement; it’s what draws a chorus of “oohs” from the crowd: a broomball injury. It can happen within seconds and is caused by any number of things. Perhaps it was an overzealous save to protect the goal or a desperate attempt to score. Although large bruises or scrapes tend to turn into badges of honor among broomball fanatics, injuries are usually avoided by saner broomball players.

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After a long career of campus service, Shahrzad “Shazoo” Rizvi has stepped down as President of the Michigan Tech Undergraduate Student Government. His resignation was accepted by the USG body last Wednesday after a scheduling conflict arose within his final semester.
“It is just really unfortunate that I cannot complete my entire term as elected president, but I have exhausted all options and this is what is best for USG,” said Rizvi the day after the decision was made. “What it is a class schedule conflict.”
“I discussed it with my officers and they felt it was important that the president be at meetings and chair. Our constitution requires that I preside over the general body.” said Rizvi, “I wanted to define ‘preside’ as having authority over it, but not necessarily chair. My officers wanted to define it as chair and the general body agreed and chose to accept my resignation.”
Due to the acceptance of Rizvi’s resignation, the USG vice president, Amanda Van Slooten, will step into the Presidency. She brings a wealth of leadership experience to the position, including several semesters with USG. Van Slooten was not immediately available for comment.

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