African Night 2010: The Story from Within will be held Sunday, Feb. 28, 2010. Dinner will start at 5:00 p.m. in the Memorial Union Ballroom (MUB), with performance starting at 7:00 p.m. in the Rozsa Center for Performing Arts. One ticket will cover the dinner and the performance . The prices are $10 for students and $15 for faculty and the general public. Tickets will be available for sell at the Rozsa box office from Monday-Friday, 11:30 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. Plus two hours before the performance. Tickets will also be available Thrusday Feb. 25 from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. in the MUB and Friday Feb. 26 from 9:00 a.m to 5:00 p.m. in Fisher Hall. During this event, students from various African countries provide the audience with an exhilarating display of some of the dance routines from their countries. The food prepared before the performance will showcase the culinary masterpieces from certain African countries, which include Nigeria, Ghana, Keyna, Zimbabwe, and more. Apart from food and dancing, other performances such as African dramas, poems and presentations portraying the lifestyles and cultural aspects native to the beautiful continent of Africa will also be showcased. This year’s special guest performers are the Hayor Bibimma Dance Company and the Michigan Tech African Students. This event has grown consistently over the years, and attracts an audience of over 300 people every year. This event is brought to you by the African Student Organization (ASO). ASO is a student organization on Michigan Tech campus comprised mainly of students from various African countries as well as students from other parts of the world. One of the aims of this organization is to promote awareness and share African cultures with the Michigan Tech community as well as with the surrounding Houghton County communities.

A collaboration of MTU students across a variety of disciplines met to celebrate last Thursday, November 12. They met in the hallways of Fischer, they presented and discussed in the Memorial Union Ballrooms, and they posted their work on the J.R. Van Holt Library walls. They want us to know about their work in the field of usability.
The event those students celebrated last Thursday was World Usability Day; the theme was “Designing for a sustainable world.” Events included a paper prototype exhibition that demonstrated its’ effectiveness in Fischer, presentations by usability and sustainability experts, and a showcase of usability posters submitted by Michigan Tech students for consideration in the poster design contest.
“Today’s society wants products that have more than one use and that are sustainable,” says Jeremiah Baumann, a student on the committee for organizing World Usability Day at Michigan Tech. “This is where usability comes into play for someone like myself in the Technical Communications field. As a Creative Designer, if my designs aren’t usable, then they are not successful and don’t see the light of day.”
World Usability Day is an international event sponsored by the Usability Professionals’ Association. A group dedicated to using their expertise in usability testing to “humanize technology.” Their website states “your cell phone should be as easy to use as a door knob.” Some of the international highlights of the event included a DesignIT! Conference in Japan, a celebration for the opening of a new testing facility (the iQ Studio) in Dublin, and students performing usability testing for companies in Finland.
Usability itself is a growing field of interest for not only designers and creators but for any students of higher education looking to create products of the highest quality. Usability refers to the quality of a product as well as to the process of testing how real users interact with the product.
The impact of World Usability Day was clear at the Michigan Tech Campus. Jeremiah states “The presentations this year, including the poster sessions, show how usability and sustainability are directly related, allowing for students to reflect about how they can achieve a better world. Michigan Tech students from all disciplines had the chance to learn about sustainability from local experts.”
Those experts included Rick Donovan, the Operations Manager, Senior Engineer and Research Scientist at Sustainable Futures Institute who talked about high performance computing, artificial intelligence computing, computational materials science, and systems modeling for sustainability. Rick Loduha, an Associate Professor of Art and Design (Interdisciplinary Design) at Finlandia University in Hancock talked about design and creative problem solving. And, Christopher Plummer, Associate Professor of Theater in the Visual and Performing Arts Department at Michigan Tech talked about sustainability in sound design and soundscapes.
Joshua Kaufman, a writer for the Digital Web Magazine, writes “usability testing breaks down the wall between the designer and user, and allows us to see how real users do real tasks in the real world.” And things were real for Michigan Tech Students last Thursday.
See the World Usability Day Upper Peninsula (WUD U.P.) website at hdmz.hu.mtu.edu for more details about World Usability Day 2009 and for a countdown till next years’ celebration.

As the semester comes to an end, some seniors begin to pack their bags for one last time. Winter commencement for the class of 2008 is just around the corner, and the students are realizing how fast it is all coming to an end. Dec. 13, 2008, 10:30 a.m. in the Student Development Complex, the mid-year commencement will be the final steps for the graduating class in their Tech experience. The rehearsal will be held on Friday, Dec. 12, at 1:30 p.m. in the SDC Multi-Purpose Room. President Glenn Mroz and his wife will host a reception for the graduates and their families on Friday, Dec. 12th, 2008, from 5:30 – 7:30 p.m. The reception will be held in the Memorial Union Ballroom.

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