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Happenings in the Keweenaw Peninsula September 18, 2006 Text and photo © 2006 and courtesy Sustainable Futures Institute. Reprinted with permission.

MTU Sustainable Futures Institute to host poster exhibit, banquet Sept. 20

HOUGHTON -- Campus Sustainability Week at Michigan Tech University gets underway on Tuesday and Wednesday, Sept. 20 and 21, as the Sustainable Futures Institute (SFI) hosts the annual meeting of its advisory board. On Wednesday, Sept. 20, from 4:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m., the Annual Sustainability Poster Session will be held in the Rozsa Lobby. This will be followed by the annual SFI reception and banquet.

SFI is an education and research leader on sustainability initiatives related to water, air and energy; industrial ecology; environmentally conscious manufacturing; green engineering; public policy; the built environment; sustainable development that includes issues of the developing world; pre-college education for students and teachers; community outreach; and university campus eco-improvements.

The poster session and banquet will celebrate many recent accomplishments of the faculty, students, and staff of Michigan Tech’s Sustainable Futures Institute. Among these are Wood-to-Wheels, Mondialogo Worldwide Engineering Award, Research Experience for Undergraduates,* Parsons Brinckerhoff Environmental and Water Resource Student Design Award, IGERT for Sustainability, New Undergraduate Certificate, International Sustainable Engineering Initiative, Michigan Tech Center for Water and Society and NSF Material Use: Science, Engineering, and Society (MUSES).**

John Sutherland, right, SFI  co-director with James Mihelcic (not pictured), MTU professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and Neil Hutzler, chair of the MTU Civil and Environmental Engineering Department, admire posters at the 2005 SFI poster session. (Photo © 2005 Michigan Tech Sustainable Futures Institute. Reprinted with permission.)

The Sustainable Futures Institute invites its members and all Michigan Tech faculty, staff, students and anyone in the community with an interest in sustainability to display a poster at this year’s Sustainability Poster Session. Poster can include such topics as what sustainability means, public service announcements and research results that illustrate some aspect of sustainability. Posters can be set up beginning at 4 p.m., and the Poster Session is open to the public from 4:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. Poster Session attendees are invited to cast their vote for the Best in Show. 

Beginning at 5:30 p.m., a reception will be held for all SFI faculty/staff/students and poster presenters. The annual banquet will start at 6:30 p.m. For planning purposes please notify Laura L. Walz (llwalz@mtu.edu) if you plan to present a poster. If you plan to attend the reception/banquet please contact Denise Heikinen (dmheikin@mtu.edu).

During the banquet, attendees will review their successes over the past year and give voice to their dreams of future sustainability projects that call for the collective intellectual and creative energy of the SFI community.

The Sustainable Futures Institute is composed of members from every discipline on the Michigan Tech campus. This year the banquet coincides with the annual meeting of SFI’s Advisory Board, whose membership includes representatives from Caterpillar, Dow Corning, General Motors, the Great Lakes Commission, Los Alamos National Laboratory Department of Energy, Nelson Mandela School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs at Southern University and A&M College and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA)-Forest Service.

The Campus Sustainability Week continues on Monday, Sept. 25, at 7:30 p.m. at the Rosza with a talk by David Gallo: “Extreme Deep: Exploring the Ends of the Earth—Neptune’s Basement.” Dr. Gallo is Director of Special Projects at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Located on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution is the world’s largest private nonprofit, ocean research, engineering and education organization. Dr. Gallo will address the campus again from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 26, in 135 Fisher Hall with a talk entitled "Global Water Crisis on the Blue Planet."

Editor's notes: * See the July 2006 Keweenaw Now article, "Students learn practical side of research at annual Renewable Energy and Sustainable Living Fair," by Julia Kalloz and Ezekiel Fugate, students who participated in SFI's Research Experience for Undergraduates this past summer. ** Visit the SFI Web site to learn more about these projects and programs.