The series are sponsored by the Presidential Commission on Diversity and the Presidential Commission for Women. This program brings women role models to campus. It gives MTU students the chance to interact with women from industry, government, education, nonprofit organizations, etc., and find out what it is like to work in areas where women are underrepresented. Priority is given to women working in the private sector. To be eligible for this award, the lecturer must hold at least one informal meeting with students in which she can discuss her work experiences.
Presentations can be open to the general public or designed for specific audiences.
Assignments could include classroom teaching, informal interactions with students and faculty, and summer session courses. Departments are encouraged to seek out scholars with the potential to become Michigan Tech faculty, or research collaborators who are in or are eligible for tenure-track positions at a university. The following awards have been made for fall quarter Visiting scholars Kathryn Lynnes, senior program director at Earth Tech in Grand Rapids, markets her firm's expertise in brownfield development, hazardous waste management, and environmental law. Janina Legendziewicz, a professor of chemistry from Wroclaw, Poland, is co-editor of several books and has published more than 100 articles in the chemical sciences. Her specialties are spectroscopy, inorganic chemistry, and structural chemistry, and she was appointed to the spectroscopy section of the Polish Academy of Sciences.