Commencement

‘How will you make your mark on the world?’

stuxbury — Sat, 21 Dec 2024 19:14:43 +0000

‘How will you make your mark on the world?’ stuxbury Sat, 12/21/2024 - 14:14

Nearly 40 years after Henry Maier earned his diploma from ��-Dearborn, he attended his first campus commencement. The retired FedEx ground president and CEO skipped his own ceremony because he moved immediately after finals to begin working. On Dec. 21, he was back at his alma mater — this time delivering the keynote speech to the Class of Fall 2024.

Keynote speaker Henry Maier

“Thanks for the opportunity to finally attend — even if it is almost 50 years late,” said Maier, who graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in economics in 1986. “I entered ��-Dearborn as a freshman in the fall of 1972, only the second class of freshmen admitted to the university. My family couldn’t afford college, so I had to work one, two and once three jobs to pay tuition. I’m sure many of you sitting here can relate.” Maier went on to have a 35-year career with FedEx. “��-Dearborn made it possible for students like me to get not just a college education, but a Michigan education,” he continued.

Surrounded by family, friends and favorite professors, hundreds of Dearborn Wolverines were awarded 713 degrees during two 90-minute commencement ceremonies in the Fieldhouse. The morning ceremony recognized graduates of the College of Arts, Sciences and Letters and the College of Business. The afternoon ceremony celebrated graduates of the College of Education, Health and Human Services and the College of Engineering and Computer Science.

Delivering the keynote, Maier congratulated the graduates on reaching their goals. He said their hard work will continue to open doors for more opportunities. “Today you reached a milestone, but what you really have done is given yourself choices. You can choose to earn a living, what problems you want to help solve and decide what direction you want your life to go in,” he said.

Maier added that, as life unfolds, the knowledge the graduates have gained will prove important — but so will the understanding that there will always be lessons to learn and skills to grow. “If you take nothing else with you today, be curious, inquisitive and remember that your education does not end when you leave today,” he said.

Student speaker Almunthir Elhady echoed the idea that graduation is not a conclusion. The College of Engineering and Computer Science graduate told his fellow students that with each step they take, they will be called to adapt, to grow and to rise. “The future is not a destination — it is a process of becoming, a journey of constant redefinition, of striving not just for personal success, but for a world that is better for those who will follow,” Elhady said.

Student speaker Almunthir Elhady

As Chancellor Domenico Grasso certified the degrees, he told the students that he looks forward to seeing the good that they bring into the world. “I welcome you to the society of learned men and women and to the pantheon of distinguished Michigan alumni — almost 700,000 strong — who have shaped and defined the world in which we live,” Grasso said. “Today also marks the shortest day of the year in terms of daylight, but from here on, the days will gradually grow longer. Just as the light of the sun increases, so too will the light of your education — symbolized by our university seal — guide you, illuminating your futures for the rest of your lives.”

Then, students in the Class of Fall 2024 — who ranged from ages 18 to 65 and hailed from 14 U.S. states and many nations around the world — turned their tassels, marking their official transition to alumni. During the two ceremonies, 482 undergraduate, 226 graduate and five doctoral degrees were awarded.

Grasso also awarded one special diploma — to Maier. “We are going to present him with the diploma that he did not receive during his commencement,” Grasso said. “Congratulations.” Smiling, Maier accepted it with one word: “Finally.”

Chancellor Domenico Grasso and Class of Fall 2024 keynote speaker Henry Maier

During his keynote speech, Maier noted that the anthem for his generation — the Baby Boomers — was a Graham Nash song titled “Chicago.” He paraphrased the lyrics: “We can change the world. Rearrange the world. It’s dying to get better.” He encouraged the newest ��-Dearborn alums to think about their song, while also talking about what a big day it was for them both — even though their graduations were nearly 40 years apart.

“To the Class of 2024, I ask, ‘What’s your anthem? How will you leave your mark on the world?” Maier said. “What I can tell you is you have already begun.”

Story by Sarah Tuxbury. Photos by Annie Barker and Andrew Mascharka

Commencement

Alumni Engagement

College of Arts, Sciences, and Letters

College of Business

College of Education, Health, and Human Services

College of Engineering and Computer Science

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Sat, 12/21/2024 - 18:57

��-Dearborn awarded 713 degrees during two 90-minute commencement ceremonies on Dec. 21 in the Fieldhouse.

The Class of Fall 2024 was celebrated at two commencement ceremonies on Dec. 21. Photo by Annie Barker

Class of Fall 2024: College of Business graduate Lamyah Burhani

stuxbury — Wed, 18 Dec 2024 10:29:14 +0000

Class of Fall 2024: College of Business graduate Lamyah Burhani stuxbury Wed, 12/18/2024 - 05:29

Lamyah Burhani remembers coming to ��-Dearborn as a high school student and mentally making notes of the campus environment, the welcoming feeling she experienced and knowing she wanted to say yes to as many opportunities as possible.

Three and a half years later — yes, she graduated in less than four — Burhani has completed four internships, traveled out of state for an Alpha Kappa Psi conference as the ��-Dearborn chapter president, studied in Italy through the university’s Study Abroad program and more. She says these experiences helped grow her confidence.

“I chose ��-Dearborn because, as cheesy as this sounds, it felt home-y. It could also give me the education I wanted and was the best financial decision. What I didn’t realize is how much the past few years would bring me out of my shell and help me learn how to be secure in myself and my abilities and to speak up,” says Burhani, a Canton resident double majoring in marketing and supply chain management. “Being at ��-Dearborn has helped me become a leader.”

She joined Alpha Kappa Psi her first year, after attending the university’s Winter Involvement Fair. When she became president at the end of that year, Burhani transitioned the business fraternity back to in-person activities following the pandemic. She reorganized the student organization’s space in Fairlane Center North and looked for ways to create community. She planned fun and career-focused events on campus while promoting business development opportunities, which included the AKPsi Elevate Conference in Chicago.

Burhani says not only did her time in the fraternity and exploring resources help her meet new friends, these activities also connected her to ��-Dearborn leaders who had expertise in career development. Of particular note, Burhani mentions ��-Dearborn’s career fairs and resume workshops, as well as the COB course Business Administration 300, taught by Business Administration Lecturer Rita Agius, which introduces students to career-securing strategies. Agius is also the senior internship program manager in COB’s Business Career Center.

“I was so impressed that there was a course that focused on all things career development. We talked about resumes, job searches, marketing ourselves, writing professionally and anything you can think of that will make you a stronger candidate. It definitely enhanced my professional growth,” Burhani says. “The career training and network you can get at ��-Dearborn is really incredible.”

Burhani, who plans to focus on the supply chain management side of her degree and is currently weighing her available opportunities, says the Business Career Center helped her find three of her four internships. She completed two supply chain management internships, at Detroit Manufacturing Systems and Tenneco, as well as a marketing internship at The Mushroom Angel Company, located in Detroit’s Eastern Market. “I started going to ��-Dearborn career fairs as a freshman. At the time, I went just to go. I didn’t know if it would help me or not. It did. I want to encourage students, even during their first year, to go. And then keep going,” she says. “You build relationships year after year. You learn about the companies, meet the representatives and make connections. Then you can decide what you want to work toward.”

Burhani says she did not originally intend to major in supply chain management, but Operations Management Lecturer Laura Birou noticed her talent and encouraged her to consider it as a career path. Not only does the supply chain field have a double-digit projection for growth — the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that employment of supply chain management professionals will grow by 30% from 2020 to 2030 — Burhani also finds it highly intriguing.

“I came to college planning to have a career in marketing. I love marketing and will apply the skills I gained in my marketing classes to my career, but I learned that I have a talent for numbers, organizing and attention to detail that I didn’t realize,” Burhani says. “Knowing that I had a part in getting something in the right quantity where it needs to be on time is something I find fulfilling.” In addition to the automotive field, Burhani is interested in working in healthcare, where many of the supplies are potentially life-saving.

Reflecting on the past three-plus years, Burhani says her time in college also gave her an opportunity to travel to Italy through the International Summer Program in Management at the University of Padua. During the five-week program, she took business classes at the University of Padua with Italian students, while also traveling the country. She saw the Colosseum in Rome, rode in a gondola in Venice and saw Michelangelo’s David in Florence. “I’ve never lived away from home before. I got to do that, meet friends from Italy that I still talk with, and do things I only thought I’d be able to see in books or social media,” she says. “I also saw how the world is much bigger than just me or what’s happening right now. I knew that, but to see it through so many layers of history was humbling.”

Nearing the end of her ��-Dearborn undergraduate experience, Burhani says the welcoming, home-y feeling never left. Sitting in her favorite chair in Fairlane's student organization space recently while taking it all in, Burhani says she’s ready for what’s next.

“��-Dearborn is such a special place. The people here want you to go out into the world and succeed, but they also encourage you to leave a legacy here,” she reflects. “Thanks to the people I’ve met and the things I was able to accomplish while at ��-Dearborn, I know I’ll be able to do both.”

Story by Sarah Tuxbury

Commencement

Student Success

College of Business

COB Student Organizations

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Wed, 12/18/2024 - 10:27

Graduating in under four years, the supply chain management and marketing double major says ��-Dearborn helped her gain job experience, an international perspective, leadership skills and memories that will last a lifetime.

Portrait of COB graduate Lamyah Burhani. Photo by Jansen Sangala

Class of Fall 2024: CECS graduate Dania Ammar

lblouin — Mon, 16 Dec 2024 16:46:13 +0000

Class of Fall 2024: CECS graduate Dania Ammar lblouin Mon, 12/16/2024 - 11:46

When Dania Ammar moved with her family from Beirut to southeast Michigan in 2017, her plan was to build on her civil engineering background and start the master’s in construction management program at ��-Ann Arbor. But some family circumstances led to her deferring her enrollment. As it happened, during the unexpected semester off, she reconnected with a friend from Lebanon who was studying mechanical engineering on the Dearborn campus. He had a lot of good things to say about the college, particularly how the research enterprise was growing quickly, giving graduate students a lot of opportunities. It was enough to pique Ammar’s interest. She got on the ��-Dearborn website, checked out the programs and research labs, particularly those in Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering, and set up a meeting with then-College of Engineering and Computer Science Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education and current CECS Dean Ghassan Kridli. “Dean Kridli was very generous in giving me some time to talk with him about the programs and all the research that was going on at ��-Dearborn at that time. I decided this was definitely one of the best options,” Ammar says.

The following semester, Ammar decided to go for it — enrolling in the IMSE master’s program at ��-Dearborn in 2018. IMSE is a broad discipline, and Ammar recalls feeling very open to exploring all the possibilities. That first semester, she took a variety of classes and found an early champion in Associate Professor Jian Hu, who specializes in using data analytics and machine learning in risk management applications. “I had a very good math background and knew some programming, but I had no background in that field,” Ammar says. “Professor Hu provided me with all kinds of support, told me which books I should start reading, and gave me time to get accustomed to programming models that we were using. I learned so much and it was a phenomenal experience.” A little later in her master’s program, she crossed paths with Professor Shan Bao, a specialist in human factors who was helping develop a new master’s program in Human-Centered Design and Engineering, a field that roots engineering solutions in deep understandings of human needs. Ammar says a lot of people think of human factors as a psychology-based discipline — and it does draw on psychology and user feedback quite a bit. But with Bao’s work, Ammar saw how the discipline’s deepest potential lay in combining those insights with complex data analytics and even artificial intelligence. “You can’t really develop any product, whether it is something simple or something very complicated, like an automated vehicle, without going into the human factors aspects of it,” she says. “But I saw this isn’t just about psychology. It’s about figuring out ways to quantify the psychology — to measure human preferences and behaviors so you can build models that help you gain insights into those measures.”

Ammar loved working with Bao and chose to continue her journey at Dearborn with a PhD. For her dissertation research, she took on an ambitious multiphase project in transportation safety that explored one of the more fascinating emerging challenges related to autonomous vehicles: How will pedestrians learn to trust and safely interact with vehicles when humans aren’t doing the driving? Ammar says both pedestrians and drivers typically rely on an exchange of visual signals, like eye contact and waving, to negotiate who has the right of way, and absent a human driver, cars will presumably need some way of declaring their intentions. She began her work with a deep dive into road crash data, identifying the factors that lead to the most dangerous situations between pedestrians and human-driven vehicles in order to derive potentially problematic pedestrian-AV scenarios. She then embarked on building a cueing system designed to satisfy pedestrians' needs while interacting with AVs in these evaluation scenarios. That phase of her research led to several interesting conclusions. For example, Ammar discovered that pedestrians tend to favor technologies that closely mimic their interactions with human drivers, e.g. AVs that communicate a symbolic message, like the familiar flashing silhouette used at crosswalks, either directly on the vehicle or via crosswalk infrastructure (or both). She also investigated many fine-grain details, like whether a pedestrian’s age, gender, and driving and pedestrian behavior (conservative versus nonconservative) influenced their preferences for AV cueing. The final stage of her research involved creating a VR simulation, where she observed participants reacting in tricky situations, like an autonomous vehicle quickly approaching a red light before eventually stopping. By measuring how long pedestrians took to leave the curb and using physiological measures like pupil diameter, she could see which safety cues inspired trust or distrust. She’s hoping the results, which have led to several publications, will help other researchers, automakers and civil engineers as they design cueing systems for the era of autonomous vehicles.

Since officially finishing her PhD program, Ammar has switched gears a little bit, and in some ways, it’s a moment when her diverse studies are all coming together. Since August, she’s been working as a data science project engineer with Hottinger Brüel & Kjær, where she focuses on data analytics and machine learning-based solutions for a wide variety of industries. “These skills can be leveraged in any application, including civil engineering-related fields, which have changed a lot even in the short time since I was an undergraduate student,” Ammar says. “Let’s say you had a project and you needed insights about soil mechanics or wanted to predict settlements in the soil over time. In the past, we would have done that with a bunch of physics-based and numerical equations. But now, with more sensors being installed and collected data becoming available, researchers are developing machine learning-based models to answer those questions. That’s where the field is going now, and in the future, most engineering solutions will be built with data collection in mind so these models can keep getting better.”

Ammar now just has one finishing touch to put on her ��-Dearborn career: Walking across the commencement stage in December. She expects it’s going to be a pretty emotional moment. “��-Dearborn has been my home for the last seven years,” she says. “It’s only been a few months since I left, but to see everyone again is going to be very special. I’ve had the opportunity to work with so many different people, and I always felt, sincerely, that every day I spent with them was a chance to learn something new.”

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Story by Lou Blouin

Commencement

Student Success

Technology

College of Engineering and Computer Science

Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering

Off

Mon, 12/16/2024 - 16:44

The recent PhD graduate almost pursued a career in construction management until ��-Dearborn helped her unlock a future in data analytics and artificial intelligence.

Since finishing her PhD, Dania Ammar has been working as a data science project engineer. She'll be putting the punctuation mark on her seven-year ��-Dearborn career on Saturday, when she walks across the commencement stage. Photo by Annie Barker

Class of Fall 2024: CEHHS graduate Jesse Whitman

lblouin — Mon, 09 Dec 2024 15:48:18 +0000

Class of Fall 2024: CEHHS graduate Jesse Whitman lblouin Mon, 12/09/2024 - 10:48

Education master’s student and Fall ’24 graduate Jesse Whitman has always been drawn to people and places that don’t match his own background. In fact, when he graduated from his small-town, southwest Michigan high school in 2007, he didn’t apply to a single in-state university — just to guarantee that he’d land somewhere unfamiliar. As it turned out, Miami University in Oxford, Ohio wasn’t exactly exotic, but it was hard to turn down a Division I track scholarship. Whitman’s major at Miami, however, did stretch his horizons. He majored in history, with a concentration in Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies. He even learned Arabic. “I just have always had this desire to learn about other cultures, and that seemed about as different from my own background as you could get,” he says.

Whitman loved his time at Miami, but he jokes now that his choice of major may have complicated his employment prospects — especially given he graduated in 2011, when the U.S. economy was still recovering from the Great Recession. So fresh out of college, and struggling to find work in his field, he decided to completely switch gears. He says he joined the Navy in small part because his grandfather had served in the Navy, and in large part because he had a lot of student loan debt and the Navy has a generous loan repayment program. When he enlisted, he scored high on the ASVAB exam, a sort of SAT for the military, which put him on track to train to become a “nuke” — technical staff who maintain the electrical systems on the Navy’s nuclear-powered submarines and aircraft carriers. The intense training lasted 18 months, after which Whitman was assigned to the Harry S. Truman, an aircraft carrier based in Norfolk, Virginia, where he worked on operations and maintenance of the nuclear propulsion plant’s high-voltage electrical system.

Whitman says his time in the Navy shaped him in several important ways. The high-stakes environment of operating a nuclear-powered electrical system taught him a lot about the importance of owning your work. And it enabled him to see the world: during his time in the Navy, he went to Dubai, Croatia, Crete and Bahrain. Most importantly, he says, it taught him a lot about people — and specifically, about who Americans really are, deep down, when the issues that divide us aren’t front and center. “I mean, when you’re doing your shift and you’re trying to stay awake at 2 a.m. and you're not looking at your equipment, what are you doing? You’re learning about the person sitting next to you, what they believe in, what they enjoyed about the recent port call,” he says. “The Navy takes a really big sample of America. It’s maybe a better representation of what America really is — or could be. It’s the melting pot. It’s people who have really different backgrounds and beliefs, but there is this expectation that we’re all going to work together regardless of our beliefs because we all have this greater mission we’re contributing to. After being in the Navy, I’m confident I could work with anyone.”

Whitman says the reason he left the Navy was pretty simple: His daughter was born, and his demanding work schedule, which required him to be out to sea for weeks at a time, meant he was missing too many of her “firsts.” He decided not to renew his contract and to head back to school, making what seemed like a logical choice. He enrolled in ��-Dearborn’s electrical engineering program, where he says the stunning new Engineering Lab Building was a big draw. But three semesters in, he simply wasn’t feeling it. “I was doing well academically, but it wasn’t ‘sparking joy’ — to quote Marie Kondo,” he says, smiling. “So I tried to think back to the last time I felt a lot of job satisfaction, and it was teaching.”

In the Navy, it turned out, Whitman got to do quite a bit of teaching, most often about technical subjects having to do with the ship’s electrical systems. Other times, it was more informal, like the mentorship that came with looking out for younger members of his team. “Some of them were 18 years old, and the Navy can throw a lot of money at you, so it’s important to take care of your finances,” he says. “They had questions about how to buy a car or buy a house, and I was a little older, so I could help them with that stuff. It felt good to be able to impact their lives in a really practical way.” Whitman decided to cut his losses in his engineering program and switch to a Master’s of Education. The vibe shift for him was immediate. He says it felt incredible to suddenly be around a group of super positive people who were all committed to serving a greater good — not totally unlike the environment he’d found in the Navy, but it was a better fit for who he’d become.

Whitman says it feels pretty amazing to be bringing this chapter of his life to a close — which, of course, is really just the beginning of a new chapter. In particular, he feels fortunate to have had the time and space to “find my footing as a 35-year-old man,” something he says was only an option because of his wife’s support. And his student teaching experience this past semester has only reinforced the feeling that he’s made a good choice. In particular, he’s enjoyed all the experimentation it's forced him to do. On his very first day, for example, when he bored the first two periods of sixth-grade geography students with a prepared lecture on the fundamentals of maps, he wasted no time pivoting. During the lunch hour, he quizzed his supervising teacher, who gave him some sage advice about the attention spans of 11-year-olds that he’s still using. Developmentally, Whitman says, kids that age are still learning how to digest large “blocks” of information. So this semester, he learned to mix in things like YouTube videos and activities that ask the kids to weigh in with their takes on things. “Luckily, I’m at the age where it’s easy for me to accept that I don’t know everything,” Whitman says. “I’m new to this, so working with teachers that have been at this for 20 years — of course, they’re going to be better at it than me. Why wouldn’t I try out their advice? Even they’re still trying out new things. You see that teaching really is going to be a lifelong learning experience.”

In fact, Whitman’s student teaching experience at his Oak Park middle school has been so enjoyable, he’s now thinking his preferred first job might be something like teaching 7th grade — even though he originally envisioned himself as a high school social studies teacher. “With all things, I try to just embrace the opportunity you find yourself with,” he says. “I kind of think of it like being in a maze. How do you know you’re going the wrong direction? You hit the wall and turn around. That’s happened to me a few times in life. But now I’m finding that I might want to do middle school because I gave it a chance. The path in front of me still feels open.”

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Story by Lou Blouin

Commencement

Student Success

College of Education, Health, and Human Services

Education

Off

Mon, 12/09/2024 - 15:44

After serving in the Navy for eight years, Jesse Whitman is answering a different call and pursuing a career in teaching.

For the final leg of his master's in education, December grad Jesse Whitman has been teaching middle school geography at a school in Oak Park. Photo by Annie Barker

Class of Spring 2024: CEHHS graduate Weirong Huang

lblouin — Mon, 29 Apr 2024 12:25:23 +0000

Class of Spring 2024: CEHHS graduate Weirong Huang lblouin Mon, 04/29/2024 - 08:25

Being a kindergarten teacher who specializes in working with English language learners was never Weirong Huang’s plan. In fact, when Huang was offered her first permanent teaching position working in a Dearborn Public Schools’ classroom with ELL students shortly after her 2020 graduation from ��-Dearborn, she almost turned the job down. As someone who just a few years earlier was learning English herself, she doubted whether she was the best person to help students. Moreover, while she spoke English, Cantonese, Mandarin and several other Chinese dialects, she didn't know any Arabic, which many of her potential students spoke as their first and only language. But Huang ended up taking the job, and three years later, she has no regrets. In fact, helping children learn English has become such a defining part of her life as a teacher, she decided to return to ��-Dearborn for her M.A. in Education with the English as a Second Language (ESL) endorsement, a degree she officially claimed at Saturday’s commencement ceremony.

Huang, who grew up in southern China, initially came to the United States on a two-year visa working as an au pair for a family in the Dearborn area. But she says she also saw it as an opportunity to continue her education. It’d been a dream of hers to open a preschool in China, but she wanted to study in the U.S., where she says the educational philosophies were less strict and focused more on children's individual interests. After her au pair job ended, she enrolled at Oakland Community College and later transferred into the education program at ��-Dearborn. At the university, she says she found exactly what she was looking for — namely, a program that exposed her to a range of creative educational approaches. In particular, she remembers being shocked — in a good way — the first time she visited ��-Dearborn’s Early Childhood Education Center. The school follows what is known as the Reggio Emilia model, where young children are encouraged to explore the world around them — continuously constructing and revising their individual theories about how the world works, like little scientists. It was basically the antithesis of the “factory” model of education. If she ever did get to start a preschool, Huang thought she’d want it to be just like that.

In her classroom at Snow Elementary in Dearborn, Huang says she likes looking for opportunities to use constructivist techniques with her kindergartners. But day to day, language is always front of mind. In a typical school year, Huang has about 20 5- and 6-year-olds, about half of whom start the year knowing little or no English. Moreover, nearly all of her ELL students are Arabic speaking, so she’s learned a variety of techniques for overcoming the language barrier. In Dearborn Public Schools, English learners aren’t grouped into special ELL classrooms — they attend classes with their English-speaking peers. Huang says this approach has a variety of advantages. One of the biggest is it lets her pair ELL students and bilingual students. Kids being naturally helpful, it’s never hard to get volunteers to translate, though she says this buddy system can definitely lead to a chatty classroom. Another technique: Using more language-neutral tools to jumpstart language learning. “For example, when we do our daily writing assignments, we do a drawing first. Then we write about what we’re drawing,” Huang explains. This gives students a low-pressure task that lays the foundation for their language activities, which helps build their confidence.

Huang says one of the biggest lessons she’s learned both through her program and in her three years leading a classroom is that assessment has to be treated as a nearly continuous activity for English learners. “Maybe you have a student who you just think is quiet, but that’s when you have to make sure that maybe he’s not just quiet, he’s struggling with the language,” she says. “So you have to have little conversations with them all the time, to see where they’re at. My students tease me because even at recess I’m assessing them. I’ll call them in and ask them to count to 100 and then send them back to play.” Little “tests” like this allow a teacher to see if a student is struggling with something. If they are, Huang knows to give them a little extra time — until she sees that unmistakable spark of understanding in their eyes. “You have to always be watching,” she says. “As a teacher, you have so many eyes.”

Initially, Huang thought her own status as an English language learner would be a liability in the classroom. “I honestly feared that if parents knew that about me maybe they wouldn’t want me teaching their kids,” she says. Now, she doesn’t worry about it. If anything, she sees her own ELL status as an asset that helps her relate to her students. She knows what it feels like to come to a new country and be so scared to speak that you just stay quiet. She also knows how good it feels to work hard and overcome that fear. She’s open with her students about her own story, which she says helps build a bridge between them, no matter what language they speak. “I think they are amazed that I’m from China because they think all teachers live at the school,” she says, laughing. “They don't think you have a personal life. Or that you have kids their age, or have a guinea pig and two tortoises, or like to draw. So I like to share a lot with them. So much of education at this age is just about inspiring them and building their confidence and setting them up to become lifelong learners. So whatever common ground we can find and have fun with, you have to use it.”

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Story by Lou Blouin

Commencement

Inclusion or Diversity

Student Success

College of Education, Health, and Human Services

Education

Off

Mon, 04/29/2024 - 12:14

The ’20 education alum returned for a master’s to pursue her passion for teaching English language learners.

Graphic by Violet Dashi

Class of Spring 2024: CECS graduate Issa Hachem

lblouin — Wed, 24 Apr 2024 12:12:02 +0000

Class of Spring 2024: CECS graduate Issa Hachem lblouin Wed, 04/24/2024 - 08:12

First-generation college students often speak of the burden of having to figure out financial aid, majors and minors, and all the other mechanics of a college experience without the help of a parent who’s done it before. But that learning curve can be seriously flattened if you have older siblings blazing the trail for you, says spring ’24 graduate Issa Hachem. The computer engineering senior had three older siblings who, as he did, attended Henry Ford College for two years, then finished a four-year degree. (His two older brothers are also ��-Dearborn graduates.) Issa’s older brother, Mohamad, even studied a similar discipline, which helped him avoid his brother’s mistake of taking a bunch of classes that didn’t transfer. “It’s like the family hand-me-downs, but with advice,” Issa says. “Each kid coming up has it a little bit easier than the last.”

Indeed, the Hachem family is building an impressive story of collective achievement — one in which the American Dream label, however overused, feels apropos. Issa’s mother, Eman, came to the United States from Lebanon when she was a teenager, and his father joined her a few years later. Neither of Issa’s parents had the opportunity to go to college, but he says it was always the goal that the kids would. After graduating from ��-Dearborn, Issa’s oldest brother went to medical school and is finishing his residency in June. His sister is a NICU nurse and is pursuing a master’s in nursing education. His other older brother works as an engineer at Bosch, where Issa is currently interning in the same department. Following the well-honed Hachem formula, the youngest is now finishing his second year at Henry Ford and will be starting his computer engineering program at ��-Dearborn this fall.

Issa’s own college journey has had its unique twists. He’s worked full time or part time at six different jobs while he’s been in school. He’s also part of the unique mini-generation that started college during the COVID pandemic. He didn’t even have an in-person class until he transferred to ��-Dearborn in 2022. Issa remembers it being a pretty big adjustment. His first semester, he did well in three of his four classes, but he struggled in his “Engineering Statistics and Probability” course — the most failed course in his program. “It was almost the end of the semester, and I had to make a decision: Do I quit my job? Do I work really hard and try to not fail this class and potentially sacrifice my As and Bs? Or do I maintain the As and Bs in the other classes and retake the other class later?” For a new student, it was a veteran way to assess the situation. He ultimately decided to abandon ship on the statistics course. When he retook it a few semesters later, he aced it — which wiped out the failing grade and gave a big boost to his GPA.

After that rocky first semester, Issa found his stride in his computer engineering program. He says it’s hard to pick a favorite course or professor. Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering Paul Watta’s habit of giving students a quiz every lecture stressed Issa out at first. But he grew to love Watta’s demanding style and the fact that his classes were packed with hands-on projects. Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering Hafiz Malik also made an impression. “This dude — I remember he just rolled up the projector screen and went full chalkboard for two hours straight,” Issa says. “I had so many questions, and he answered every single one of them in a way that made perfect sense. The guy is a genius.” (Issa later completed a directed study in computer vision with Malik.) He and Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering Samir Rawashdeh bonded over their shared interest in assistive technologies for people with disabilities. (He also loved that Rawashdeh’s passion for engineering bled over into cool side projects, like the Star Wars robots Rawashdeh builds for his kids.) Issa, himself, has been living with significant hearing loss since early childhood. For his senior design project, which Rawashdeh oversaw, Issa and his teammates built a device to assist hearing impaired people with their directional hearing — something that Issa’s top-of-the-line hearing aids can’t even do. “I got the idea when, one day, my friends and I were sitting around the garage and this cricket was chirping,” he explains. “And so we’re trying to find this cricket, and my friends all knew right where to look. And I was, like, ‘Guys, I have no idea where this cricket is!’ That’s when I realized just how bad my directional hearing was.” Their device is a 360-degree microphone array that can be worn tucked inside a ballcap. When it picks up sound, it buzzes on that side of the array, giving the user a discreet, easy-to-interpret tactile sensation of where the sound is coming from, enhancing spatial awareness for hearing impaired people. Issa and his teammates' project won the Best in Electrical and Computer Engineering Award and the Alumni Advisory Council Innovation Award at the 2024 Senior Design Competition.

Issa says it’s a little surreal to be wrapping up a senior design project and to have graduation just a few days away. The approaching milestone has definitely given him a new perspective on things — particularly regarding the role his family has played in getting him to where he is. He laughs a little now at the teenage version of himself — the kid who thought he was “coming from the trenches” because he had a family that provided him everything he needed but not everything he wanted. Now he sees how having a dad who was an auto mechanic and DIY’d almost everything in their home nurtured his love of engineering. He appreciates the hours his mom, the self-taught family accountant, spent filling out his FAFSA forms. And he sees how his college experience likely wouldn’t have gone as smoothly as it did without his older siblings’ hand-me-down wisdom.

“In high school, I think I was worried about all the wrong things. I was comparing myself to the kids whose dads owned businesses and could buy them expensive clothes and pay for college like it was nothing,” Issa says. “I thought I had nothing. I had this mentality that I had to grind. But now I see I really didn’t need to do that. When I was kind of overwhelmed working full time and trying to go to school, my family always had my back. They helped me realize that, no matter what, I was going to have a roof over my head and food to eat. Now, I see all that other material stuff didn’t matter. And I see some of the kids from high school who had it easy — they’ve switched majors three times and are still trying to figure things out. So I guess I’m just more grateful for my family and my friends. Any success I have — I wouldn't have it without them.”

###

Story by Lou Blouin

Commencement

Student Success

Technology

College of Engineering and Computer Science

Electrical and Computer Engineering

Off

Wed, 04/24/2024 - 12:10

One of three siblings to graduate from ��-Dearborn, computer engineering graduate Issa Hachem says getting to the commencement stage has been a family affair.

Graphic by Violet Dashi

Class of Spring 2024: CASL graduate Eric Welch

stuxbury — Sat, 20 Apr 2024 11:35:23 +0000

Class of Spring 2024: CASL graduate Eric Welch stuxbury Sat, 04/20/2024 - 07:35

After Eric Welch’s daughter, Abbie, graduated from college in 2018, she told her dad, “We did it!” Welch, a single father, beamed with pride. But, when reflecting on his own path, Welch says that day encouraged him to finish something he felt was left undone: his own college education.

“I went to college right after high school, but dropped out my sophomore year. I wasn’t focused and I didn’t know what I wanted to do,” says Welch, a nontraditional student who re-entered college in his 40s. “I’m not saying that I have all the answers now. But I have experience, know myself a bit better and trust that I will end up where I am supposed to be as long as I’m honest with myself.”

People around campus may recognize Welch — and his work — when relaxing in the CASL contemplative garden. He’s a landscaper on campus, a full-time job he started in January 2023, and is especially proud of the green twig dogwood and forget-me-nots he and his team of student workers planted there. Dearborn Wolverine athletes may know Welch, who did a winter internship with the ��-Dearborn Athletics office, as the guy in the stands who reported on their games. Readers of the campus’ literature journal Lyceum know his writing. Not only did he contribute to the publication, he also served as managing editor for three years.

CASL grad Eric Welch is pictured by the Chancellor's Pond.

“I didn’t know that I could express myself in these ways. After high school, I looked at majoring in sports medicine. When I first started back, I thought about coaching and teaching,” says Welch, who re-started his college journey at Schoolcraft College in 2018 and transferred to ��-Dearborn in 2020. “As this middle-aged guy, I wrote an essay in English class about my attempts to recreate the original Irish coffee and got praise for it. It was the first time I remember getting praise for my writing. I submitted that essay to Lyceum my first year here and it was published. That opened up a new world for me. I’m an introvert, but I learned how freeing it was to express myself. So I kept looking for ways to do that.”

Reflecting on his life between the end of high school and now, Welch says after those two years of college, he joined the Navy in 1994 — inspired by his uncles and cousin, who were in that U.S. military branch. He then worked with his brother as a volunteer firefighter in Novi. He later became a supervisor for an EMS company and worked there for more than a decade. Then, when Welch’s father called him to help manage the family store, Hershey’s Shoes in Garden City, Welch stepped away from his EMS career in 2012 to assist his dad.

“When the family calls for help, you go,” says Welch, who worked at Hershey’s Shoes until his father retired and the store closed in December 2022. “I could have taken over the store, but I knew it wasn’t for me. I wasn’t the best version of me when I worked there. I appreciate the opportunities my dad gave me, but I was in school and pursuing my own path. I wanted to see where it would lead me.”

So where have the last few years at ��-Dearborn taken him? He’s graduating summa cum laude. He’s met new friends, found a love of garden work and writing, and shown himself what is possible — all while working full time and trying out new things. “I’ve learned that it’s OK to be a little bit uncomfortable,” he says. “You usually come out on the other side with a new skill or perspective. It just means that you are growing.”

Nearing the end of his college journey, Welch says he still can’t believe the transformation he’s gone through while on campus. He attributes it to the people he’s met at ��-Dearborn.

Welch says the SOAR Program, which is a go-to resource space for older adult learners, helped him transition back to college after nearly 30 years. Because of the SOAR program, he always had a computer to use, knew where to go for help and had a built-in community of other Dearborn Wolverines who were returning to school.

He says Communications Professor Tim Kiska’s journalism courses introduced him to new ways of telling stories and serving the community through news writing, which led Welch to start a side hustle in freelance journalism.

And his full-time ��-Dearborn landscaping position helped him balance school, finances and expression. “My boss was great about helping me work my schedule around school,” says Welch, who is participating in the graduation ceremony in April, but officially graduates in August. “There’s nothing like the freedom of being outside, seeing the results of what you’ve done and having work be a little bit different every day.”

As graduation approaches, Welch says he’s going to enjoy his last few months of college. He’ll continue his landscaping role — but he’s also received job offers for newspaper reporter positions once his degree is complete. “I’ve learned that following what makes you happy is the most important thing. I have a lot to think about,” he says. “But I want to concentrate on finishing school first.”

Daughter Abbie isn’t able to attend the April 27 ceremony in person — she’s in L.A. working in the movie industry and visited Welch last month — but she’ll get up early to watch the ��-Dearborn YouTube stream of her dad getting his diploma. Welch says his parents will be in attendance. And they'll see their hard-working son get a degree that was three decades in the making.

“I hope they are proud, like I was of Abbie. I did this for them. I did this for Abbie. I did this for me,” Welch says. “Nothing can change the past. But you can make decisions now that can change the course of your future.”

Article by Sarah Tuxbury.

Commencement

Student Success

College of Arts, Sciences, and Letters

Off

Sat, 04/20/2024 - 11:34

Inspired by his daughter’s college graduation, Eric Welch returned to school after a nearly 30-year hiatus. The English major says support from ��-Dearborn’s professors and staff helped him start — and finish — this chapter in his life.

Graphic by Violet Dashi

Congrats to the CECS and CEHHS Medallion awardees

stuxbury — Wed, 10 Apr 2024 22:41:27 +0000

Congrats to the CECS and CEHHS Medallion awardees stuxbury Wed, 04/10/2024 - 18:41

This commencement season, 12 students are recognized with ��-Dearborn’s top honors.

Chosen by faculty from their respective colleges, graduates are recognized for their outstanding quality of character, intellect, integrity and academic record.

Three Dean’s Medallion awardees are chosen per college with one of those students selected to receive the Chancellor’s Medallion. This semester’s Chancellor’s Medallion winner comes from the College of Engineering and Computer Science. These students will be recognized during the April 27 commencement celebrations.

The College of Arts, Sciences and Letters and the College of Business recipients were featured in a Reporter article on Tuesday.

Here are the awardees from the College of Education, Health and Human Services and CECS.

Chancellor’s Medallion

Zoie Mink
College of Engineering and Computer Science

Zoie Mink is receiving a dual Bachelor of Science in Engineering in mechanical engineering and bioengineering. She is also receiving an undergraduate certificate in engineering mechanics.

Mink’s outstanding leadership was recognized with the Alan Mulally Leadership in Engineering Scholarship in 2022. This competitive scholarship recognizes students from universities around the globe that “have demonstrated leadership skills in academic or community-based settings.”

Mink was a researcher in the Human Factors Lab under Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering Amanda Esquivel. She studied female lacrosse athlete head impacts, as well as dancer and soccer player landing kinematics and kinetics. Mink was also a research intern at Wake Forest School of Medicine during summer 2022 and 2023. During her first summer, she researched soccer athletes performing headers and the kinematic and neurocognitive effects. During her second summer, she worked with NASCAR to investigate rear crashes and the effect of head surround foam on driver head kinematics. Mink published and presented her research results at annual meetings of the Biomedical Engineering Society.

Mink, a supplemental instructor in the Mechanical Engineering Department, is president of the Society of Women Engineers, vice president of Pi Tau Sigma, corresponding secretary of Tau Beta Pi and professional development chair for the Biomedical Engineering Society at ��-Dearborn. As SWE president, she led the organization of the 2024 POWER (Professional Opportunities for Women and Engineering and Research) conference. Mink also is passionate about K-12 outreach and encouraging young girls to pursue majors and careers in STEM. Mink has initiated and helped lead middle school outreach programs, a big sister/little sister mentorship program and a rocketry event for Girl Scouts.

Mink will work at Ford Motor Company in the crash safety labs for the summer. She will then start a biomedical engineering graduate program in August to work toward her master’s and doctoral degrees.

Dean’s Medallion

Eejoy Lim
College of Engineering and Computer Science

Eejoy Lim is receiving a Bachelor of Science in software engineering.

Lim is involved in research. She’s worked with Assistant Professor of Computer and Information Science Zheng Song on detecting bias and discrimination in web services. Lim also worked with Assistant Professor of Computer and Information Science Probir Roy to fine tune transformer models for detecting performance bugs in high performance computing applications.

She secured an internship position in summer 2023 with Petronas, a Fortune Global 500 oil and gas company, where she developed and designed a website to facilitate and streamline the handover process across teams for more than 1,100 gas stations. Her contribution led to a 30% reduction in processing time, significantly improving efficiency.

Aiming to contribute to the academic success of her peers, Lim worked as a supplemental instruction leader, where she led boot camps and study sessions for core computer and information science courses. Additionally, she aimed to introduce different perspectives and enhance the breadth of student learning. She revived TEDx��Dearborn, which had been discontinued during the pandemic, and is a core team member of Hack Dearborn events. And, as president of the Student Activities Board, Lim organized some of the biggest events on campus, including the Homecoming Carnival, the Cedar Point trip and the Thanksgiving dinner. Lim also helped bring the campus friend, Bruce the Goose, to life.

Lim has applied to several graduate programs in computer science.

Michael Mackiewicz
College of Engineering and Computer Science

Michael Mackiewicz is receiving a dual Bachelor of Science in Engineering in electrical engineering and engineering mathematics.

Mackiewicz is a member of the National Society of Leadership and Success and is highly regarded by faculty in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department as well as the Mathematics Department. Mackiewicz had an internship with Consumers Energy in the summer of 2023, working as a low voltage distribution planning engineer. He worked on many projects that focused on increasing the safety and reliability of power lines. Mackiewicz continued to work for Consumers Energy part time during his final year of college.

Mackiewicz’s outstanding college experience has not been without challenges. In his senior high school year, Mackiewicz was diagnosed with lupus, an autoimmune disease. His treatment carried into college, which included a kidney biopsy, hip and ankle surgery, and a full hip replacement along with many sessions of physical therapy totaling around two years. With the help of the Office of Disability Services, Mackiewicz was able to attend college throughout his medical treatment.

On top of managing his health and studies, he has been an active member of the United States Powerlifting Association for more than two years. Through his engagement in powerlifting, Mackiewicz strives to inspire others not to be confined by their disabilities.

Following his graduation, Mackiewicz has accepted a position as electrical engineer at Wade Trim, an energy utility company.

Mary Bradshaw
College of Education, Health and Human Services

Mary Bradshaw is receiving her Bachelor of Science in health and human services with a focus on human services.

Bradshaw is a leader on the field and in the classroom. She was named captain of the women's cross country team from Fall 2022, participated on the Student-Athlete Advisory Council and served as the Team Representative on the Council since Fall 2023. She’s earned multiple WHAC Champions of Character awards and the Chancellor's Award for exemplary leadership and community engagement through athletics. In addition, Bradshaw has worked as a supplemental instruction leader and has been a student associate in the Graduate Studies/Admissions office.

Working as an undergraduate research assistant alongside Associate Professor of Sociology Carmel Price and Associate Professor of Public Health Natalie Sampson, Bradshaw delved into the complexities of using plain language in public notices pertaining to the Clean Air Act — an initiative resonating with environmental justice concerns. Their collective efforts culminated in a publication featured in the journal Environmental Science and Policy. Bradshaw played an active role in presenting the findings at the American Public Health Association annual conference and the Environmental Health Research to Action Academy.

What makes Bradshaw’s academic journey unique has been her commitment to the 4+1 HHS to MSW program where — through her academics, research, athletics and work experience — she has had the opportunity to engage with her various passions, such as mental health, public health, the environment, communities and social work, to generate a vision for change that she wants to see in the world.

Following graduation, Bradshaw will finish her Master of Social Work at ��-Ann Arbor.

Britney Chungag
College of Education, Health and Human Services

Britney Chungag is receiving a Bachelor of Science in health and human services with a focus on public health. Additionally, she has earned an undergraduate certificate in health communications from the College of Arts, Sciences and Letters.

A nontraditional student, Chungag transferred to ��-Dearborn from Oakland Community College. Though faced with challenges and delays in her educational timeline, she attributes her success to the unwavering support of friends and family as she juggled studies, work and personal aspirations.

In her research efforts, guided by Assistant Professor of Human Services Finn Bell, Chungag developed a logic model for the nonprofit Foster Love to evaluate and improve their Family Fellowship Scholarship. This project was pivotal in helping former foster youth with the college process, focusing on nondiscrimination and enhancing student success rates. Chungag also completed a research project dissecting the fashion industry's history and environmental impact. This sustainability-focused research project highlights the effects of fast fashion on society, environmental repercussions and potential legislative solutions. Under Lecturer Michael Montgomery’s mentorship, Chungag developed a fundraising portfolio for Code.org, showcasing effective strategies for individual and corporate fundraising efforts.

Chungag’s extracurricular activities include memberships in the African Student Union, Black Student Union, Criminology and Criminal Justice Collective, Pre-Law Association and Public Health Society, as well as the Phi Theta Kappa honor society and the National Society of Leadership and Success.

Following graduation, Chungag plans to take the LSAT and pursue law school. Envisioning a Fall 2025 entry into a JD/master's program, she is considering specializations in either public health or health informatics.

Hannah Funk
College of Education, Health and Human Services

Hannah Funk is completing her Bachelor of Arts in mathematics, with a vision to transition into elementary education.

Funk participated in multiple field-based learning experiences throughout her academic journey. At Salina Elementary School, Funk not only observed first-grade math lessons, but also delivered an addition lesson. At Thorne Elementary, she assisted in sixth-grade ELA instruction and taught a class, further sharpening her pedagogical skills. As a student teacher at Allen Elementary, Funk was immersed in a kindergarten setting, balancing the instruction of various subjects with the development of classroom management techniques and nurturing educational connections.

Her professional portfolio is further enriched by her undergraduate research experience. During her capstone courses, Funk created educational action plans that utilized researched-based practices to fill gaps in understanding for students. These targeted multiple content areas like science, ELA and math. Within the action plans, Funk reviewed studies that utilized best practices and then used the findings to support students. She also wrote lesson plans that required the use of researched-based practices in order to tailor instruction to support students. During her current semester of student teaching, she continues to research best practices to ensure the success of her students.

Funk has balanced full-time work, achievements and rigorous course loads, while experiencing challenges, including losing a family member. Through it all, she continues to look for ways to help others.

After graduation, Funk plans to teach elementary education and is eager to enter the classroom as an in-service teacher. She intends to begin a master’s degree in special education.

Awards

Commencement

Student Success

College of Education, Health, and Human Services

College of Engineering and Computer Science

Off

Wed, 04/10/2024 - 22:40

��-Dearborn honors a select group of soon-to-be grads each semester for outstanding achievement.

Celebrating diversity, mentorship and the Class of Fall 2023

stuxbury — Sat, 16 Dec 2023 21:51:57 +0000

Celebrating diversity, mentorship and the Class of Fall 2023 stuxbury Sat, 12/16/2023 - 16:51

��-Dearborn alum and Class of Fall 2023 keynote speaker Bill Anaya has 25-plus years of global government relations experience that’s given him the opportunity to travel the world, build relationships and grow his cultural knowledge.

The 1993 College of Arts, Sciences and Letters graduate worked in the White House, with the Alibaba Group and for Motorola. He’s currently the vice president of global government affairs for Coupang, a major e-commerce company that Fortune magazine called the “Amazon of Asia.”

Addressing the Fall ’23 graduates, Anaya says he credits this path to an alma mater they now share: ��-Dearborn. The university awarded 684 degrees to the newest Dearborn Wolverine alums during commencement ceremonies on Dec. 16. The morning ceremony recognized graduates of the College of Arts, Sciences and Letters and the College of Business. The afternoon ceremony celebrated graduates of the College of Education, Health and Human Services and the College of Engineering and Computer Science.

Read Anaya's keynote address here.

“This place bet on me 34-and-a-half years ago — a childhood janitor with Latino roots and limited resources,” said Anaya, who, as a high school student, was selected to receive the Chancellor’s Scholarship. He was able to share that news with family before his father’s passing from cancer.

“Because of ��-Dearborn’s decision to grant a full academic scholarship to me, I would be able to earn an otherwise unobtainable world-class education and so much more,” Anaya told the graduates.

Listening to Anaya share his experiences as a hard-working, first-generation student from an underrepresented community, some of the graduates nodded their heads in recognition. The ��-Dearborn student body, according to Fall 2023 data, is 47% first-generation and 46% Pell-eligible.

Anaya also spoke about the ways ��-Dearborn shaped his life through mentors, dedicated professors like Political Science Professor Emeritus Helen Graves, internships and overall support.

Chancellor Domenico Grasso praised Bill Anaya, a 1993 alum who delivered the keynote address, for his remarks to the Class of Fall 2023.

“These internships and caring leaders made all the difference in my life,” he said. “And Dearborn was at the heart of it all. Always training me, always propelling me, always encouraging me. Always making my life and circumstances different.”

Student speaker Nour Haj Salem, a Computer Engineering and Computer Science graduate student from Tunisia, said she’s thankful to have earned a ��-Dearborn degree and to learn from the opportunities that came with it.

“Inspired by my grandfather's wise words, ‘eli bela fi haja ydirha,’ which means, ‘if you truly desire something, you must do what it takes to achieve it,’ I became the first in my family to venture alone to the U.S. for graduate studies,” Haj Salem said. While at ��-Dearborn, she completed an internship at CBRE as a software engineer. She also worked as a research assistant studying machine learning with Assistant Professor of Computer and Information Science Foyzul Hassan.

“Let us take a moment to express our deepest gratitude to the professors, mentors and all the dedicated staff who have been our guiding lights,” she said. “Their support, patience and wisdom have been crucial to our success.”

Haj Salem also talked about the welcoming atmosphere she experienced at ��-Dearborn when she traveled 5,000 miles from Tunisia to attend grad school in the U.S. She said the diversity on campus, the halal food offered in the Renick University Center’s McKinley Cafe and volunteer-based public engagement opportunities reflect the community she chose to study within.

Student speaker Nour Haj Salem congratulated the Class of Fall 2023, while also welcoming her family to the U.S. They traveled from Tunisia to see her graduate.

“Being part of this university is a source of pride, as we embrace and celebrate our differences together,” she said. “Looking ahead, this experience will guide our future work. We'll carry teamwork, empathy and the appreciation of diversity into our careers.”

The university’s commitment to both inclusion and practice-based learning was on full display at the ceremony, with the debut of new name-reading software developed by Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering Hafiz Malik and four of his CECS graduate students. The software allowed students – or, if they chose, partners, parents or even their kids – to record their names exactly how they should be pronounced. As each student walked across the stage, one of Malik’s students scanned a card featuring a QR code, which triggered the system to play the graduate’s audio recording and display their name on the big screen.

Professor Hafiz Malik, center and taking a bow, and his CECS graduate students debuted a new name-reading software at the Dec. 16 commencement ceremonies.

After the last name was announced, rows of students waited for the moment to turn the tassel and make it official. Chancellor Domenico Grasso then announced it was time to stand up, move it from the right to the left of their mortar boards and celebrate.

“I welcome you to the society of learned men and women and to the pantheon of distinguished Michigan alumni — more than 670,000 strong who have shaped and defined the world in which we live — now it is your turn,” Grasso said. “I wish you every good fortune and success.”

Earlier, as Anaya congratulated the graduates on this milestone, he said he’s looking forward to the difference they will make in their chosen fields and the world. He encouraged them to combine their education with the lessons gained through their challenges and perseverance.

“For yourself and for someone you see around you during your career, get in the business of transport — from disadvantage to fulfillment. Be a center of gravity around that idea,” he said. “Make your approach contagious and part of the DNA of any organization where you are now or where you will be. Provide the special brand of care, the Dearborn brand of care.”

See more photos of the big day or watch the recorded ceremonies on YouTube and Facebook.

Article by Sarah Tuxbury.

College of Arts, Sciences, and Letters

College of Business

College of Education, Health, and Human Services

College of Engineering and Computer Science

Off

Sat, 12/16/2023 - 21:40

The university awarded 684 degrees to the newest Dearborn Wolverine alums during the commencement ceremonies on Dec. 16.

Class of Fall 2023 graduate Brianna Bryant, a first-generation college student, celebrates on the graduation stage. Photos by Shannon Schultz/Michigan Photography

The perfect idea to ensure perfect name pronunciations at commencement

lblouin — Wed, 13 Dec 2023 17:05:14 +0000

The perfect idea to ensure perfect name pronunciations at commencement lblouin Wed, 12/13/2023 - 12:05

At a typical commencement ceremony, the cultural diversity of the American university is on full display, though organizers often struggle to nail one of the most basic expressions of this richness: pronouncing their students' names correctly as they walk across the graduation stage. “Basically no matter how good your name reader is, and ��-Dearborn has a very good one in Marcus Harris, it’s going to be very difficult to be 100% perfect,” says Hafiz Malik, a professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering who’s working on a number of diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives for his Chancellor’s Inclusive Excellence Fellowship. “There is just too much variation in pronunciation across cultures — and even within a culture — to get everyone’s name exactly correct.”

After the December 2022 ceremony, Malik was discussing this challenge with some of his colleagues when an idea dawned on them for how to fix the problem once and for all: “You can’t get more perfect than someone saying their own name,” he says. The next day, he circled back with the group with a brainstorm: Rather than having someone read names from phonetic spellings, which is how it’s traditionally been done at Commencement, Malik and his grad students could build an automatic name reading system that would play audio files of the students’ names that were pre-recorded by the students themselves.

Fast forward a year and their name reader system is set to debut this weekend at the December 2023 Commencement ceremony. Here’s how it works: Students recorded their names in advance using the NameCoach feature in Canvas, a tool that many students already use to help their professors with pronunciation. Then, as students walk across the stage, they’ll simply scan a card featuring a QR code. That will trigger the system to play their audio recording and display their name on the big screen. Malik says some graduates have had a little fun with the new recorded name option. One student got their kids to record their name. Malik’s wife, who’s walking this season to celebrate her master’s in health information technology, also opted to get the family involved. “The kids and I recorded her name together,” he says.

For Saturday’s ceremony, about 60 percent of graduates chose to make a recording for the name reader. Harris is recording the remaining 40 percent of names, and he and Computer and Information Science Professor Bruce Maxim will also be on stage to read any last-minute additions to the program. Malik is prepping some backup, too. “This is the first time we’ve done this, so we have backups of all the audio files, backups of sensors and the QR code reader, and we designed the system to work entirely offline so it can still function if the internet goes down,” he says. “We also made sure each person on our team has a backup partner in case someone gets sick that day. And even if my wife wasn’t graduating, I’d definitely be there to make sure everything goes smoothly!” If they do experience a technology glitch, phonetic spellings on the back of the cards provide a simple analog failsafe.

Malik credits his team of graduate students — Abhishek Ashok Borde, Abdul Kareem Shaik, Swetha Rani Kasimalla and Aditya Bendale — for taking this idea and running with it. “They are all from India, and many of them have long names, so I think this idea resonated with them and they worked very, very hard,” Malik says. “I never had to push them, they were so motivated, and I think it was very satisfying for them to create an actual product that is going to serve a need on such an important occasion.”

Malik and the students have submitted a patent for the system and are working with the U-M Innovation Partnerships office to commercialize it so other universities can use the name reader too. Their system boasts significant improvements over similar name reading options available today, which Malik says can cost upwards of $12,000 per ceremony and don’t allow students to record their own names. Malik says in the future, they’d like to embed the QR codes with additional personal information, like the student’s degree and major. “We could also have new students record their names when they get photographed for their student IDs so their recording is already ready to go when they graduate,” he says.

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Story by Lou Blouin

Commencement

Inclusion or Diversity

Student Success

College of Engineering and Computer Science

Electrical and Computer Engineering

Off

Wed, 12/13/2023 - 17:04

Professor Hafiz Malik and his graduate students built a new name reader that allows students to record their names in their own voices for the commencement ceremony.

Electrical and Computer Engineering Professor Hafiz Malik (center) and his graduate students (from left) Aditya Bendale, Abhishek Ashok Borde, Abdul Kareem Shaik and Swetha Rani Kasimalla show off the name reader they created for Fall 2023 Commencement.