HOUGHTON, MICHIGAN – Gazing across the Portage Canal at the lush green hills to the north, Frank Pavlis remembered a very different view from the campus of Michigan Technological University. When the 1938 graduate was studying chemical engineering at Michigan Tech, those hills were barren. “There were no trees,” Pavlis recalled. “They’d been taken down for mining and for people to use to heat their houses.”
Pavlis is delighted with the difference. “This area has been transformed by trees and flowers.”
The 97-year-old alumnus was at Michigan Tech last week for a ribbon-cutting ceremony marking the opening of the new college named for him: the Pavlis Honors College.
More Women at Tech
There are other striking changes as well. There were fewer than 1,000 students at the University in the mid-1930s, compared to 7,000 today. In his class, there was one woman. “Probably three or four in the whole university,” Pavlis said. Last fall, female enrollment at Michigan Tech totaled 1,810, with 906 in the College of Engineering, the most ever.
“I am pleased to see so many ladies here,” Pavlis remarked at the Friday afternoon ribbon-cutting for the Honors College.
A longtime supporter of the University, Pavlis is a member of Michigan Tech’s McNair and Hubbell giving societies. In 2009, he received the University’s Distinguished Alumni Award.
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