How Michigan Can Leverage Early College High School Programs To Increase Post-Secondary Enrollment and Graduation Rates

Michigan has experienced a significant and sustained decline in postsecondary enrollment rates. A continued shortage of college graduates poses serious implications for the state’s economic future and workforce preparedness. In response to this trend, Early College High School (ECHS) programs have emerged as a promising strategy to increase college enrollment and degree attainment by reducing financial barriers and supporting traditionally underrepresented populations. This capstone paper draws on document analysis and a quantitative survey of student interests to advocate for the expansion of ECHS programs in Michigan

The Effects of Short-Term Rental Regulation on Neighborhoods in Traverse City, MI

With the increase in popularity of Short-Term Rentals (STRs) and the increase in housing and rental prices throughout the United States, this study aims to explore the effects STRs have on housing and rental prices in Traverse City, MI. Traverse City is a popular tourist area and has experienced significant price increases over the last decade. STRs have been a topic of regulation by many local units of government and the area lacks unified regulation. The study area is confined to two census block groups of adjacent neighborhoods that occupy different townships. The townships have two different approaches to STR regulation with one banning whole house STRs and no monitoring and the other allowing them by permit with density requirements and actively monitoring listing sites for violations. By comparing the increases in housing and rental prices and the number of active STR listings in the two neighborhoods, this study aims to explore the effects regulation has on compliance and housing cost. This study should provide a framework for implementing effective regulations that can be used as a primer for unifying regulations across the state of Michigan

Anarcho-Syndicalism in the Negaunee Branch of the Finnish Socialist Association

Socialism reached a prominence as a movement in the United States during the early 20th century. Fueled by the machinations of industrial capitalism and labor reform, many workers, immigrants, and other individuals would arrive to the precepts of socialism, a political movement avowing to shirk the constraints of capitalism on the proletariat. Specifically, the question of why and how labor unions should function in a socialist society was a central tenet of debate within the faction of the American Socialist Party. The central question of this article is to examine why anarcho-syndicalists argued against traditional socialist reformist arguments in the ASP and advocated for revolutionary actions to rectify the plights of workers. An analysis of the writings of local figures of the anarcho-syndicalist factions, such as William Risto, provide a humanizing perspective into the socialist movement, deriving individual motives, contexts, and attitudes that individuals undertook. Specifically, examining the relationship between the individual writings and actions of the anarcho-syndicalists of the Negaunee Branch and the ASP allows introspection into how these figures wished to utilize their historical agency. This split in the FSA exemplifies the dichotomy of how individuals will utilize their individual agency in reformist and revolutionary forms to mobilize change

Consideration of a Vehicle Miles Traveled Tax in Michigan

Gasoline tax revenue is becoming increasingly insufficient to fund road repairs and maintenance nationwide due to the increased fuel efficiency of gasoline-powered vehicles, increased sales of electric and hybrid alternatives, and overall construction cost inflation. Michigan’s solution to this problem, until now, has been to continually increase existing fuel taxes, which does little to address the aforementioned issues. Alternative policy options to supplement and eventually replace these traditional taxes include bridge and highway tolls, higher licensing and registration fees, and the Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT). Several states in various stages of VMT tax implementation are examined through the lens of public policy and administration topics, and considerations unique to Michigan are addressed. Any final VMT tax policy proposal must acknowledge constituent privacy and security concerns while achieving equitable administration

Water Wars

This is a fictional novel

Resistance, Adaptation, and Assimilation: Native American Responses to Christianization in the Great Lakes Region, 1800-1900

Analysis of the relationship between Native Americans and missionaries shifted from an early broad, sweeping praise of the missionaries, to overwhelming condemnation of their actions in the post Civil Rights political climate. Since the time of European contact, histories often fell into Hagiography; extolling the virtues of the missionaries, and their God-ordained work to save the soul of the perceived heathen Native. In the mind of many, the conversion of the Native was merely a natural result of the superiority of European-descended American culture. However, as a result of the Civil Rights Movement, a pivot away from lauditive analysis took place, and shifted toward seeing the missionaries as destructive forces of genocide. Both frameworks generally ignored a crucial aspect of the equation: Native agency. Indigenous people were written as objects that history simply happened to, rather than as people who participated in it. A push occurred, in recent years, toward recognizing Native Americans as active agents in their own history. They may not have willingly chosen the circumstances which beset them, but they did not sit idly by while missionaries Christianized their people. Instead, they resisted, adapted and assimilated in order to work within the system put upon them. This paper will analyze the threefold Native response as it pertains to the Great Lakes region of North America

Women’s Voting Registrations in Marquette County

Following the Michigan state amendment of 1918, which granted women the right to vote, the women of Marquette County began registering. This paper looks into the Ishpeming women’s voting records from 1919 and 1920, as well as news paper articles that document early voting registration turnouts in Marquette and Negaunee. The research focused on the patterns of registration in the context of amendments, elections, and political movements at the local, state, and national levels. While there has been extensive research and analysis of early women voters across the United States, no previous studies have analyzed the Ishpeming voting records. Women across the Upper Peninsula began registering to vote in February of 1919. In Ishpeming, 1,581 women registered in the first month, the vast majority of them prior to February 15, as it was the original cutoff date for the upcoming election in April. In March, registrations dropped to 285, and in April, only 22 women registered. February saw the highest month of registrations recorded. Another surge occurred in the spring of 1920, with 68 registrations in March and 8 in April. The summer of 1920 brought another resurgence, likely motivated by the ratification of the 19th Amendment and the upcoming national election. In July, 16 women registered, and 191 women registered in August

Stifled Voices: World War II from the Upper Peninsula

Academic scholarship on World War II is primarily based around letters and correspondence between soldiers and their families. A large body of such correspondence exists for both the Upper and Lower Peninsulas of Michigan; yet, most scholarship on the state’s connection to World War II is centered around strictly the Lower Peninsula. This is especially strange when comparing the data on enlisted soldiers from both Peninsulas, as we find the percentage of the population who enlisted in the US Army from the Upper Peninsula is roughly double that of the percentage for Lower Peninsula enlistments. There are clear reasons as to why this is the case; the Lower Peninsula has a drastically larger population and a large industrial capacity, both of which also factor into the urban centers being hotbeds for cultural change. Yet, given the fascinating depth of both the military and social commentary present in the narratives of these Upper Peninsula natives during the war, its presence as a glaring blind spot in the academic study of the region is both perplexing and unwarranted. The focus of this paper is to draw attention to this disparity in a way that highlights the need for further scholarly work in examining how World War II affected the Upper Peninsula and its residents

Making Upper Peninsula History Accessible: The Promise and Fragility of UPLINK

Small historical societies frequently cannot afford to make their collections more accessible via online catalogs or digital collections. Many are now coming together in consortia in order to afford digital collections platforms. Several such consortia have popped up in the Great Lakes region. This article focuses on UPLINK, the Upper Peninsula Digital Network, and what resources scholars can find there. It also explains why a consortial approach is useful to archives, libraries, and historical societies

The March of the Naples Soldier: A Look into the Spanish Flu Pandemic 1918-1920

This paper dives into the memory of Spanish Influenza from 1918 to 1920. It will analyze and deconstruct the fear caused or absent during that time and later in the records and literature. The comparison of the time of the Spanish Flu will be contrasted with the memory of the time period with the including of Pale Horse, Pale Rider, which was written in 1939. It will compare these two times and conclude with the recent COVID-19 pandemic from 2019 to 2021. It was November 2019, and reports of a new respiratory disease from Wuhan, China, began to trickle in. Although it would start as a regional epidemic, it quickly escalated into a global pandemic by the middle of March 2020, bringing the modern world to a standstill. The unprecedented measures such as lockdowns, mask mandates, and a race to produce a vaccine, all aimed at controlling the spread of the virus, made it seem like we were living in a video game to prevent the eradication of humanity. This rare occurrence of a lethal pandemic was a shock to our seemingly invulnerable world of medicine. It produced an inconsistent response that led to civil disobedience, ranging from a lack of respect for mask mandates and conspiracy theories. This is not, however, the first modern pandemic. The first time our interconnected world, where people travel rapidly globally, turned against us was in 1918 with the forgotten Spanish Influenza Pandemic. The “Naples Soldier,” named after a popular opera show of the time, as it would be known to many parts of Europe, would jump around the world with maximum efficiency. The Spanish flu pandemic of 1918, although maybe forgotten and an infection attributed to the flu, would show a significant contrast among the reactions to the disease with the dissonance between the time of the Spanish Influenza and how it is remembered in records or literature of the time