During the ‘20's the college grew and new hires included Duggan, Seeber, Harrington, Partlo, Longacre, Sermon, and Stipe, each of whom served for at least the next 25 years with several serving for more than 40 years. Duggan became registrar very soon after he was hired and served in that capacity for the next 30 years. At that time the registrar was the second most important administrative position in the college.* After a couple years, Seeber moved to Mechanical Engineering where he had a long and successful career.** Harrington and Partlo would later become the Heads of separate Math and Physics departments respectively when Fisher retired in the mid 1940's. Shortly thereafter, Partlo took over as Dean of the College. Sermon and Longacre then served as Physics Department Heads, with Sermon also serving as registrar for many years.

It is interesting to note that, excluding the short-time instructors, all of the faculty in the 1920's had at least one degree from the Michigan College of Mines. The majority of those faculty were hired with only a BS degree and would earn a MS degree while on the job. None of them would ever obtain an earned PhD. These home-grown faculty hired in the 1920's, under the direction of the much more senior Prof. Fisher, served as the core of the physics and math faculty for several decades to come, and had a strong presence in the department until the early 1960's.

The Geophysics Research Emphasis

In 1927 the State Legislature approved a broadening of the charge of the College and a new name, the Michigan College of Mining and Technology, or MCMT for short. The case was made that "the successful mining engineer and metallurgical engineer require broad knowledge of all phases of engineering, and as such are really entitled to recognition as general engineers, equipped to undertake work in almost any branch of the engineering profession." Hence, the broadened scope was put forward as a recognition of the existing facts. At the time of the change the total College enrollment was near 300 students. Shortly after this time, in 1933, a Bachelor of Science degree in General Science first appears, which one could claim is the first non-engineering degree to be offered by the College.

* The first Michigan Tech Vice President was Ed Williams, appointed in 1962. In the early 2000's, there were a half dozen Vice Presidents.

** Seeber served as Department Head of Mechanical Engineering from 1926 to 1948. Seeber's son, Robert Rex Seeber, Jr., would be instrumental in the design and construction of IBM's first large scale computers. The Seeber Computational Laboratory, the beginnings of electronic computation at MTU, was established in Hubbell Hall in 1958, one year after the senior Seeber's death.

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