RickyTicky, I don't recall details but have been told several times that some iteration of the tower did blow over unexpectedly in explanation of a picture, I believe in the underground commons/library, of the aftermath. Maybe it was during demolition of one?
I lectured and took a few classes at Purdue but never pursued a degree there. My wife's second degree is from Purdue however, but she's probably one of the few people less interested in school trivia than I am.
I believe that if you look closer at the regulations, you'll likely find that they will preclude anyone who is not licensed from doing any actual structural engineering where lives would be at risk if it were to fail. Perhaps others are allowed to 'engineer' some non-critical 'structural components', or choose beams from a span table, but I'd be surprised (and quite nervous) if states were allowing those without a PE to do actual structural design on anything of consequence.
Your picture of the old stone building at Michigan Tech reminded me of the history of the "Old Chemistry" building at Stanford. It was originally built in the 1890s:
It was badly damaged in the 1906 SF earthquake:
After repair, it was used again until the 1989 Loma Prieta quake. Then it stood empty for about 25 years while they tried to raise the money to bring it to modern seismic standards (plus ADA-compliance, energy efficiency, etc.) Finally it re-opened about a year ago. The exterior stonework is now really a cosmetic shell, with a steel framework inside providing the actual structure. I'm sure it would have been much cheaper to tear it down and replace it with a new building.
One thing at Michigan Tech, we had almost NO chimneys on any of the buildings on campus. That's because years ago they had built a central steam heating plant down next to the lake, where they had easy access to coal, which was also being shipped in, by lake freighters, for the copper mills which were built along the lake shore. Years later the plant was converted to oil and who knows, maybe it's using natural gas by now. They used to hold labs down at the power plant for things like steam-based applications, including running a couple of different steam engines, and real-world studies of heat transfer (not sure if those classes are still being held there, but they were back in the 60's and 70's).
Now this campus-wide system even provided heat and hot water for the student apartments where my wife and I lived the last three years of my time there.
Here's a recent shot showing about half the campus from above Portage Lake. The red building on the Right, near of the water, that's the central steam plant. As you can see the only visible smoke/steam anywhere on campus is coming only from those buildings.
