On Thursday February 24th, 2011, the United Taconite (UTAC) Filter Wash team presented our project and findings to the steering committee at the United Taconite Pellet Plant located in Forbes, MN. The purpose of the steering committee is to approve funding for projects that the senior members of UTAC wish to implement into their plant. Therefore, this presentation of our project was a big deal for IRE.
Matthew and I were the speakers who presented our findings to the committee and the feedback was everything that we could have hoped for. We received many compliments on our work and it made the many late nights we put in working on the project all worthwhile. One of the compliments I would like to share:
"The level of design detail and experimentation goes beyond what we would have
gotten had the project been contracted out."
This was extremely rewarding to hear from someone who is highly regarded in the engineering community of the Iron Range.
To go along with this, I would like to talk a little about the preparation for the presentation and what we did as a team. First of all, practice makes perfect. Matthew and I rehearsed this countless times and at first, we received feedback from other members of the group as to what we could improve upon. After this, we gave the presentation to the faculty members of IRE so we could get some "expert" input as well. The day before the presentation, Matthew and I were the lunch speakers for IRE and had printed out comment sheets for all the students at IRE so that we could get even more feedback on our presentation and speaking skills.
In closing, UTAC stated that they are planning on budgeting the project so it can be implemented in the 2012 fiscal year. I feel this is a huge step for IRE in justifying that we become engineers by practicing being engineers.
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