Last Friday, Governor Mark Dayton made a trip to the Iron Range and Iron Range Engineering was lucky enough to host him and other Minnesota representatives. Tyler Bartek, Carson Krueger, Grant Graupmann and I were able to walk the governor through some of the projects that our groups worked on last semester and a couple from this semester. He seemed more than interested in the students and projects by not only being attentive but also asking questions about the projects and about what we were planning on doing after we graduated from the IRE program.
After describing our projects to the governor, our program co-director, Ron, spoke his piece describing the history of the program, a little about how the program works, how we pair with industry, and about how we need more space for a growing program (adding ~25 new students in the fall). Governor Dayton apologized for not adding our request for money for a new building back into his bill. Robb Bigelow from United Taconite and LaTisha Gietzen from Polymet Mining described how having the IRE program on the Iron Range is such an asset to their companies and to the region as a whole.
Overall, it was a great event and a great opportunity.
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