Minnesota Cup Update

Yesterday, Eric Schaupp and Matt Hudson presented at the Minnesota Cup as finalists in the student division. Throughout the summer, the two worked to develop a business plan furthering the project work completed in the spring semester of 2011. The format for the finals was eight minutes of presentation then twelve minutes of question and answer. After the Q&A, the judges gave feedback on the presentation and how the questions were handled. The Minnesota Cup provided extraordinary opportunities and learning experiences in areas such as business, marketing, entrepreneurship and presentations.

Proofed by: Eric Schaupp

The Beginning of the End....

An interesting time is about to begin for the Generation 1 students. One semester stands between us and the rest of our lives. This semester is going to ramp up fast and be full of learning on both the technical and professional side. Many of the 1st Generation students are also currently taking part in a project based Chemistry 2 class. The Chemistry class is a night class that includes a lab portion and is taught by ICC's very own Gordy Savela. This, coupled with the heavy workload that already exists, is sure to make this semester a busy one. Time management will be the key to success for all students. Being that I have seen this before (three times to be exact), I am confident I will be able to handle everything on my plate, including a 3 credit politics class at Mesabi. This general education class is a small piece of serentity that helps me keep my sanity in the crazy world that is Engineering Education.

Proofed by: Matt Hudson

Keewatin Taconite Trip

The KeeTac 2 group visited the plant for the first time on Friday and collected information about their semester project. The overall scope of what we will be doing consists of redesigning a system that feeds concentrate to a testing system.  This system called NOLA (nuclear online analyzer), is designed to determine the percent silica in the product for system control.  Currently there are numerous pumps running constantly to feed these samples which is unnecessary in terms of energy consumption.  Our group will be working with KeeTac Engineers to come up with different ideas to design and implement a more efficient  means of delivery to the testing room.  
The trip to the plant itself was very interesting in that we got to see more than just our project area.  We walked for quite a distance through the plant and viewed the mill itself which was very interesting to see in person.  The group is very much looking forward to working with KeeTac and are gearing up for our next design review with our mentor. 

School Has Officially Started!

The first day of school started with a five hour bus ride to Mankato. On the way down students were divided into their project teams to establish goals and guidelines for the semester. After arriving in Mankato, students participated in a variety of events depending on their level of study in the program. Throughout the day, new students received ID cards and everyone attended orientation at the library and career development center. Later that evening, the student body met with the program directors and MSUM faculty for welcomes and introductions before retiring to the hotel for the evening. During the second day there, a team building event was led by Mankato personnel. The bus returned from Mankato just in time for a number of us to head off to Chemistry 2, a night class with Gordy Savela. The trip allowed new and old students to interact, and was a great way to start the semester off.

Proofed by Tyler Bartek

Recent happenings at Iron Range Engineering

The last few weeks of summer have been extremely busy for the interns working at Iron Range Engineering while getting things all set up for the fast approaching school year. They have assisted in the construction of new dividers which will be used to rearranging the classrooms, library and labs. These workspaces will be specific areas for project teams which will provide an exceptional working environment. In addition, these new areas will be complete with more storage, more tables and more white boards!

Proofed by Andy

ASEE Conference Closure

Yesterday was the final day of the ASEE Conference, but it was my most productive day. It started off with a blast of useful information. At 7:00 a.m. I attended a session on teaching sustainability. The first three presenters did a fabulous job explaining their papers, all of which IRE and ICC could utilize ideas from. My second session was on entrepreneurial skills and mindset. Although the presenters had good information, none of it was new to the IRE model. They did mention Formula SAE Cars on a tangent conversation, which would be awesome to build on a team at IRE. The third session I attended was on problem solving and modeling. Jennifer Cole presented her paper on how to assess students' mathematical modeling abilities. She had many good points in her paper and presentation that I believe IRE can use to improve our mathematical models. I then moved on to a session for communication. Sandra Soto discussed an interesting method of presenting called Pecha Kucha. A Pecha Kucha presentation is a 20 slide PowerPoint in which the presenter spends 20 seconds per slide presenting the information. The whole presentation is 6 minutes and 40 seconds long. The majority of students surveyed said that even though this presentation is more challenging, it is better, and they would prefer to use this style rather than traditional. Michael Alley nearly blew my socks off when he presented his paper on bullet lists, good or bad. His presentation was by far the best of the conference. He engaged his audience for the whole presentation, and never even stopped to turn around and see what was on the projector screen. He didn't even have a mirror or reflector to see it... Trust me; I checked. So now you're thinking, "Wow! That sounds like a whole lot for just one day." But wait, there's more! I had the privilege of seeing not only Mason Hansen, an instructor at ICC, present on Itasca's learning community, but also seeing Ron Ulseth present the Iron Range Engineering Project Based Learning Model. I was surprised at how few questions were asked, (about 10 out of the 30 people) but Ron did do a very good job explaining the model. The project based learning session concluded my first ASEE National Conference. I have 12 pages of notes and an experience of a life time. I want to thank Ron Ulseth for allowing student interns to attend this Conference. I would also like to thank Itasca Community College, Iron Range Engineering, and all of their sponsors and funding organizations, because without them, this trip would not have been possible. I have learned a lot in these last three days, not only for my personal growth, but things that I can offer to students and faculty at IRE. If you would like more details on the sessions, contact Ron Ulseth for my ASEE National Conference Sessions Summary.

Day 2 in Vancouver

Today was rather short, but very productive. I started off the morning by going to a session on Educating Students for Professional Success. The very first presenter was Robert Gustafson P.E. who explained how to teach students to become teachers. As an IRE student, we are required to lead learning conversations, so this presentation seemed to have many good pieces of information to extract from it. I then moved onto computer and electrical engineering laboratories. There was not much in this session that was beneficial to IRE, but I learned more about nano technology along with wireless communications. My last session of the day was ASEE International Partners, which was led by the President of ASEE. Anette Kolmos from Aalborg University, Masa Takei from a Japanese University, and Myongsook Oh from a Korean University, all presented their current status of incoming students and the percentages of engineering students. They also discussed their future plans to improve the amount of engineering students that enter and graduate from their institutions. It was a great opportunity to meet the presidents of other countries. My final blog post for the ASEE Conference will be posted tomorrow night. Thanks for reading!

Proofed By: Andrew Nelson