Dec 2, 2007 - Met Advisory Board Teleconference

 

Those present: Dr. Kellar, Dr. Howard, Dr. Medlin, Dr. West, Dr. Cross, Cindy Hise

 

Those calling in: Wendy Craig, Shane Vernon, Ray Peterson

 

Welcome and Introductions

 

It has been a couple of years since we met with the Advisory Board and since then we went through an ABET review, had 3 faculty retire (Dr. Stone, Dr. Marquis and Dr. Han) and hired 2 faculty (Dr. Medlin and Dr. West)

 

Dr. Medlin joined us 2 years ago when Dr. Stone retired.  He is originally from Nebraska.  In industry worked for LTD Steel, Temkin and Zimmer.  Dr. Medlin teaches 2 new courses Met 601 Biomaterials and Met 492 Forensic Engineering.

 

Dr. West joined us 1 ½ years ago from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.  His interests include High Temperature Alloys and Welding.  Dr. West works closely with the AMP Center on campus.  Dr. West teaches a new course Met 430 Welding Engineering.

 

Ray said he was glad to see the new classes, and asked if any of the classes have disappeared?  Dr. Kellar said yes some of Dr. Han’s classes at the graduate level including Hydrometallurgy are not taught anymore.

 

Shane said he was pleased to see a Welding and Steelmaking course at the undergraduate level.

 

Dr. Cross took over some of Dr. Han’s courses including Met 310 Aqueous Extraction and Mes 712 Interfacial Phenomena.

 

Dr. Kellar reported on

Enrollment-For quite a few years prior to 2006 the B.S. enrollment was between 42-48 students.  We now have 65, the largest the program has been in over 15 years.  Our undergraduate degree is still Metallurgy and we have a shared MS and PhD in Materials Engineering & Science with chemistry and physics.  Our goal is for 80 students in the program.  We can accommodate that number of students and there is a need for that number in Industry.

 

Placement-A big number of our graduates go to Caterpillar, Nucor, John Deere, Micron and RPM, with a lot staying here for their M.S. degree.  The reemergence of the Mining Industry has helped our program.  Most of our students have multiple offers by graduation.  Last year Metallurgists started at $57,000.00 a year.

 

Scholarships-Two thirds of our undergraduates get scholarship support.  Our students are very competitive in National Societies for scholarships.  SDSM&T is about to announce the 50 million dollar capitol campaign.  The department has three new endowed scholarships, Lorin and Mary Brass established the Lorin and Mary Brass Metallurgical Engineering Scholarship, Tami Nelson established the Hurlbert Scholarship and Ken and Helen Han established an endowed scholarship.

 

Industrial Support-We are very fortunate to have companies like Caterpillar and John Deere have supporting our program.

 

Outreach/Recruiting-We hold a weekly Hammer In on Friday’s for any student to come do some blacksmithing on the forge.  Dr. Medlin has secured NSF funding to do extra curricular activities.  Craig Willan donated a trailer we are making into a mobile lab with blacksmithing and metallography to use as a recruiting tool to visit area middle and high schools.  We formed the Women in Metallurgical Engineering task group to help recruit more female students.  This task group includes: Tami Nelson, Lisa Schlink, Jeanne Eha and Wendy Craig.  We held a metal clay working luncheon that 8 girls attended and molded jewelry.  After fired and polished it is 99.9% silver.  We know of 3 girls who want to do this so we will continue this next semester.  Freeport is sponsoring Lisa’s travel here in February, she will speak at a luncheon for prospective high school students.

 

Questions/Comments-

Advisory Board was pleased we made it through the retirement phase.  Dr. Kellar said because of the people we hired it was an easy transition.

It was asked if we are getting pressure from the State to have 80 students or is that just our goal.  Dr. Kellar said a little of both, but 80 is optimal for us.

Shane said there are only a few strictly Metallurgy undergraduate programs left in the United States, this is our nitch.

Dr. Howard mentioned we will be sending out a Survey Monkey to Employers of our students to see how they compare with students from other schools for ABET.

 

 

Input from our Advisory Board member Rich Wensel

 

My comments are as follows:

• I like the bio-materials and forensics classes.  Bio is something I always thought we were lacking, at least an intro to it.  Forensics is similar to failure analysis, which has always been at least 50% of my job when dealing with manufacturing.  More emphasis on FA is something I always thought would be good since it's not only useful in industry, but it ties together concepts you learn from so many different classes.   Bringing together concepts and showing practical applications was, to me, very cool and helpful.
• I really like the blacksmithing stuff too.  That is a really popular thing lately (at least in MT/ID).  Making it available to all students, including high school students, is a great idea.  You should set up some sort of contest to see which student makes the most interesting art, furniture, engineering structure, tool, whatever.  Maybe approach the art aspect and put things on display?  I think one area often overlooked at tech schools is how having a science background helps at ton when you're an artist, especially if you're doing scultures and such.  I see you mention architure, which is another area.  And you tied it to attracting women, very clever, a great idea. 
• On a similar note: do you do industry projects or senior design for this kind of stuff?  My old college roommate (Wayne) is a tatoo artist and I visited him in Chicago at Christmas.  He's designing his own little tattoo guns and having them cast at some place in Chicago.  It might be cheaper for him to have someone design a few for him, actually cast them, and then have him try them out.  It's a pretty cool device that requires a lot more engineering than you'd think: lightweight, comfortable to hold, looks good, cheap to make, material properties that allow it to be rigid yet minimize vibrations, etc.  Anyway, if you're looking for senior design ideas for things that can actually make, let me know and I'll hook you up.
• On slide 10 where you talk about where students go, I think it's too broad.  For instance, isn't Electronic Materials a subset of Materials.  Maybe do 2 slides, one is general, another breaks it down.  For instance, main groups could include: manufacturing, materials, and minerals.  Then break it down, ie: manufacturing can be: heavy equipment, medical, electronic, etc.  Materials can be bio, electronic, ferrous, non-ferrous, etc.  Why do all this?  So you can figure out where people are going and what to address in coursework, and how to target prospective students.  After all, working in a mine isn't exactly attractive, but working on a titanium hip might be (again, especially for the women).
• If you're targeting women, why not get Deb Carlson involved with this stuff?  If you have to boot me off so be it, it might be more valuble to have a woman if you're going to have a representative from the electronics industry? 
• The scholarships are going well.

 

 

 

From: Kellar, Jon J. [mailto:Jon.Kellar@sdsmt.edu]
Sent: Wednesday, December 19, 2007 5:13 PM
To: Kellar, Jon J.; ray.peterson@aleris.com; walenta_john_b@cat.com; rwensel; Craig, Wendy; shane.vernon@nucor.com; shawn.veurink@rpmsolutions.com; herculon@sitestar.net; nic.wald@rpmandassociates.com; mark.benson@usbank.com
Cc: Howard, Stanley M.; Hise, Cindy A.; Cross, William M. (SDSM&T); West, Michael K.; Medlin, Dana J.
Subject: Dept Advisory Board Teleconference, 12/20/07, 4-5 p.m. EST/3-4 p.m. CST/2-3 p.m. MST/1-2 p.m. PST; call in number=1-800-752-9545

Dear Everyone:

 

I was hoping to have a web interface for the Advisory Board presentation tomorrow, but it looks like new “updates” to Live Meeting will not allow this. Rather, I have attached the presentation with this note. You will have to advance slides from your own PC as we discuss them tomorrow. The .ppt file was rather large so I have attached it in .pdf form to reduce the size. The call in number is 1-800-752-8545. The bridge is through the USD Medical School, so one of the USD operators will greet you before we start the teleconference. I look forward to talking with you tomorrow.

 

Jon

 

Dr. Jon J. Kellar

Douglas Fuerstenau Professor and Chairman of Materials and Metallurgical Engineering

South Dakota School of Mines and Technology

501 E. St. Joseph Street

Rapid City, SD 57701-3995

605-394-2343

605-394-3369 (fax)

Jon.Kellar@sdsmt.edu

Do you Nano?!

http://nsnc.sdsmt.edu