San Diego - My Favorite City in America

Cable Car Power

IRE Trip to West Coast

This week I am traveling with the Iron Range Engineering (IRE) students on their Spring Break trip. They left MN 10 days ago and are having a blast as they travel the country in a counter clockwise motion. You can see their blog at irengineering.blogspot.com I met them last Thursday in San Francisco. We saw the Golden Gate, the California Academy of Sciences, Lombard Street, Ghirardelli Square, cable cars, and a whole lot more. Saturday morning, 3 of the students and I headed to the coast for a 14 hour trip down the Pacific to San Diego. One word - WOW! I felt like I was in Hawaii. The scenery was amazing. Today we went to the world famous San Diego Zoo and to Mission Beach. Tomorrow it is off to Las Vegas!

Engineering Arts

Wow. I guess this is my busy time of year. A month can fly by as if it didn't even happen. Last night we held the first ever engineering arts program at ICC. We believe that if we want creative engineers, they have to take part in creative pursuits throughout their education. Last night over 40 students danced, performed music, performed as storytellers, displayed sculpture and displayed photos. It was a great night.

Happy Easter

What a beautiful day -- spiritually, emotionally, and meteorologically! I am prepping myself for the upcoming Easter egg hunt. I am the grand champion of the world... not finding eggs, but rather hiding them. Each year I hide them so well that not only can't the kids find all the eggs, but neither can I!

Lots to report since my last post. Best news first - I got an iPhone! It is absolutely amazing what this thing can do. Among other things, I can listen live to every MLB baseball game of the entire season.

Secondly, the Iron Range Engineering program has been funded. Here are two articles that were published this week:

Duluth News Tribune: http://www.duluthnewstribune.com/event/article/id/117230/

Minnesota Business North: http://www.businessnorth.com/onthemove.asp?RID=2950

There is a lot of work to be done between now and when we begin delivering curriculum next January, but this is the most exciting kind of work you could ever imagine.

I better go get my boots on for the big egg hunt...

Maple Syrup Season Arrives

The best part about living in Minnesota is the constantly changing seasons. My seasons go like this starting on Jan 1 with some over lap of course:

Snowshoe season
Maple Syrup
Walking with Angie
HC Baseball
Kayaking
Quetico
Summer at Grandma Molly's
HC Friday night football
Autumn in Warba
DEER SEASON

They are all outside and all a lot of fun. One of my favorites is being at Aaron's in the spring for collecting sap and boiling syrup. The air outside is organic and moist, the temps are cool and refreshing. Hopefully this week I'll make my first trip over there.

Iron Range Engineering Program Given Green Light

Distinguishing Characteristics of the New Engineering Program

Educating Engineers: Designing for the Future of the Field, together with other recent research and reports on engineering education, make a compelling case for envisioning engineering education in a new way. The new Iron Range engineering program will explore a completely different way of approaching engineering education. Some of the characteristics of this new approach are:

·Primary emphasis is on development of learning outcomes that have been spelled out in national reports, including The Engineer of 2020. This emphasis is contrasted with primary emphasis on coverage of topical material that characterizes many of the engineering programs throughout the world.

·Faculty members in the new program will invest heavily in developing abilities of students in the program to assess their development with respect to these outcomes. To support self assessment faculty members must be able to articulate criteria with which development with respect to these outcomes can be evaluated.

·All learning activities will be organized around externally-sponsored projects. Each semester, students will be working on several externally-sponsored projects concurrently. Faculty members will use the projects as contexts for developing competencies and learning subject matter. Students will be enrolled in courses primarily to address the logistical requirements of university procedures, but there will not be courses following patterns that are used throughout the world.

·Students complete course and graduation requirements by exceeding or meeting levels of competencies with respect to clearly articulated outcomes.

·Initially, the program will be an upper division program. Students will be recruited from community colleges where they will have fulfilled their lower division requirements. A four-year program is envisioned in 6-8 years.