Engineering Quarterly VOL.VI. . . No.1
FALL 2023
W ELCOME ! The Engineering Quarterly is published four times each year by the Hamm School of Engineering at the University of Mary. In each issue, we include articles from each of the seven majors we offer: Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Civil Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Computer Science, Construction Engineering, and Construction Management. The intended audience of the Engineering Quarterly includes engineers, engineering students, engineering alumni, future engineering students, and people working in related fields such as science, computing, and mathematics.
ABET ACCREDITATION RETROACTIVE TO 2020
The University of Mary’s new Hamm School of Engineering has been granted ABET accreditation for its Bachelor of Science degrees in civil, mechanical, and electrical engineering. The Accrediting Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) is an international, non-governmental organization that accredits post-secondary education programs in natural sciences and computing. ABET has granted its maximum certification of six years to the BSCE, BSME, and BSEE programs at the Hamm School of Engineering at the University of Mary. “Accreditation is important because it says we meet the national standards and are up to par with every accredited engineering school
in the world when it comes to earning a Bachelor of Science degree in civil, mechanical, or electrical engineering,” said Assistant Professor of Engineering Anthony Waldenmaier, a member of the accreditation task force within University of Mary’s Hamm School of Engineering. Waldenmaier is one of the first three engineering faculty hired by Dr. Terry Pilling in 2016. The four, with their own wealth of experience, immediately sought feedback from industry leaders at Bobcat and other engineering companies, asking them what they weren’t seeing from other engineering schools and what they would like to see from a new engineering school, the only one in western North Dakota. With input in hand, they began the very insightful, careful, and intentional planning process – beginning with the student-first faculty they hire, the minute details of how every inch of classroom and lab space are used together, in a comprehensive and very hands-on curriculum that begins with the student’s freshman-year experience and continues through their senior year. The four architects of the program all believed in the same philosophy they wanted emphasized at the Hamm School of Engineering that would ultimately produce the highest quality engineer. A new kind of engineer – one that is better technically, but also better trained in various soft skills such as communication, salesmanship, working with interdisciplinary engineering groups to understand each other’s skillsets, leadership qualities that allow them to work as a team, and being humble, caring, and community-minded. Pilling believes strongly that earning accreditation is affirmation of all their hard work and attention to detail. “Ultimately, the test of a great engineering school is whether our graduates are positive contributors to society within their communities, successful, and getting hired by companies,” emphasized Pilling, dean of the Hamm School of Engineering. “All our Hamm School of Engineering students are getting internships and our graduates are getting jobs. Often, engineering firms are competing for our graduates early on in their four-year cycle and are hiring them – often before they even start their senior year. Our students are working at internships from their sophomore year up through graduation, and often the same company will offer them a position when they graduate. They are working for great companies.” Those companies know that Hamm School of Engineering students have been tested and challenged each day – maybe more than most. Waldenmaier uses old-fashioned equipment to teach his surveying class, not because they can’t afford new equipment, but because the older equipment forces the student to know more about surveying – and more importantly, the ‘how’ and the ‘why’ behind the process. The latest and greatest
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equipment automates most of the work for the user. “I emphasize that in my surveying class,” said Waldenmaier. “If students were to do a surveying internship, they’ll have an instrument that, once it is started, will do all the work for them. If the automated machine gives the user an unbelievable or unrealistic number, these students will know immediately something is wrong with the machine. They know because they have done the measurements the hard way, or old fashioned way, in my class.” There are even courses they invented and are not likely taught at other schools, and some they have redesigned – all based on listening to engineering firms and receiving positive feedback from companies who have hired Hamm School of Engineering graduates or have students interning for them. “In one instance, we had a freshman engineering student working as an intern,” recalled Rodrigo da Costa Aparecido, instructor and lab coordinator at the Hamm School of Engineering. “The actual engineer at the company quit and the University of Mary student took over from the engineer and completed all the work throughout the summer.”
There are now 13 full-time engineering faculty teaching, and even more adjuncts on staff who are experts in their field. Part of their vision is to cap the total number of Hamm School of Engineering students enrolled to somewhere between 250 and 400, so there are less than 20 students per class. Right now, there are approximately 220 total students. “We are very proud of what we do because we can have that one-on-one interaction with our students, and we can more effectively integrate the knowledge in different ways: merge the hands-on part with the theoretical part and keep everything connected,” added Pilling. “We can see it in their eyes if they get lost – then we can step in and help the student get back on track. So, it is very personal, one-on-one interaction with the student. I live for those moments when the light bulb goes on in the head of the student, the student gets excited, and then they start asking us really cool questions and we all learn from it. They are all engaged and interested. It’s fun.” Pilling, Waldenmaier, and da Costa Aparecido admit that courses in the Hamm