Minutes from the Manufacturing Engineering Advisory Board Meeting
December 16, 2011
Attending: Glenn Gehring, Ron Malles, Eric Winters, Paul Thomas, Chris Bendel, Mike Lorenzen, Rich
Rothaupt, Scott Springer, Lin Stradins, Jean Price
Absent: Dan Bee, Cory Cauwels, Don Craighead, Scott Graf, Matt Hafele, Andy Myers, Bob Meyer,
Bruno Rahn, Kurt Schnapp, Dean Schley, Bob Vytlacil, Ben Ferron (student), Elizabeth Fuss (student),
Rajiv Asthana, Jerome Johnson, John Dzissah, David Fly, Tom Lacksonen, Cheng Liu, Laura McCullough,
Forrest Schultz, Derek Wissmiller
(Bold indicates professional in the field)
1. Lin Stradins thanked those who attended the capstone presentations and asked questions.
Your input is appreciated. Lin welcomed everyone and introductions were done. Ron
Malles indicated that Hoffman Enclosures is looking for someone with AutoCAD and
SolidWorks knowledge to begin in January.
2. Minutes from the May 13, 2011 meeting were approved as distributed (Rothaupt/Gehring).
3. Program Update – Lin Stradins
There are 243 total students in the program this semester including 12 at Green Bay. The
program continues to grow requiring multiple sections of core engineering courses. The
new programs in computer engineering and plastics engineering are doing good.
Rich Rothaupt indicated that classes with less than 15 students enrolled are cancelled
except classes for the new programs. If there are more than 10 students, the instructor’s
salary is prorated. We are trying to be more efficient. The question was asked if this forces
larger class sizes. Rich indicated if there are enough students to offer another section we
can typically get support from the provost.
There are 69 freshmen in the pipe line. There are 91 seniors including 12 in Green Bay.
Seventeen are graduating tomorrow including five who have jobs.
There are close to 40 applications for 2012-13 compared to 25 last year.
4. Recruitment Efforts
STEPS camp continues to be a good way to bring women into engineering and mathematics.
Brenda Puck from our department is the director. Glendali Rodriquez from construction
and Jo Hopp from physics are also working on STEPS. It has been suggested we should do a
STEPS camp for boys.
FIRST Lego League tournament was offered this year under the leadership of Brenda Puck
and Kevin Olson.
We had a huge response for STEM Career day with over 320 attending and over 100 were
turned away. Rich indicated he felt the huge turnout was due to increased advertising.
Discussion was held on how to reach the home school children. One suggestion was
through the Stout alumni newsletter.
Skills USA will be held on February 24, 2012. Greg Slupe is organizing this event. This is a
good recruitment tool with competition in industrial/vocational topics.
The number of middle and high school groups visiting has been increasing. We are trying to
set up hands on activities for these groups. Also community colleges and technical schools
have been visiting.
5. Laboratory Equipment Discussion
Existing equipment:
 4 Milltronics CNC mills (collaborative project with plastics engineering and
manufacturing engineering)
 2 Mazak lathes
 CNC punch press
 Sinker EDM
 Manual lathes
 Manual mills
Desired equipment:
 Laser machining – expensive to buy and maintain. Perhaps a CNC plasma cutter will
do what laser machining would do
 Water jet machining – better teaching tool but can be loud, dirty and expensive to
maintain. A smaller unit might be OK
 Laser welding – it was suggested to ask for donation/loan of equipment or have part
of capstone project done off campus
 Wire EDM – easier to use than sinker but can be dusty
 Portable CMM – it was suggested to check with Polaris – they may have one
available
Open discussion:
Mike Lorenzen would like to bring more current technology in to the welding lab.
Scott Springer suggested adding more wood in to the curriculum including sustainable uses.
Could include wood as a raw material for manufacturing.
Eric Winters – Students in engineering technology seem under prepared in quality tools. Lin
indicated that we have a quality minor or quality certification where courses are offered on
line. The quality classes are taught by management department instead of engineering
faculty.
Paul Thomas – failure analysis using FFT.
John Dzissah does project based work using design of experiments
Rich – it would be nice to have the capability of a 4 or 5 axis mill. It would need to be
incorporated into the courses.
PLC controls is hard to keep up to date. Currently we have no one with that knowledge
available as Cheng Liu has been pulled off for computer engineering courses. Could it be
team taught with someone from industry (like Allen Bradley)?
Eric didn’t think that a wire EDM should be a top priority. Glenn felt that students should
know what it is and what it can do. It was mentioned that the equipment gets out of date
so quickly.
6. Presentations
Comments on the mornings presentations were that the material was OK, some lacked
enthusiasm and seemed were done at the last minute. Perhaps more presentations should
be built in to the curriculum. It would be a chance to offer criticism that could be improved
upon. Students could also evaluate each other.
7. Next Meeting
The fall meeting will be held on Friday, May 11, 2012 at noon with capstone presentations
starting at 10:00 am.