News at SDState

Yucheng Liu, head of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at South Dakota State University, will be inducted as a fellow of the American Society for Engineering Education at the group’s awards luncheon June 24 in Charlotte, North Carolina. Each year, up to one-tenth of 1% of the society’s members are selected for induction into the American Society for Engineering Education’s Academy of Fellows — the group’s highest honors.

Phuong Nguyen, an assistant professor in the construction and concrete industry management program at South Dakota State University, has been honored by his educational peers. On April 16, he received the Associated Schools of Construction Region 4 Teaching Award at the 62nd annual ASC International Conference in Shell Beach, California.

Brady Hatkin knows his way around a hockey arena. A roping arena? That’s a different story. But the fact that the electrical engineering major is more comfortable on ice skates than on a quarter horse didn’t keep Hatkin from being a major contributor to an award-winning project to create an autonomous team roping dummy. The Bullseye autonomous roping dummy is a three-wheeler using a 24V battery system. Standing at around 3 feet tall and 8 feet in length, Bullseye simulates a live steer, reaching up to 22 mph and performs complex turning paths determined by the user via a handheld remote controller, allowing practice without the use of live steers.

Jerome J. Lohr College of Engineering at South Dakota State University graduated a total of 260 undergraduate students May 9 with 71 of them also participating in ceremonies to honor the professionalism of their new career. (The spring graduates also included 19 with a doctorate and 78 with a master’s degree.) There were 62 graduates who participated in the Order of the Engineer ceremony, which is open to a senior or graduate of an ABET-accredited engineering program. It was noted that participation was more than double what it had been in previous years. A nationally recognized ceremony, its presence on the SDSU campus dates back to at least 1975. This year marked a special milestone as the Hard Hat ceremony was incorporated into the Order of the Engineer ceremony for the first time. The addition symbolized the connection between hands-on learning in a classroom and the ethical responsibilities of the constriction professions.

Building more time into the testing cycle for the race car that Wild Hare Racing club team members built for this year’s contest allowed the team to place the best it has in at least eight years. The South Dakota State University team competed in the internal combustion engine division of the Formula SAE contest at Michigan International Speedway in Brooklyn, west of Detroit and Ann Arbor, finishing in 29th place out of 117 teams, which included top U.S. college teams as well as entries from Spain, Brazil, Italy and Canada.

Like so many, the COVID-19 pandemic changed Gavin Eischens’ life in profound ways. While still in high school, he became a certified nursing assistant at the height of the pandemic, an experience he jokingly said means he’s “been a CNA for my whole life.” More seriously, those early experiences inspired Eischens, now finishing his second year in South Dakota State University’s respiratory care program, to pursue a career in respiratory therapy.

Irene Arango Gómez, community care coordinator for the Community Practice Innovation Center in South Dakota State University’s College of Pharmacy and Allied Health Professions, says her work is shaped by a need to know and understand public health systems and advocate responsibly within them.

AI-enabled safety glasses designed by a group of South Dakota State University engineering students so impressed judges at a NASA contest that State students repeated as champions at the Gateways to Blue Skies competition at Langley Research Center, Hampton, Virginia. The glasses are designed to assist aircraft mechanics, but they could be applied to virtually any field. The system captures images of maintenance tasks, listens to the mechanic during the repair process, and automatically generates a complete maintenance report that becomes part of the aircraft’s service record. The SDSU team dubbed Wingman was one of eight teams selected to compete in the NASA contest finals May 18-19 at the NASA facility.

Success has carried over from one year to the next for the South Dakota State University Livestock Judging program. Last year’s team had a successful run, and this year’s team is continuing that momentum as members move through their competition schedule.

Although SDSU has been recognized as a leader in precision agriculture, a faculty member in the Department of Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering noticed a gap in precision technology coursework related to livestock. This gap prompted Dick and Jeune Nicolai's gift to the university.