News and Events
We are proud to announce that, as of Fall 2012, our department undergraduate enrollment is at a record high of 514 students. Our graduate student enrollment count is at 16 students, including 6 PhD students.
The Mechanical Engineering Department implemented a new women's mentoring program this last fall, in order to increase our percentage of women students in the field. This program pairs upper-class women students with entering freshmen, which gained our department national media attention this past year. We kicked off the mentoring program with an ME Women’s Breakfast at the beginning of the fall semester. Students in the mentoring program have the opportunity for additional support through online social media groups and mentor/mentee-specific events.
In November 2012, six mechanical engineering women students attended the 2012 Society of Women Engineers Conference in Houston, TX, with Dr. Cassandra Kingsbury and Lisa Carlson. While there, our students had the opportunity to tour Toshiba and NASA's Johnson Space Center, along with networking at the conference's career fair and attending an SDSM&T alumni event. 
Logo Image from: google.com
Mr. Larry Pearson met with ME 492- taught by Drs. Dolan and Korde- twice in fall of 2012. His first lecture focused on fundamental aspects of the different fuel sources used for vehicles (gasoline, diesel, ethanol, biodiesel, electric power, natural gas, hydrogen), how the fuel is produced and the associated pros and cons (availability, storage, environmental effects, infrastructure, economics), and vehicle design issues such as drag, weight, mechanical efficiency, and energy use of accessories, etc.
In Mr. Pearson’s second lecture, he performed a detailed economic comparison of fully electric vehicles with hybrid vehicles and discussed the findings in the context of the cost of electricity generated using oil, coal, natural gas, nuclear, solar and wind resources.
Dr. Langerman, the department head of Mechanical Engineering, also gave one guest lecture in ME 492, Sustainable Energy for Vehicles, and discussed nuclear energy generation and nuclear power plant design and safety in light of his many years of experience in the nuclear industry.
