Megan
Snyder developed a unique routine during the Spring 2021 semester. She woke up
at midnight every evening for two weeks and traveled to the South Dakota Mines
campus to join an eight hour Zoom call with a team industrial chemistry and
chemical engineering students in Germany.
Snyder
was on one of seven collaborative teams engaged in a hands-on chemical process design
project as part of a longstanding relationship between the Technical University
of Darmstadt, Provadis School of International Management and Technology, and
South Dakota Mines.
In
a normal year, Mines students like Snyder would have an opportunity to travel
to Germany to take part in hands-on learning inside a German university and manufacturing
plant. In future years in-person learning will continue. But for Snyder the opportunity to work
virtually is still very rewarding.
“Even
though we could not travel, I still wanted to interact with an international
team of engineers,” says Snyder. “I was very impressed with the German students
and engineers who could switch to English mid-sentence when I entered the room
and continue to communicate complex engineering concepts in a second language.”
Snyder
has now graduated and is working for Kimberly-Clark. The company has multiple
ongoing international projects, and this experience gave her insight into
working as an engineer in the global marketplace. “When working on an
international team in real life you won’t be able to jump on a plane for every
issue, very often you will be collaborating on Zoom, and this class gave me
tools to overcome challenges.”
This
international experience is a capstone senior design course for chemical
engineering students at Mines. “These students have gone above and beyond,
getting up in the middle of the night, to take part in this very intensive program,”
says Travis Walker, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Chemical
and Biological Engineering at Mines. “They believe so much in this
international experience they chose to do this even though they did not get a
chance to travel this year.”
This
year students helped design part of a nitric acid plant in collaboration with
the German industrial firm, Thyssenkrupp, which works closely with the German
course organizers, Professor Dr.-Ing Alfons Drochner and Professor Bastian
Etzold. Nitric acid is an important component in things like fertilizer. “The
corporate sponsor is hoping the student teams will come up with new innovative
solutions that can increase efficiency to a few areas in the plant. Students
sometimes bring a unique or creative perspective to the table that can benefit industry,”
says David Dixon, Ph.D., professor in the Department of Chemical and Biological
Engineering at Mines.
Mines
students benefit greatly from this collaboration on multidisciplinary design
projects that involve German faculty, engineers, chemists, and students.
“Engineers
and scientists live and work in a global economy. This experience is preparing
our students for the real world because many of these students will be doing
this same sort of international work on industrial teams throughout their
careers,” says Suzi Aadland, Director of the Ivanhoe International Center at
Mines.
Mines
is forging similar collaborations between universities and corporate partners
in other countries including the Universidad Mondragón in Queretaro, Mexico and
a number of countries in South America.
“The
structure of this relationship with our partners in Germany is something we are
trying to repeat elsewhere because it’s very valuable for students. This really
intensive design work, with an international team is the very same experience many
of our students will take part in when they graduate and go to work for a
multinational company,” says Aadland.