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Hydrogen Properties for Energy Research (HYPER) Laboratory Cool. Fuel.

Let’s talk about Safety

One of the promising undergraduate students within the lab I worked in at Wisconsin was machining a part one day on a mill. He passed on the unsupervised lab-specific machine shop for risk of safety and was in the established student shop in the College — a fancy facade of a facility with a carefully organized tool closet and a windowed observation office where the head machinist, a disliked authoritarian of a person with decades of experience, could watch the shop. The student was very sharp, but left the chuck key in the mill head and turned it on. The key spun around, flew out, … » More …

Lessons from the performing arts: UI jazz choir

This is likely to be the first in a series where I sit in on the very highest performing educational environments on the Palouse. Characterized by students that perform at the highest levels the actual profession they come to the university for. The goal of my visits is to distill the common themes, and heuristics for developing high performance professionals ready to contribute to society.

I came to watch Dan Bukvich lead the UI jazz choir. Dan is a longtime friend from my younger days at the UI. Once as a junior, on a hunch, he invited me into his musical composition … » More …

Scaffolding Growth of Agency in Engineering Design

The NSF currently has open programs for Research in the Formation of Engineers. With the primary emphasis on:

Introductions to the profession at any age;
Acquisition of deep technical and professional skills, knowledge, and abilities in both formal and informal settings/domains;
Development of outlooks, perspectives, ways of thinking, knowing, and doing;
Development of identity as an engineer and its intersection with other identities; and
Acculturation to the profession, its standards, and norms.

Scaffolding Growth of Agency within Engineering Design is, in laymen terms, what and how we teach engineering design in order for students to master the empathetic connections … » More …

Trading Places and Ways

Mark Twain is widely considered one of the most intelligent Americans in history, but a more accurate description may be one of the most empathetic Americans in History. His first historical fiction novel, “The Prince and the Pauper” tells the story of two similar looking young boys of very different social class who trade places. This is an early example of relational empathy communicated in a way the masses could understand. The novel was later adapted for the 1983 movie “Trading Places” featuring Eddie Murphy and Dan Aykroyd. The now classic story is one of many examples of how, even if magically, we … » More …

A walk down memory lane

I went for a walk through the University of Idaho’s Mechanical Engineering Design suite the other day. The tracks for hanging posters I hung in the halls 12 years ago are still in use. The rubber-band planetary gear demonstrator I made with a friend is still displayed in the meeting area. This is a community that I contributed to.

In many ways, our designed contributions are how we identify with and relate to a community through time.

To the group of UI ME graduate students that watched me in the hall, I was just a stranger passing by. When I pointed and said I made … » More …

Our near-miss hydrogen vent in ETRL 221

 

Yes, rumors about a hydrogen bomb in ETRL are exaggerated.

On August 2nd around 10:00 am, the HYPER lab had an uncontrolled hydrogen vent into ETRL 221. There was no damage to equipment or personnel, leaving the event classified in accordance with U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) criteria as a “near-miss”. While no critical flaws were identified with the experiment design or procedures for handling the event, the subsequent expert review by the Hydrogen Safety Panel has valuable lessons learned for the WSU and cryogenic hydrogen research communities.
Event Timeline
Around 9:00 AM — A bird flew into a sub-station and shut down power … » More …

“I wish I worked there!”

Last fall I perused the book, “I Wish I Worked There!: A look inside the most creative spaces in Business” By Kursty Groves, Will Knight, and Edward Denison (photographer). The book goes inside many of the world leading design spaces, including Google, Dyson, Lego, Pixar, and others. The authors conclude that any truly creative space must have four key elements:

Play
Focus
Work
Collaborate

Sounds pretty good right?

It should be obvious that explicitly labeling something as a “creative space” entirely misses the point, and is the crux of the joke in the above image. … » More …

Lessons learned from the first five years: Building community

A letter came in the mail the other day that I’ll be granted tenure in August… and so it goes.

Looking back on the last and first five years at WSU there are a lot of lessons learned.

One of the most important being how to build a supporting, thriving community. I remember my old boss Dave Bahr asking me, “So what are you really trying to do?” My immediate response: “build a community.” I naively told my friend P.K. that it would take 3 years to build community, he laughed and said “eight.” In short, I had no idea what it took to build community, I just … » More …

Lessons learned from the first five years: How to spend your startup

A letter came in the mail the other day that I’ll be granted tenure in August… and so it goes.

Looking back on the last and first five years at WSU there are a lot of lessons learned.

One of the most important being how to spend your startup. This is one of those things that everyone has an opinion about, so listen politely, do what you think is best. What I’m about to tell you is something that I was not told, nor have heard, which is why I’m telling you.

The first and most important thing to do when you get to WSU … » More …