Dear Friends,
The South Dakota School of Mines and Technology's Baja SAE team returned from the Baja SAE competition at the Caterpillar Edwards Proving Grounds in Peoria, Illinois with outstanding results. Two cars from the School of Mines competed at the event: Car #7, a new car designed and built by the senior students (with assistance from underclassmen); and car #117, built last year and managed by this year's underclassmen. Car #117 won the endurance events and the sales presentation event (tying with Oregon State), with a sophomore and junior making the presentation. Car #7 was in the design finals and placed 4th overall in the design event. The cars placed 4th (#117) and 6th (#7) overall out of the 112 teams that originally entered the competition. SAE faculty advisor, Dr. Dan Dolan, expressed his continued amazement at the performance of our students and their presentation skills. The final results of the competition can be found at: http://www.sae.org/.
Congratulations to School of Mines Civil Engineering sophomore, R.C. Scull II, who recently climbed Mt. Everest. The 20-year-old Rapid City native has plans to continue on to be the youngest climber to summit the eight tallest mountains in the world. R.C. has now climbed Mount Aconcagua in South America, Mount Elbrus in Europe, Mount Denali in Alaska and Mount Vinson in Antarctica and Mount Everest, the tallest peak in the world. Remaining mountains to climb are the Carstenz Pyramid in Indonesia, Kosciusko in Australia and Kilimanjaro in Africa. R.C. is the son of Bob (CE82) and Sharla Scull of Rapid City.
Dr. Lance Roberts and Dr. Linxia Gu have each been awarded competitive research grants by the State of South Dakota. A total of six faculty members at South Dakota public universities earned state grants totaling nearly $500,000, to support their individual research projects. This is the fourth year the state has financially supported grant awards to build a higher level of competitive research at the six public universities.
The South Dakota Board of Regents has awarded seven mini-grants totaling $32,522, to faculty members across the state who have developed research projects associated with the new Sanford Underground Laboratory at Homestake. The four SDSM&T faculty receiving awards of $5,000 each are: Dr. Sookie Bang (co-awarded grant with Dr. Cynthia Anderson (BHSU)), Dr. Stan Howard, Dr. Dana Medlin, and Dr. Rajesh Sani.
As always, I welcome your thoughts and comments. I can be reached at charles.ruch@sdsmt.edu.
Charles Ruch