SCSU Students Helping Central MN Businesses
St. Cloud State has a program called "Huskies Invent" that is designed to engage students from a variety of majors and fields to work with area businesses to help solve problems. SCSU President Dr. Robbyn Wacker and SCSU Mathematics Professor Dr. Dale Buske joined me on WJON this week. Wacker says this program allows students to have hands on experiences working on projects to help their industry partners. Huskies Invent was started by Dr. Buske in 2018. Students get 48 hours to solve a challenge brought to the students by an industry partner. These students form teams and build a prototype of their solution to present to the industry partner who then picks a winning entry.
Dr. Buske says the first 4 times they've done this they focused on manufacturing working with Park Industries, Duzurik and Cold Spring. He says they've worked with Cold Spring twice now. Buske says the students get together for 48 hours over the weekend mainly at the ISELF building with faulty and student involvement. He says the problems presented to them are best when they can be addressed in a 48 hour period. During the process on Saturday representatives from the industry partner are present to answer questions and constraints and things of that nature.
Dr. Buske says pretty much every invent has been a success story. At Cold Spring Buske says they were trying to find away to determine the thickness of their large granite slabs. He says SCSU students came up with the idea to solves this. Buske says the students were then hired for the summer to bring this invention to reality. He says students at Cold Spring also invented a new work bench letter setting for some of their employees.
If you'd like to listen to my full conversation with Dr. Buske and Dr. Wacker it is available below.
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