Blacksmithing at the School of Mines

NEWS FROM THE S.D. School of Mines

Thanks to a grant from the National Science Foundation, Dr. Dana Medlin and colleagues are Back in Black.

Medlin, associate professor, materials and metallurgical engineering, is the principal investigator on the project, which is a course, curriculum, and laboratory improvement project that focuses on integrating the art and science of blacksmithing into the engineering curriculum. Medlin is joined on the project by Dr. Jon Kellar, chair and professor, materials and metallurgical engineering; Dr. Stuart Kellogg, chair and Pietz professor, industrial engineering; James Rattling Leaf of Sinte Gleska University, Dr. Michael West, assistant professor, materials and metallurgical engineering, and Ms. Deborah Mitchell, associate professor, humanities, and director of the APEX Gallery.

The project took root several years ago when materials and metallurgical engineering faculty encountered high school students that had developed an interest in blacksmithing. These students were unique in that they were interested in both the hands-on aspect of the craft and the engineering behind it. These encounters triggered discussions among the faculty as to how they could use blacksmithing as a tool to garner student interest and understanding in metallurgical engineering, physical science, and engineering as a whole.

During the summer of 2006, they worked with a number of summer camp students on metalworking, and the results were so encouraging that the concept was introduced to more than 200 School of Mines students in an introduction to engineering course. The interest garnered from these students led to the creation of an extracurricular program called the weekly Hammer-In. The Hammer-In is an open forge time every Friday afternoon that attracts an average of 15-20 students each week.

The interest shown by students wasn't the only positive, though--Medlin noticed in course discussions that those students with hands-on experience with blacksmithing techniques had a better grasp of many metallurgical engineering concepts.

"We wanted to use blacksmithing as a gateway to improve the undergraduate student understanding and application of fundamental structure/property relationships relevant to all materials," Medlin said. "Blacksmithing will give students more of a hands-on approach to learning these concepts early in their academic career and hopefully better comprehension and application of these concepts in the more advanced metallurgical engineering courses."

Sophomore through senior laboratories are being redesigned to include metalworking components with the thought that integrating the hands-on aspects of blacksmithing into the curriculum will lead to improved student understanding.

Another important aspect of the project is outreach. The outreach portion of the projects was implemented with the goal of increasing participation in engineering by females and minority students."We found that most middle school, high school, and even undergraduate students are not familiar with metallurgical engineering until their second or third year of college. Usually, this is too late to successfully recruit new students into the program," Medlin said. "Using blacksmithing as an outreach tool captures students' attention, even at the middle school level, and gives them a memorable hands-on blacksmithing experience that also introduces them to the basic concepts of metallurgical engineering."

These hands-on demonstrations will also occur with middle- and high-school students that are on campus for activities and summer camps, such as the Youth Engineering Adventure, Science Technology Engineering Preview Summer Camp for Girls, and Engineer's Week activities.

The power of blacksmithing allows the students to take something old and create something new. Back in Black uses that idea to transform traditional engineering into something exciting and dynamic, and shows the students that they can shape their education as readily as the metal they are working with.

Source: South Dakota School of Mines and Technology- News.

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