Start your engines: Stout receives motorcycle engine donation for engineer lab opportunity

MENOMONIE — Working on motor skills has a completely different meaning to engineering students at the University of Wisconsin-Stout.

Through a collaboration between Stout and Polaris Industries, an automotive industry company, the university’s engineering department received a donation of two new Indian Motorcycle engines: one air-cooled and another liquid-cooled. The connection between the industry and university started about 10 years ago, said Engineering and Technology Department Professor Devin Berg.

While the connection started initially between a family member of one of the students, Berg said it has only grown from there as this donation helps support what they are trying to do at Stout. He said his current goal is to work with students to try and develop a way both engines can be integrated into some of the courses.

“In our engineering programs, we cover things like heat transfer and fluid dynamics and things like that, which are relevant to the design and testing and understanding of engines,” said Berg. “What the students that are working with me are doing is developing a test stand that will allow us to operate these engines in that controlled environment where we can use them under different conditions, take measurements, record data that we can get back out of the engines and use that as a tool for teaching some of the principles that we cover in our engineering curriculum.”

Working towards that implementation, he said students are helping develop an engine testing system and stands which can help them operate the engines in a number of environments and lab settings. Berg has employed two senior students to help in this development, Charles Lenk and Lucas Lirette.

While the support of Polaris with the engines is hugely helpful, Working on putting these engines in a classroom setting still requires peripheral costs to develop accompanying technology. Berg’s work is also supported through the John “Jed” Copham Memorial Professorship in this capacity, as the endowed professorship honors Copham, a 1997 graduate who owned Brainerd International Raceway in Brainerd, Minn., by supporting engineering department faculty and staff with projects connected to automobiles and motorsports.

Berg said with this support, they can create an environment where engineering students get practical experience.

“Hands-on is one of those things that we focus on at Stout,” he said. “The ability to take some of the theory that we learned in our engineering courses and see it in practice and in application can be really helpful for making that connection between the sometimes difficult to grasp engineering theory and the real-world things that our students see on a day to day basis… Being able to make connections in that way is, I think, really helpful from a learning perspective.”

Continuing into the topic of career potential, Berg said, “We’re lucky in engineering at Stout that our students have a lot of job opportunities and a lot of places that they can go with their careers. But, one of the things that can definitely really help them along that path as they transition from students to working professional engineers is those hands-on experiences; things they can point to in a job interview that say, ‘Hey, I not only took my classes and learned the basic principles of engineering, but I also have this experience starting and completing a project with these particular outcomes.’ And I think what that can really demonstrate to a potential future employer is that this student has some of that real-world experience before they have even graduated.”

Their hope moving forward is that the two engines are something which they can make use of in the classroom as they continue to figure out ways to implement it.

“The support that we get on occasion from companies like that really bolsters the things that we are trying to do…” said Berg. “Connection is also super valuable because that is our goal — to give our students these real-world, real-life experiences. Our partnership with a company such as Polaris really helps with that.”