Summer 2006

It’s a flat, flat, flat, flat world

Posted by on June 17, 2006

It was “a time of tremendous excitement” for engineers when Harry J. “Hank” Sauer Jr. entered graduate school at MSM-UMR 50 years ago. It had been nine years since Chuck Yeager had broken the sound barrier, and the U.S. seemed poised for even greater breakthroughs in flight. Fueled by the post-World War II economy and […]

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The world is flat. Or is it fat?

Posted by on June 16, 2006

After Columbus and before globalization, we realized the idea of a flat world was a myth. We’ve known for a long time that the world was really quite round. But, recently, we learned the world is being flattened by global competition. Or is it? Thomas Friedman is largely responsible for confusing things with his best-selling […]

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From Beijing to Pine Street

Posted by on June 15, 2006

Kim “Mac” McGinnis, ME’79, hasn’t missed a single St. Pat’s celebration since graduation – even though, for the past five years, he’s had to travel halfway around the world to get back to Rolla.

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America’s quiet crisis

Posted by on June 15, 2006

William J. Daughton, chair of engineering management and systems engineering, reviewed Thomas Friedman’s book The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the 21st Century for the American Society for Engineering Management’s Engineering Management Journal. Friedman’s book, Daughton writes in his December 2005 review, “brings into focus trends and events that most readers would recognize […]

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UMR in a global society

Posted by on June 15, 2006

What challenges does globalization pose to higher education, and how should campuses like UMR respond to these challenges?

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Ralph Flori: A jack-of-all-trades

Posted by on June 13, 2006

“I didn’t go to college expecting to teach,” says Ralph Flori, PetE’79, MS PetE’81 and PhD PetE’87. “I wanted to be an engineer. My passion growing up was working with tools, building and creating things, and taking things apart.” Flori took his interest in how things work, his experience working in his dad’s heating and […]

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Travis Stensby: Lucky to be swimming

Posted by on June 12, 2006

Travis Stensby was swimming for the University of Minnesota when he discovered a blood clot in his shoulder three years ago. That medical condition forced him to quit the team, and he thought his collegiate swimming career might be over.

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Tuncay Akbas: It’s a small world after all

Posted by on June 12, 2006

In today’s global economy, many companies outsource their service departments to countries where labor is cheap to be more cost-effective.“Since the world is getting smaller with all of the latest high-tech developments in communication technology, it is not hard to have a company work for you a thousand miles away to make you more competitive […]

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