...MIMIC...

NEWS ARCHIVE

MIMIC PROJECT FEATURED AT NATIONAL CONFERENCES

Making Industry Meaningful In College (MIMIC), an award-winning project at Illinois Valley Community College, was featured at three national conferences in 2007.

Three IVCC professors gave presentations at the Advanced Technological Education Principal Investigator’s Conference in Washington D.C. Oct. 17 – 19. Dorene Perez, program director of computer aided design and computer aided engineering; Jim Gibson, program director of electronics, and Rose Marie Lynch, communications instructor, publicized the MIMIC project in a showcase and teamed with a Purdue University professor to lead a discussion session on MIMIC and a Purdue project. The ATE conference was hosted by the National Science Foundation and the American Association of Community Colleges.      

In April,  Perez, Gibson,  and Lynch gave a presentation at the National Association for Workforce Improvement Conference in Chicago. The NAWI is an organization of workplace representatives and state-level and local educators dedicated to improving career and technical education.

The IVCC professors also gave two presentations at the American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference June 24 – 27 in Honolulu, Hawaii. Shawn Schwingle, industrial education instructor at LaSalle-Peru High School, joined them in giving one of the presentations.

The MIMIC project teams IVCC students in engineering design, electronics and business into student companies to design, produce, market and sell products. Schwingle’s graphics students at the Area Career Center are designing a product for the college project.

In June 2006, Perez and Schwingle received a grant to participate in an ASEE workshop designed to assist them in involving high school students in MIMIC. The workshop was funded by the National Science Foundation. An NSF grant is also supporting the MIMIC project.

"Encouraging more young people to enter technical careers, especially careers in engineering, is a major goal of the NSF," said Perez.

The MIMIC project has been widely publicized in nationally distributed technical publications and at national and international conferences including the American Society for Engineering Education International Colloquium in Beijing, China, in 2004. A paper about the project, authored by the three IVCC professors, was named Best Paper Overall at a national conference in October 2006.

MIMIC was created 11 years ago by Perez and accounting professor Alice Steljes, now retired. Accounting professor Susan Koepke now supervises the business students in the project.

June 2007

MIMIC SHOWCASE AT THE ATE CONFERENCE IN WASHINGTON D.C.:
Jim Gibson (left) and Dorene Perez presented a showcase at the ATE conference sponsored by the National Science Foundation and the American Association of Community Colleges in October 2007.