IVCC - MIMIC - Making Industry Meaningful In College

ORIGIN OF MIMIC

Making Industry Meaningful In College emerged from an IVCC Tech Prep Team in-service session in March 1994. Tech Prep team members had been working together to integrate academic and vocational/technical subject matter for two years. Integrating students, as well as subject matter, became the goal. The initial plan for MIMIC was to create teams of engineering design and accounting students to design, produce and sell products.

Organizers of the project were Dorene Perez, CAD/CAE Program Coordinator, who continues to be a MIMIC instructor, and Alice Steljes, accounting instructor, now retired. MIMIC started in spring 1995 with students in accounting, engineering design and plastics technology classes meeting together in "companies." Students in marketing internships also participated but did not meet regularly with the teams. Cyndy Bruch, plastics instructor, and Becky Andrewes, marketing instructor, participated in the first year.

The project was originally named MIMiC, the acronym for Modules in Interdisciplinary Manufacturing Concepts. Following a brainstorming session at a Tech Prep Team meeting in February 1995, the project was renamed Making Industry Meaningful In College. In April 1995, MIMIC won a Connections 2000 Award for Innovative Integrated Curriculum from the Illinois State Board of Education, and MIMIC instructors Dorene Perez, Alice Steljes, Cyndy Bruch and Becky Andrewes spoke at the Connections Conference.

Plastics technology students participated from 1995 through 1997. Electronics students, under the supervision of Jim Gibson, joined the project in 1996. A MIMIC business course was developed by Alice Steljes and offered for the first time also in spring 1996. BUE 2260, Integrated Business Operations, continues to be a capstone course for students in a number of A.A.S. business programs. Over the years, students in a number of other fields have also assisted the student teams: web design, graphics, art, and technical writing, for example.

For photos and more about MIMIC's early years,
see Previous MIMIC Years

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