South Dakota Proves It Can Win Internationally

South Dakota has little clout when it comes to national politics.  States aren’t equal anymore, as they once were under the Articles of Confederation during the first heady eleven years of the United States of America.  Our members of congress wisely stick to play-it-safe support of issues.  

      But the Metallurgical Engineering Department at the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology never felt like an underdog in San Diego earlier this month as it seized first place in an international competition among universities, winning the Grand Prize by forging a historic Norwegian langseax sword.

      “The sword was forged by a student team representing the South Dakota School of Mines, with steel smelted in a historic manner with local materials gathered from the Black Hills.” Students used blacksmith Jack Parks’ extensive forge in Piedmont, as reported earlier on this site.

      The Metallurgical Engineering Department at SDSM&T has had an interdisciplinary history of designing team-taught courses with the Humanities Department, such as “Materials and Civilization” which taught students the history of metals from the earliest times, down through the Industrial Revolution (see cover of course textbook above), including in-class demonstrations of processes like lost-wax casting.