education

SPDI

Sustainable Product Design & Innovation is a degree program developed early in the 21st century at Keene State College. Keene State College is part of the University System of New Hampshire. Here is a link to the schools website https://www.keene.edu/academics/programs/spdi/

It took me a couple years to figure out the acronym SPDI. At first I had assumed it was a STEM or STEAM program (I can be oblivious). Then I noticed that the letters didn’t match. I had to ask what they ment.

My first introduction to SPDI was a tour with the Society of Manufacturing Engineers were we saw their first 3D printers and a machine shop. A few years later we were invited student presentation on their Manufacturing Enterprise course to the . I was quite impressed. I had spent most of my life in manufacturing and the students did a good job of representing the manufacturing structure.

A few years later I was asked to join academia and become a member of SPDI staff. It has been a privilege. Somewhat surprisingly this has been my third longest job. I have only spent more time making automobile headlights and medical devices. Having worked with many engineers in the past, I hope to train the students how to be better engineers.

Let me break down what SPDI means to me.

Let’s start with the word sustainable. The UN defined sustainability in 1987 as the ability to meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. Written by international politicians that statment can mean whatever you want it to be. I am sure someplace that would be, I have slaves, so my children should have slaves. Myself, I would say, make good things so you do not go out of business. Yes, sustainable is considered a political word. Politicians do choose what is sustainable, that is the way things work. Most politicians support manufacturing. They know we need things.

The next word is product. This is a word I can understand. A product is a thing. Our world is made of things. We depend on things. There is no society without things. Things keep us alive and let us live longer. The vast majority of things in our lives are manufactured. Musical instruments, books, paint brushes, and your phone are all manufactured. Manufacturing is an art.

Design, how do we define our things. How big are they, what are things made of? How are going make these things. We learn computer aided design, how to digitally render things. That is just the start. When we have a thing, how does it relate to other things. How do things work together. Are there unexpected consequences? Form fit and function is what we said in the factory. How does the product do the job? I could go on and on, however I will take a break and go on to what may be the most important word.

Innovation, for me it means collaboration to make better things. How can we make better things? Can we improve the result of two interacting things? Can an assembly of things work better together? That is what learning is.

SPDI is something I can belive in. Recently I have been trying to promote SPDI by giving away SPDI jackets that the students designed. As usual, some people do not agree. We are a Liberal Arts school, not a technical college. My view is manufacturing is the one art all the other arts are dependent on. Just my opinion.

The House on the Hill

I want to go three ways with this blog. On third being observational politics, one third the motering life and one third education. I have neglected education, so I will do a few stories. I find this interesting as I was never formally trained as an educator. However, I have trained many people and attended five colleges. I will admit that I did not do well in school, and part of that was my own fault.

For example there was a course that was about building housing developments. I think it was some sort of civil engineering course, but I am not really sure. The premise was to find a nice field near a town, build a road that would maximize half acre house lots, then build a series of identical houses. This process would be the most efficient and effective way to provide homes for people to buy.

At a previous college I attended a course about building housing. That course was titled “The Handbuilt Homes of Woodstock NY”. Every week in that course we would visit a different house In Woodstock NY. The homes were all different. They varied from a geodesic dome made of old LP records to a massive three story home that resembled an art gallery. No homes were remotely similar, however they all had character.

I understood the logic each course presented. I will call neither right or wrong, however I would do something that would get me into trouble. In the housing development course I suggested that the housing should be built in the hills. My reasoning was our ancestors worked to clear the fields and we should use the fields for agriculture, not housing. Now this violated the premise of the efficient building of homes for people. For I had suggested that we add complexity. For whatever reason I held firm in my view.

I was sincere in my view, many civilizations build nice communities on hillside. There are pretty hillside places in Santorini, Nepal, Peru, and even San Francisco. I understood the logic of a development, however life should be aspirational. We should be able to look out the window and see the world. We should utilize what we have to benefit society. For me it was personal.

To my surprise my belief precipitated a field trip. Unlike my previous homebuilding class, this class just stayed in the classroom where we drew pictures of housing developments. One day the instructor announced he had signed out a van and he was going to drive the class to a housing development. To my surprise the development was on a bit of a hillside. The instructor then pulled into the driveway of a newly completed house and instructed us to get out of the van and go behind the house. He then pointed to a big one inch crack in the foundation and said “This is why you don’t build houses in the hills”. I mumbled something about we should learn how to build better foundations. The instructor had won, I then kept my mouth shut and said no more.