Center for Materials Processing provides real-world opportunities for students, solutions for industries
Providing real-world opportunities for both undergraduate and graduate students while also addressing industrial challenges is the mission of the Center for Materials Processing (CMP) in the Tickle College of Engineering (TCE) on the University of Tennessee’s (UT) Knoxville campus.
“We can take a problem that industry has and boil it down,” Chris Wetteland, CMP Associate Director, explained to us in a recent interview. “What we really like to do is craft a solution that uses an undergraduate student and other Tickle College resources.”
Located in Ferris Hall on “The Hill,” CMP is a state-designated “Accomplished Center of Excellence.” It has been led since July 2012 by Claudia Rawn who earned her PhD in materials science and engineering from the University of Arizona. Wetteland, whose experience includes both higher education and a national laboratory, has been leading the Center’s outward facing engagement with industry, working closely at times with UT’s Center for Industrial Services (UT CIS).
Projects are supported by industry memberships that help underwrite the work that the students undertake for the company. “Their funds support students working on their projects,” Rawn explains, adding, “It (the work) has to be related to materials processing, but it’s a pretty large envelope.”
From her college years, she understands the value of experiences like those offered through the CMP.
“As an undergraduate, we had lab classes, but it was only in the real world that I got to see, ‘So this is what they meant,’” Rawn says. Replicating those hands-on experiences is clearly something that she and Wetteland relish.
“It’s so satisfying to be able to call a student and ask if they want a job,” he says, with Rawn adding, “That (work) makes them very attractive as a hire.”
Cost of a CMP membership typically ranges from as low as $500 to $3,000. In FY19, the Center either partially or entirely supported 14 graduate and 38 undergraduate students performing materials processing research. Examples of the projects and the benefit to students can be found in CMP’s FY2019 annual report.
In addition to access to bright minds, another of the real values for a manufacturer is that the students have access to expensive equipment like a scanning electron microscope (SEM) to perform the work. “They don’t have to buy a SEM for just one or two tests a year,” Rawn notes.
Wetteland, who is leaving CMP after this semester to return to Los Alamos National Laboratory where he worked for a decade, talked about the importance of partnering with others. One of those organizations was UT CIS where he called-out George Aslinger, the organization’s Chattanooga-based Solutions Consultant.
“I spent a day with him visiting companies, and we generated a couple of projects as a result,” Wetteland said. “We do it from a student centric perspective. A lot of people benefit from that approach.”
