OGLESBY – Making Industry Meaningful In College (MIMIC) was named a finalist for the Bellwether Legacy Award, which recognizes previous Bellwether Award winners that have been offered for five or more years and have been replicated elsewhere. Six years ago, the MIMIC project was a finalist for The Bellwether Award, which recognizes excellence and innovation in community college programs.
IVCC and the other finalists for the Legacy Award were honored at the Community College Futures Assembly, in San Antonio in February. One of the originators of the MIMIC project, Dorene Data, gave a presentation on the 25-year-old IVCC project at the Assembly and accepted the award on behalf of IVCC. Data is the program coordinator of computer-aided design/computer-aided engineering and one of the developers of MIMIC. MIMIC places students in engineering design and business into teams to design, prototype, manufacture, market and sell products. It was first offered in 1995 by Data and Alice Steljes, an accounting instructor, now retired.
Since its inception, MIMIC has been recognized as an innovative project. Data explained that MIMIC appears to be the first community college project to place technical and business students into teams to design, manufacture and sell products. In its first year, MIMIC received a Connections Award for Innovative Curriculum Integration from the Illinois State Board of Education. In 2004, MIMIC instructors gave a presentation at the American Society for Engineering Education International Colloquium at Tsinghua University in Beijing, People’s Republic of China.
In 2005, IVCC received a grant of $230,000 from the National Science Foundation to make the MIMIC project the focal point or capstone for two-year technical programs. As part of the grant, the MIMIC instructors developed a manual, available online, to assist teachers in organizing similar projects, and they have given numerous workshops for teachers across the country.
This year’s MIMIC Fair, where products from MIMIC’s 25th year will be sold, is April 17. The winner of the Bellwether Legacy Award, announced at the Community College Futures Assembly, was a No Excuses Poverty initiative at Amarillo College, Texas, which connects low-income, first generation or academically underprepared students with services to help them overcome poverty barriers.
