Rod Korthals Associate Professor of Physics and Engineering Reed Hall of Science, Room 130, (815) 939-5313 E-mail: rkorthal a olivet.edu My web site

Since the fall of 2003, I have been teaching at Olivet Nazarene University in Bourbonnais, Illinois. This is within two hours of my wife's family in the Chicago suburbs and Mahomet, Illinois. I'd like to thank Mike Gingeirch for introducing me to ONU. Mike was one of the first engineering teachers hired there. He also had a great testimony that made him a good friend and reliable coworker while we were in Graduate school in late 80's.

As I just said, my family lives around George, Iowa which is about 15 miles from Minnesota and 30 miles from South Dakota. Most of my time there we lived between George, Ashton, and Matlock. We went to the Reformed Church in Matlock, where I first made a commitment to join the church. My mom and dad, my two little brothers and my little sister all still live in and near George (along with dozens of uncles, aunts, and cousins), so I still go there every now and again. And ya, I do speak a bit of Minnesotan-after all, my mom was from North of the border (Hills MN).

I did my undergraduate studies at South Dakota State University in Brookings South Dakota. Brookings was about ½ the distance from my hometown of George, Iowa than was Iowa State University, and ISU overbooked their housing when I applied there. I’ve been associated with some much bigger universities since my undergraduate days, but I still think my education at SDSU was first rate! I also had two good friends from my home town who went there with me-Duane Graves and Joel Lutjens. The helped me get active in the Reformed Christian Fellowship group there, where I made a few other friends. My roommate at SDSU was Scott Pladsen. He was in Minneapolis last I heard from him-Scott, give me call or write! Another great friend I made there was Mark Van Zweden.

I had an interesting time (Proverbial curse: May you live in interesting times!) between completing my BS and starting my MS. It was a real lesson in trusting God, and though I've seen some tough times since then, I've seen Him Who is trustworthy. I saw the mid-80’s farm crises first hand; my family lives about 40 miles from Bobby Polzien’s farm near Worthington, MN for those of you who remember that period of time or have heard John Mellencamp’s song Rain on the Scarecrow. I also worked for a month at a company (Delta Industrial) that retrofitted and designed new CNC (computer numerically controlled) machines near Minneapolis, MN. These experiences helped fire my interest in 1)going back to graduate school, 2)getting into instrumentation and control systems instead of just animal production and facilities, and 3)living further south ;-).

I did my PhD and MS work at the University of Illinois. My PhD work was on the effects of airflow on plants. I worked with Sharon Knight and Art Spomer in the Horticulture Department (now Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences) as well as with my advisor, Les Christiansen in Agricultural Engineering. Between my MS and PhD, I helped construct and operate the Fan Test Chamber in the Bioenvironmental Environment and Structural Systems (BESS) lab. My master’s thesis was on trouble-shooting swine facilities. Along with Dr. Christianson, I worked with Dr. Stan Curtis (Animal Science) and Dr. Art Muelling (AE). Of course the most important part of my time at Illinois was my activities in Hessel Park Church and a Bible study where I met Jean whom I married while there. Hi Parkers, Neergaards, Gold's, and Raymunds!

I also worked for five years with the Biological Engineering Research Unit at the USDA-ARS Meat Animal Research Center in Clay Center Nebraska. Our main efforts were focused on measuring and predicting the effects of the environment on hogs, cattle and sheep. I also took part in some nutrient balance research related to cattle feedlot waste management. I became interested in quality management while at Clay Center, and was active in Systems and Software Engineering within the unit and within ARS. A trigger in this area was a visit to a department of energy lab (Kansas City Allied Signal Plant) that had an excellent understanding of Systems Engineering (SE) and how to use it. In one afternoon with three of their engineers and with four of our engineers, we were able to develop a program that we submitted two weeks later for a multi-year, 1.2 million dollar grant. That project did not get funded, but I have used some of the SE concepts I learned there to great advantage for many years since then. Some links to SE sites include INCOSE, and the Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon University.  As at Illinois, the most important part of my life during my time in Nebraska was the birth of my two boys, Scott and Brian! (Yes, I need to add links showing my family and relating some of their activities. I want to work with the boys and Jean on that though.)

I worked for six years at Osborne Industries, Inc. doing research for their Electronic Animal Recognitions Systems (EARS®) program. Most of my efforts there involved development and testing of the FIRE® Feed Intake Recording Equipment and Survey Scale™ automatic weighing systems. I had two USDA-SBIR grants while there, one to develop and test the Survey Scale automatic weighing system, and another to automate tactical management tools such as statistical process control (SPC) for swine production. The study of SPC and six-sigma statistical tools was an exciting (at least to me) complement to my efforts in Systems and Software Engineering. Some links to SPC and six-sigma quality links include the Deming Institute, the Juran Institute, the Quality Digest, and the American Society of Quality. I also attended a Promise-Keepers bible study group on the first and third Saturday mornings at 7 in Osborne. We alternated between the two Methodist Churches, and had members from several different churches in the area. Hello, Mark, Wayne, Gerald, and the others who are meeting with you now, and those others who met with us before. We actually attended Dispatch Christian Reformed Church, out in the country north and a little East of Downs, where the town of Dispatch was. Dispatch is now just a couple of cemeteries, a farmhouse, the parsonage, a former-schoolhouse used by the church, and the thriving (for that area) little church. If you're in north.central Kansas some Sunday, stop by and say hello the Koops for me. (Say hello to the other folks there too.)

In 2002-2003, I had a temporary appointment to teach at the top rated department for Biological and Agricultural Engineering at Texas A&M University. I taught/co-taught three courses while at Texas A&M. One was a graduate level course on Instrumentation Techniques in Agricultural Engineering, BSEN 625. Most of the related material-instrumentation, statistical references, etc. for that course are listed below. Another reference of related material is Dr. Ron Lacey’s AGEN370 course Measurement and Control for Food and Agricultural Processes. I also picked up a good tutorial on Matlab and simulink from Hadi Saadat. I co-taught a course on Environmental Controls for Plants and Animals with Dr. Ron Lacey and Dr. Gary Riskowski. Dr. Lacey maintains the web site for the course. The third course was BAEN/BSEN 265- Investigative techniques for Agricultural Engineers. I covered some psychrometrics and gave a whirlwind tour of programmable logic controllers (PLCs) and sequential logic. Other instructors for this course were Dr. Wayne Lepori, Dr. Binayak Mohanty, and Dr. Zivko Nikolov.  We also attended Westminister Presbyterian Church while we were there. The have a great program with the Aggies, and a very welcoming and committed congregation there. More than anything, they made the time in Texas-especially for my wife-really great.  Jackie-we miss you.