In 2005 the Department of Materials and Metallurgical Engineering at the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology (SDSM&T) was struggling with low student interest and enrollment in our B.S. degree in Metallurgical Engineering. The relatively meager undergraduate enrollment of 42 students was compounded by lackluster industrial support for the program. What appeared to be a perfect storm brewing in terms of program decline and possible extinction changed in the spring of 2005 when the Department Head (PI-Kellar) gave a prospective student (Mr. Kevin Gray) from Gillette, WY, a tour of the department. Such tours were relatively few. However, near the end of the tour the student was asked why he was interested in Metallurgical Engineering. The prospective student proceeded to show a knife he had forged in his home garage. The knife had a legendary Damascus steel microstructure (see Figure 1), and its creation was a testament to the student’s intuitive understanding of metallurgy as well as his artistic abilities. The extraordinary nature of this knife led to an equally extraordinary chain of events that turned around the moribund academic program.

Kevin Gray and his interest in blacksmithing inspired departmental faculty to wonder if blacksmithing could be used as curricular and co-curricular mechanisms to help catalyze the B.S. program. To test this hypothesis, the faculty wrote a small proposal in 2006 to the John Deere Foundation to purchase an anvil, forge and metalworking tools, and ultimately, to create a small blacksmithing area. That proposal was chosen for support and faculty began hosting weekly open forge times for students called Hammer Ins. Since none of the faculty were skilled blacksmiths we sought out local experts and developed a relationship with Mr. Jack Parks, a master blacksmith from Fire Steel Forge (Piedmont, SD).^[2] In addition, Professor Deborah Mitchell (MFA and campus art faculty) was supported for immersive training in blacksmithing at the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts (Maine). Steadily, through the support of program faculty, along with Parks and Mitchell, the Hammer Ins grew in attendance. The growth in attendance was largely through word of mouth, caught the attention of South Dakota Public Broadcasting and was featured in late 2006 as part of their Dakota Digest program.^[3]

The program faculty were buoyed by the student’s co-curricular interest in blacksmithing. They envisioned how the program could be leveraged by expanding into more co-curricular activities and integrating the blacksmithing aspects into the curriculum. Thus, an NSF Course Curricular and Laboratory Improvement (CCLI) proposal (Blacksmithing Metallurgy: A Multifaceted Curriculum and Laboratory Plan) was written and selected for support by NSF in the fall 2007.^[4] The CCLI project threaded kinesthetic blacksmithing activities into the B.S. Metallurgical Engineering degree program with the overall goals of improving student learning in Metallurgical Engineering and motivation toward degree completion. The curricular portion of the project included redesigned sophomore through senior-level laboratories to include metalworking components to help students develop a better understanding of structure-property relationships in metals and materials. The co-curricular portion of the project included: i) expanding the weekly open forge time (Hammer Ins) for all interested campus science and engineering students, ii) establishing exhibits featuring undergraduate student work at the campus APEX art gallery,^[5] and iii) and equipping a mobile trailer for outreach activities.

The NSF IUSE project began on October 1st, 2021. Since the commencement of the project, curriculum changes have begun to occur in MET 110 and MET 231 courses.