GVSU engineer helps local economy

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich--For one Grand Valley State University engineering student, all the dire talk about the Michigan economy was a call to action. The student, Ryan Phillips, has started his own company that he hopes will contribute to the West Michigan economy.

“I hit the point where everybody is complaining about the economy and people are worrying about it, but I didn’t see that many people doing a lot about it,” Phillips said. “And I said, ‘Why not?’ I'm not going to be the one to sit here and complain about the city that I love to live in. I'm going to take a stab at making things better and try it myself.”

Phillips will be one of the senior engineering students in Grand Valley State University's School of Engineering who will display their talents and expertise in the annual Engineering Design Conference on August 3. But in an interesting twist, Phillips isn’t merely a participant. The company he founded, Magnum Engineering, is sponsoring another team’s project.

“That was a hard one to swing by the faculty,” Phillips said. “First I got some resistance to the idea of a student sponsoring a senior project like this.”

Those concerns were assuaged when faculty members looked into Phillips’ company. Magnum, which will be a supplier to loudspeaker companies, has investors and bought a vacant 28th Street facility and a third of Rockford Acoustic Designs’ manufacturing equipment. Rockford closed its manufacturing operations  in Grand Rapids in May 2007, ending a 60-year history of producing loudspeakers in Grand Rapids. Phillips performed six terms of co-op work at Rockford doing loudspeaker design for car audio under the Rockford-Fosgate name.

Phillips will be graduating from Grand Valley’s School of Engineering on August 3 with degrees in three disciplines: electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, and product design and manufacturing engineering. It is rare for a student to complete degrees in two disciplines—three is unheard of.

The Senior Design conference will be held on Friday, August 3 from 1-5 p.m. at the Keller Engineering Lab Building on the Pew Grand Rapids Campus. MEDIA COVERAGE OF THE EVENT IS ENCOURAGED. On display will be 11 projects with a combined materials value exceeding $175,000. All projects were designed and built to address actual problems and needs of area companies. The conference celebrates the successful completion of the Capstone Design Program, in which teams of senior engineering students solve real-world engineering design problems sponsored by participating industries and other sponsoring organizations. The projects take two semesters to complete, and at the end the companies who participate have an actual working product. The costs for the sponsoring industries are materials and a small project fee—the students are not paid for their work, but instead gain college credit and valuable work experience.

The projects on display were completely designed, built, and tested by 56 students. Sponsors of the projects include: Atek Medical, Ventura Manufacturing, MasterTag International, Gill Industries, L-3 Communications, Paulstra CRC, Magnum Engineering, N-K Manufacturing, Mill Steel, Rapid-Line, Inc.

The day culminates in the Order of the Engineer ceremony, which is a special commencement ritual for Engineering students. The graduates earn their degrees later in the year than the traditional spring ceremony because they must complete a year-long co-op experience. In the ceremony, each student receives an iron ring, placed on the little finger of the working hand, which symbolizes bridging the step between training and experience. The practice started in Canada and is firmly established in the U.S.