Iron Range Engineering listed as "Emerging Leader" in Engineering Education in 2018 MIT Study by Dr. Ruth Graham 

Iron Range Engineering on the World Stage
Five world leading engineering universities presented their models for educational change at a keynote panel in Beijing, China on October 22nd.  University College London (UK), Tshingua University (China), Aalborg University (Denmark), Charles Sturt University (Australia), and Iron Range Engineering (USA) all presented models for innovation and addressed obstacles that are being overcome to achieve innovation. Dr. Ron Ulseth represented IRE on the panel and spoke to the importance of student engineers acquiring the emerging skills necessary for success in industrial regions like northeastern Minnesota.

In March 2018, MIT released a research study identifying the emerging and current world leaders in engineering education. All five of these institutions, along with 11 others, such as MIT and Stanford are in that group.  Iron Range Engineering is listed in the top 5 emerging world leaders.
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Dr. Bart Johnson, Provost of Itasca Community College, along with Ulseth attended the conference in Beijing. The title of the conference was the 7th Annual International Research Symposium on Project Based Learning (IRSPBL). Johnson and Ulseth led the most attended workshop at the conference, providing participants with insights to and strategies used in IRE’s unique model for reflection as a part of learning. 

Johnson also presented a research paper, co-authored by Ulseth and Yuezhou Wang, IRE professors. The paper highlighted the design-based research model being implemented to develop IRE’s recently funded new Bell Program. The IRE Bell Program will bring hundreds of new engineering students per year to the range from community colleges across the nation to participate in an innovative apprenticeship learning model and earn IRE’s engineering bachelors degree. 

Anette Kolmos, the world-leading researcher on PBL, and director of the UNESCO PBL Centre spoke about IRE’s emergence on the world stage “IRE has implemented a unique and powerful new learning model that uses reflection as the core to student learning. Their new Bell program will lead the world toward a future in blended personalized learning trajectories. Their work as practitioners and researcher has made substantial impacts in such a very short time.”

Iron Range Engineering started in 2010 and is a collaborative program between Minnesota State University, Mankato and Itasca Community College.  IRE is located as a satellite program on the Virginia campus of Mesabi Range College. IRE is ABET accredited.
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In April 2019, IRE joined the other 15 world leaders at MIT for a summit on how to propel engineering education into the future. In addition to IRE, MIT, and Stanford, the US were represented by Purdue and Arizona State Universities. Engineering universities from the UK, Europe, South America, and Asia make up the rest of the emerging and current world leaders who attended the summit.

Minnesota State University, MankatoBell students earn a Bachelor of Science in Engineering from Minnesota State University, Mankato. 
Iron Range Engineering won the 2017 ABET Innovation Award