As a football player, Craig Rusch loved to tackle ball carriers. As an engineer, he loves tackling problems. His senior design project in the College of Engineering and Engineering Technology gave him the chance to do both.
Rusch, along with classmates Chris Newquist and Britt Mork, created an entirely new type of football training equipment that allows defensive linemen (Rusch’s position as a member of the Huskie football team for four years) to practice against the dreaded cut block in a realistic manner with little risk of injury.
They created the “cut block sled” as their Senior Design Project – a graduation requirement for all NIU engineering students that forces them to apply lessons learned in the classroom to real-world challenges.
The project compels students to conceptualize, design, prototype and build entirely new products. The results, which are showcased in the college each spring, are a demonstration of the excellent students the college graduates.
“The senior design project is a validation of a student’s understanding of both the theoretical concepts and the application of those concepts,” CEET Dean Promod Vohra says. “It is one of the things that makes our engineers so good – they know how to solve real-life problems.”
To learn more about the cut block sled and its builders, watch the video below.