Scholarships and certification received from Foundry Educational Foundation
Significant renovations to the home of Ohio State’s foundry spurred its relocation.
With the demolition of the conjoined MacQuigg and Watts Halls looming, the foundry was packed up and moved to the Center for Design and Manufacturing Excellence (CDME) on west campus. Metal casting complimented CDME’s engineering portfolio, which includes a robotics and automation lab, metal additive lab and medical modeling lab. CDME began preparations for the incoming foundry in July 2021, and everything was finalized for a visit from the Foundry Educational Foundation on April 27.
Just as other educational foundries, Ohio State’s foundry must be evaluated by the Foundry Educational Foundation (FEF) for certification. “An FEF certified school receives direct funding from FEF. Professors are allocated a specific amount of funding each school year that they use for scholarships and discretionary spending,” states the FEF website. Professor Alan Luo is the Key Professor who liaises with FEF and has managed the foundry at Ohio State since 2013. Flickr photo reel of FEF certification visit.
FEF scholarships were presented to five students during the certification visit. Blake Barnett, Welding Engineering doctoral student ('22-'23), was not present for a photo.
FEF Scholarship Recipients
Ohio is home to more foundries than any other state, totaling 200 operational foundries to date. These facilities process molten metal into a solid that is characteristic of its host shape. It’s a metal-forming process which is known for producing shapes of intricacy, mass and quantity at a competitive cost, and it produces components found in nearly 90% of all goods manufactured in the United States1.
Ohio State’s foundry resided in the bowels of MacQuigg Laboratory since 1968. Both programs within the Department of Materials Science and Engineering – materials science and engineering (MSE) and welding engineering (WE) - utilize the foundry for hands-on metal casting and tier one research projects conducted by graduate students and staff researchers.
MacQuigg and Watts Halls are scheduled to be razed this summer and replaced by the second phase of the Biomedical and Materials Engineering Complex, which is expected to open in summer 2024.
Ohio State’s foundry was officially certified in May and will be eligible for re-certification in 2025.
Libby Culley, Senior Communications Specialist | culley.36@osu.edu
1 How are metal castings used?. Foundry Educational Foundation. https://www.fefinc.org/about/faq.html. Accessed June 8, 2022.
