collaboration

Giant Dinosaur Marionettes: Engineering Education, Art, and STS

Apex Gallery, art, Events, teaching

Sometimes people assume that engineers aren’t creative, but this is far from the truth, as the current Apex Gallery exhibit of dinosaur marionettes shows. In his introduction to mechanical engineering course, Dr. Cristian Vargas Ordóñez (in collaboration with Matt Whitehead, Senior Instructor of Art and Director of the Apex Gallery) asked students work in teams to use the engineering concepts they were learning to create and present large dinosaur marionettes.

This project shows what’s possible within engineering education and at the intersection of arts and engineering. It’s also a great illustration of a core principle of STS, which attends to how knowledge is created. Javier Lezaun, Noortje Marres, and Manuel Tironi write that “the larger aim of STS research and intervention . . . [is] to activate new collective imaginations of what an epistemically, technically, environmentally and materially engaged polity might be.” Working together as teams to create something new is a version of this aim at the scale of a college classroom, and it’s good practice for STS thinking and for working creatively with others in other areas! (Our Creativity and Collaboration in STEM minor further reinforces these connections.)

More details about the art exhibit are included in the press release below, and the marionettes will be on display in the Apex Gallery this week, with a reception this afternoon (Wednesday, 11/19) from 4-6 pm.

Art Exhibit Features Giant Dinosaur Marionettes Designed by Mines Mechanical Engineering Students

RAPID CITY, SD (Nov. 19, 2025) – South Dakota Mines mechanical engineering students brought engineering and imagination together to build large dinosaur marionettes, each one crafted with a variety of materials ranging from papier-mache and fabric to metal and 3D printed parts and designed with at least two movable parts.

The creatures are now on display in the Apex Gallery in the university’s Classroom Building. The project is part of the freshman introduction to mechanical engineering course taught by Cristian Vargas Ordóñez, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Leslie A. Rose Department of Mechanical Engineering.

Dr. Vargas Ordóñez in the Apex Gallery with the dinosaur marionettes.
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STS Students Bringing Science to the Public

communication, STS Students

Since Science, Technology, and Society (STS) is fundamentally about the intersections between science/technology and people, communicating technical information to broader audiences is a crucial skill. It’s hard to understand the science/technology itself, much less its impact on our lives, when it is only available in specialized spaces or when it is not shared in ways that ordinary people can understand.

With this in mind, two STS students have taken on the position of Public Information Officer (PIO) this semester to work with groups of senior mining engineering students and communicate relevant information to the public. Paul Roques and Parker Smith are each meeting with the mining engineering students, traveling to locations where they’re working, and reporting on what they learn – both about the mining engineering students’ specific projects and about the larger issues that arise around them.

A small vehicle sits in an underground space. A single bright light hangs from the ceiling and illuminates both the vehicle and the electrical wiring on the wall.
Image by Parker Smith.

Recently, for instance, both Parker and Paul wrote about the infrastructure at SURF (Sanford Underground Research Facility), where mining engineering seniors are working on a project. Parker explored what it felt like to go down into the underground facility and the older technologies – like elevators – involved in making that possible, while Paul described not only the project the mining engineering students are involved with (building an underground complex for CAT to test autonomous equipment) but also the questions of what mining costs – both financially and environmentally.

Parker and Paul are doing great work sharing information about these specialized projects with the rest of us through regular posts for STS social media, so you can check out their work on Instagram, Threads, or Facebook!