Students in Tracey Carbonetto and Alison Bonner’s Engineering Design 100 class at Penn State Lehigh Valley examine steel production at SteelStacks and the Hoover Mason Trestle in South Bethlehem.
CENTER VALLEY, Pa. — More than 40 students in Tracey Carbonetto and Alison Bonner’s Engineering Design 100 class at Penn State Lehigh Valley got a firsthand look at the Lehigh Valley facility that fueled an entire industry.
Every fall for the past seven years, Carbonetto and her first-year students have visited the PA Heritage Site at SteelStacks and the Hoover Mason Trestle in south Bethlehem to better understand the steel-making process. Students get up close and personal with the blast furnaces and learn what’s involved in the grand scale and scope of producing steel. Beyond just making the raw product, however, the students start thinking about the process design. Carbonetto said this is an important step in the production process that is often overlooked or poorly executed.
“We intentionally walk the trestle from the beginning of the process to the end, discussing the inputs and outputs for the next step. We wanted the students to get into the mode of process, designing it to be efficient, using massive equipment and massive supplies,” she said.
Carbonetto and Bonner paid special attention to the company’s iconic I-beams which are found in well-known landmarks like the Chrysler Building and Empire State Building in New York City. Along the way, the students learned about Bethlehem Steel’s long and important history and shared stories of their own.
“We don’t often think of storytelling in terms of engineering, but when we asked students if any of their relatives had worked at Bethlehem Steel, it helped them learn about the engineering field even more,” Carbonetto said, adding that sharing stories gave important context to “the Steel”’s role in the industry, both as a major employer in the region and steel manufacturer across the globe.
Getting off campus and into the field shows students how the material taught in the classroom is used in the real world. “The way students are exposed to so much technology and visual content, we as engineering educators have to look for the most impactful ways to teach them,” Carbonetto said. “As opposed to looking it up on the Internet, having the trestle and Bethlehem Steel facility so close by, we were able to employ experiential learning to the students’ benefit.”
This is Bonner’s first semester teaching the course; she said it was a great learning experience for her, as well.
“Some of my students had been to the trestle, but to see it in the context of the manufacturing process and really looking at the equipment there — the students brought up some great questions.” She adds, “I enjoyed going through it step by step and looking at the equipment — how each piece was related to one another, the size of it, and what the working conditions must have been like.”
James Arthur, a student in Bonner’s class, said he was aware of Bethlehem Steel’s significance in the area. He even had family members who’d worked there. But he has a new appreciation for the massive operation — and all the details that made it work — now that he’s seen it through a new lens. He’d been to SteelStacks but this was his first time visiting the Mason Trestle Bridge.
“It was a great experience to visit where so much of my family history took place, and to see the engineering part of it,” he said.
An aerospace engineering major, Arthur said he has a better understanding of how different engineering elements are interconnected. In a day full of learning, one lesson stood out: “I was most surprised by the concept of transporting the materials,” he said. “You understand you need all of these materials, but you don’t always think of the chemical engineering side, bringing in the alloys, and needing somewhere to store them.”
At the end of the day, students discussed the steel-making process and technical terminology like blast furnaces, slag, pig iron, coke, submarine and transfer cars, charging, and limestone. The experience gave students a more holistic understanding of the steel-making process and how it works together.
“Putting their engineering design skills to work, they realized the importance of planning out the physical layout of the facilities and equipment, especially in terms of efficiency and productivity,” Carbonetto said.
