MANKATO — When you’re at the Minnesota State Fair this year and wolfing down as many cheese curds and pork chops on a stick as you can, work some of those calories off by taking a walk over to the fair’s newest bridge.

You’ll find it in the Education Building at the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities booth.

Don’t plan on spanning it on foot, though. It’s not exactly that kind of bridge.

But it will definitely get a few points across. Such as these: Engineering is an important part of higher education; training better engineers will result in safer bridges; and much of the state’s best engineering training is taking place in Mankato.

Al Wodtke, a professor in Minnesota State University’s mechanical engineering department, teamed up with a few students to build a 20-foot bridge that will be a central focus of the MnSCU display and symbolize the fair’s focus on science, technology, engineering and mathematics, known as STEM.

The opening day of this year’s fair has been dubbed STEM Day, and the MSU engineering students’ bridge is intended to attract the interest of parents, teachers, K-12 students and other fair visitors. The bridge is intended to illustrate how engineers and scientists impact literally every minute of our lives.

And the for the past few days, engineering has heavily impacted the lives of civil engineering students Quadri Owokonira and Michael Burdorf, and automotive engineering student Derek Kvenvold.

Each was asked by Wodtke to spend time on the project.

“I look at this as a type of internship,” Owokonira said.

Wodtke says when he was given the project, he knew he’d need some student help. But he also said that’s the way it should be. Students in general — but engineering students in particular — learn best by doing. The past few days for these students have been spent doing a lot of “doing.”

Owokonira and Burdorf worked with Wodtke on the design, using a software program called SAP 2000 that aids designers in figuring out what materials will work best for a given project.

From there, materials had to be ordered and, when they arrived, the bridge needed to be assembled. That’s where Kvenvold came in. His expertise in the shop helped the team move through the construction phase more efficiently.

Having civil engineering students working with an automotive engineering student gives students from both disciplines valuable information about the other.

Gaining that kind of experience, Wodtke says, can potentially mean the difference between landing a job and being passed over for a more qualified applicant.

“We’re teaching survival skills,” Wodtke said.  

Wodtke and his students are certainly no strangers to building bridges.

Each year mechanical and civil engineering students take part in the American Society of Civil Engineering steel bridge-building competition.

The bridge will be delivered to the fair Aug. 19.