Michael Hoefer, selected as student marshal at Iowa State University for Fall 2015

2016 Jan 14

Michael Hoefer, industrial and manufacturing systems engineering, served as the fall 2015 semester's College of Engineering Student Marshal during the Fall 2015 commencement ceremony. He will be accompanied by Matt Frank, associate professor of industrial and manufacturing systems engineering, as he leads the engineering class into the ceremony held December 19th.

Hoefer has shown tremendous leadership as a student and received the President's Leadership Initiative Award for his work. Throughout his career, he has served in the ISU Student Government as vice president, director of student affairs and College of Engineering senator. Hoefer has also served as the president of Freshmen Council and the scholarship chair for the Acacia Fraternity.

His passion to lead has developed a passion to make a difference in his community. Hoefer led a project to install public bike repair stands on campus to support sustainable transportation, and he has began development with a team of students for, CySwap, a student marketplace that promotes reuse among students. Sustainability and reuse were also driving factors in Hoefer's honors project, which focused on economic modeling of wind turbine blade recycling.

Hoefer has been on the Dean's list every semester and has been inducted into the Tau Beta Pi and Cardinal key Honor Society. He also served as a Destination Iowa State team leader three times, tutored students in statistics, and was an Ambassador for both IMSE and the College of Engineering. When he held a teaching assistant position, Hoefer organized class materials, graded and helped students excel in their coursework.

He's gained professional experience through multiple internships: Zirous Incorporated, where he was an application developer; Rockwell Collins, where he researched, planned, and justified an automated soldering system to improve quality and efficiency; and Boeing, where he led a team to implement warehouse automation at Boeing's composite manufacturing center to improve efficiency reduce defects. His endeavors also went overseas to Germany, where he ran an independent research product using big data and GIS software to find how mining impacts water quality in South Africa.

Currently, Hoefer is in his second semester of the concurrent master of science program and is studying industrial and manufacturing systems engineering. He is working as a graduate assistant in Rapid Manufacturing and Prototyping Lab and will be returning to Boeing for an internship next summer. He will wrap up his studies in the following fall.

“As engineering students, we are fortunate to be exposed to excellent faculty and staff, study abroad programs, research, and involvement in student organizations. Add in the occasional nap between classes, and you get a group of dangerously good engineers coming out of Iowa State. Each of us has a unique adventure and passion, and I am truly honored to represent this group at graduation. The world needs engineers, and Iowa State has well prepared us to tackle the challenges of the future.” – Michael Hoefer