Facilities

Minnesota and the Twin Cities

Minnesota is a state with great variation in its weather. Although winter temperatures can dip below zero and summer temperatures often climb well into the 90s, the average daytime high temperatures are: summer 78°F; fall 41°F; winter 28°F; and spring 67°F. Average annual snow fall is 49 inches in the Twin Cities; average rainfall is 22 inches. Except for November and December, the sun shines more than half the days.

Minneapolis, the largest city in Minnesota, and St. Paul, the state capital, make up the state’s major metropolitan area, known as the Twin Cities. The Twin Cities offer numerous entertainment and cultural activities, including the Minnesota Orchestra and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, the Guthrie Theater, the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, the Walker Art Center, and the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden. Northrop Auditorium at the University offers many concerts and performances by visiting artists throughout the year, including an especially distinguished annual dance series.

There are approximately 900 lakes, 500 parks, and three great rivers—the Mississippi, the Minnesota, and the St. Croix—in the seven-county metropolitan area. Popular diversions from study and research in the summer include swimming, canoeing, sailing, water skiing, hiking, and cycling. By December, Minnesota waters are frozen, and cross-country and downhill skiing, skating, snowmobiling, and winter camping are favorite pastimes.

The Twin Cities is a national center for both agri-business and high technology. It is the home of such national and international corporations as General Mills, Cargill, 3M, International Multifoods, Land O’Lakes, and many more.

University of Minnesota

The University of Minnesota is one of the United States’ major research universities. It regularly ranks among the top universities in receipt of federal grants for research and development, and its Graduate School was recently ranked among the six best U.S. public universities.

The University of Minnesota Twin Cities campus, by far the largest in the University system, is really two campuses–one in Minneapolis and one in St. Paul. The Mississippi River further divides the Minneapolis campus into east and west banks, each with a distinctive character.

On the East Bank are the older buildings and the grassy tree-lined central mall of a traditional college campus. The Institute of Technology and many departments of the College of Liberal Arts are located on the East Bank.

The West Bank features most of the University’s newer buildings such as the Law School, the School of Music, and the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs.

The Department of Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering is located on the St. Paul campus, which includes the Colleges of Agricultural, Food and Environmental Sciences; Biological Sciences; Natural Resources; Human Ecology; and Veterinary Medicine. It is situated in the heart of a pleasant residential neighborhood, which gives it a small-town atmosphere. It is about ten minutes from the Minneapolis campus, and is easily accessible by inter-campus bus.

Department Facilities

Department facilities are located in the Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering Building and the adjacent Engineering and Fisheries Laboratory Building. We also have a laboratory in the Food Science and Nutrition Building.

The Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering Building provides approximately 30,000 square feet for classrooms, offices, secretarial and administrative areas, and laboratories for teaching and research. Approximately 12,500 square feet are available in the Laboratory Building for laboratories, shop facilities, and large project work areas.

Laboratories for bioprocessing, food engineering, value-added processing, indoor air quality, grain quality, water quality, land and water resource modeling, terramechanics, machinery systems, and agricultural safety research are available. All office and laboratory computers are connected via a department network. Access to other computers at the University and the Supercomputer Institute, and to the Internet, is available through the campus network.

Field research is facilitated through cooperation with five University experiment branch stations and several other research sites.