I landed on Rapid City, South Dakota’s Airport August 4^th 1974. I remember it well, it was 114F that day. This was a shock to a young man whom never before had experienced anything over 80F. I thought I had made a huge mistake!

First things first. I bought the biggest baddest car I could find. A ’69 Ford Galaxy with a 390 engine. It was a lime green 2-door coupe and very cool, except for the dent in the right rear quarterpanel. It was about 2X the size of any car I had ever driven in Europe, so this must be the one for me.

After seeing America on a 3 week trip (at least the western part), I settled into the rhythm of hard studies. I had a Junior College degree from Norway. With 3 more semesters (plus a summer semester) at South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, I graduated on December 17^th of 1975 with a Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering. As a reward for hard studies, I took away a GPA of 3.23 for my effort.

I was still not satisfied with the extent of my learning, so I went about 350 miles south and west to Laramie, Wyoming. On December 19^th, 1977 I earned a Master of Science Degree in Civil Engineering from the University of Wyoming. The GPA ended up at 3.47. I had fun with my Thesis project. With funds from AMF Head, I got to test and study the dynamic behavior of a tennis racket.

Student loans have a tendency to put you in the hole. Especially in my case, since the adventure was mostly self funded. I contemplated going for a PhD, but for financial reasons thought it was a good idea to get started with my career. I found a job in Wisconsin working for a small pre-manufactured building company. The name of the company was Richland Building Systems. I worked there from early 1978 to late 1980 designing light industrial building with framework made from laminated wood.

In December 1980, I moved back to the point of original landing, Rapid City, South Dakota. I took a job as a Staff Engineer for Re/SPEC. This company employs about 60 people and specializes in creating finite element codes to analyze underground caverns for Nuclear Waste Storage. My job was to prepare the mesh and run analysis for thermal, groundwater migration, and time affected rock stability.

Then it was time to move east. SDRC advertised in 1983 for Finite Element Analysts. So, I started where I left off in the previous job, making finite element meshes and doing analyses. Instead of Nuclear Waste repositories it was Caterpillar Track links and Diesel engine components. I even got to experiment with SDRC’s solid modeler back when it was in its infancy.

It is always good to learn new things, so in 1985, I got the opportunity to work in SDRC’s Marketing Department as a Product Specialist. The challenge was to apply what I had learned as a practicing finite element analyst and turn it into a marketing message and assist in pre sales situations.

Since I had experienced SDRC’s Finite Element Products as a user, watched the customers use it, and help them through hurdles, I was in 1987 offered a position as Quality Assurance Manager for the Simulation Products. This was at a time when the SDRC Finite Element Products was moving center stage in the market place against rivals like Patran. This was also the first position, where I got the opportunity to manage people

As the customer base grew, it became clear that SDRC would need a unified Product Support group within Product Development. I was elected to head this group in the fall of 1994.

This group would act as the liaison between the geographically distributed sales and support organizations and the Product Development group. It was established so the company could serve the needs of the customers faster and better.

The group was also chartered to help in product planning efforts.