Engineering a teaching career

Posted: May 31, 2013 5:00 p.m.

Professor Emeritus Arthur Opseth estimates that from 1974 to 2012, he taught more than 5,000 students in 12 different courses during his career at the University of Regina. Photo: U of R Photography

Professor Emeritus Arthur Opseth estimates that from 1974 to 2012, he taught more than 5,000 students in 12 different courses during his career at the University of Regina. He concedes, though, that he hadn’t considered a career in teaching until his former professor and master’s thesis advisor approached him in 1974 to teach in the newly formed Faculty of Engineering at the U of R.

Opseth joined the Faculty full-time in 1977. Besides his teaching duties, at various times he also served as acting assistant dean, assistant dean and acting dean. In 1997 he received an Inspiring Teacher Award from the University. After retiring from full-time teaching in 2001, he spent two years managing special projects for the Faculty, and then taught as a sessional lecturer until 2012. All of this followed after Opseth gave up a job with the Saskatchewan Government Computer Centre.

“People asked me why I gave up a secure government job,” Opseth recalls. “There was something about teaching that I liked. I enjoyed working with students, and now I have former student friends all over the world, from all kinds of backgrounds.”

Growing up on the family farm near Hagen, south of Prince Albert, Opseth’s aptitude for mechanical engineering came naturally. He remembers he and his older brother Melvin taking things apart to see how they worked and then (usually successfully) putting them back together again. By age 13 he was the chief car mechanic on the farm, having learned a lot from working on farm equipment with his dad.

“The great thing was, you got to see how poorly some things were designed,” he says.

Opseth has warm memories of attending a one-room country school near Hagen, and then a two-room school in the town, before completing his Grade 12 at the Lutheran Collegiate Bible Institute in Outlook. He spent a year on the farm before enrolling in the College of Engineering at the University of Saskatchewan, where he received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in mechanical engineering.

“Mom and dad were able to scrape up enough to pay my first year,” Opseth says, “and after that I was able to get good paying summer jobs. I worked in camps up north, so expenses were next to nothing, and that allowed me to save enough to live on for the rest of the year.”

After he graduated, Opseth spent a year at the National Research Council and then two years working as part of a team of consulting engineers in Montreal, making modifications to armoured personnel carriers for the Canadian Army.  Then, in 1964, he moved to Regina to begin working for the provincial government’s computer centre.

“It was the largest computer in the province,” Opseth recalls, “and I think it had 64K of memory. A lot of the people working there were engineers or mathematicians, because the problem-solving and design processes were the same for engineering and computer program design.”

With the move to Regina, Opseth became a member of the Association of Professional Engineers of Saskatchewan (now the Association of Professional Engineers & Geoscientists of Saskatchewan, or APEGS). He served as president of the organization in 2003 and is currently the APEGS representative to the University of Regina Senate. He has also been a member of several other local, national and international engineering and education-related organizations.

On the personal side, his volunteer activities included instructing downhill and cross-country skiing, being a Cub leader, supporting the Regina Water Polo Association and coaching youth soccer. He also served for four years on the Board of Governors of the Regina Symphony Orchestra.

In spite of his many accomplishments and contributions to the community, Opseth was surprised to learn he would receive an honorary degree, calling it a huge honour. His advice to the new graduates will be short, he says: “You’re just starting your education,” he chuckles. “You’re going to learn more in the next two or three years than you learned in the last five.”
 
Professor Emeritus Arthur Opseth will receive a Doctor of Laws, honoris causa during Spring Convocation.