Every cyclist should know some basic bike repairs they can do at home, but even the most passionate gearheads don’t often get the chance to parlay their skills into a full-time career. A new degree program at a Minnesota technical college wants to take a step toward widening that net, offering a place where aspiring mechanics and engineers can learn to work with bikes all day, every day.

Minnesota State College Southeast, located about 40 miles down the Mississippi River from Saint Paul, will accept the first cohort of students in its Bicycle Design and Fabrication program next year. Billing itself as the nation’s first program of its kind, the curriculum will aim to prime students for a career in bicycle manufacturing or an adjacent industry.

“The bicycle is the culmination of every applied engineering skill set into one application,” Travis Thul, MSCS’s dean of trade and technology, told Bicycle Retailer and Industry News.

In two years of coursework in both the lab and classroom, students will learn machining and metalworking skills, bicycle-relevant engineering principles, the history of bike design, and current industry trends. Graduates will walk away with an Associate of Applied Science degree, which should help them land a variety of technician or engineer roles.

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The college boasts that Red Wing, its small hometown of about 16,000, is a “cycling lovers’ paradise” of bike-friendly roads and trails. (MSCS also has a campus in the town of Winona, though the bicycle program will only be available at the Red Wing campus.) But its location has other, more substantive advantages: QBP and wheel manufacturer Hed are both based in Minnesota, while Erik’s, the bike shop chain, has more branches there than in any other state. Trek is headquartered in neighboring Wisconsin, while several other industrial manufacturers are also based in the region.

While other schools offer transportation design and manufacturing degrees, and others (like the University of Iowa) do have one-off bike-building courses, MSCS says its new program is the first to offer a full degree in bicycle making. Thul emphasized that the skills gained from the program could also apply to manufacturing and engineering positions in other industries.

“[A] drivetrain is a drivetrain. Gearing is gearing. Welding is welding,” he told the Forum News Service. “So we can take this program that isn't found anywhere in the country, or on earth as far as I can tell, draw students from everywhere, and make Red Wing a destination education center for this specific application, while still serving our industrial base.”

Thul told the the Star Tribune that the idea grew from the success of another MSCS program, which teaches guitar building and repair. He said he wants replicate the guitar program’s popularity while also directly preparing young professionals for industrial, manufacturing, and engineering jobs in the region. Thul wants to market the program to prospective commuter students in the Twin Cities, as well as locals and bike enthusiasts around the country.

Students enrolled in the program will begin taking general education classes in January, while bicycle-specific labs will launch next fall. The first graduating class is expected to enter the workforce in 2021.

[Find 52 weeks of tips and motivation, with space to fill in your mileage and favorite routes, with the Bicycling Training Journal.]

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Jacob Meschke
Contributing Writer

Jacob joined Runner’s World and Bicycling as an editorial fellow after graduating from Northwestern University in 2018, where he studied journalism. His work focuses mainly on news and service pieces for both audiences, with the occasional foray into longer feature work and product reviews. He especially loves to highlight the journeys of unique runners and riders doing amazing things in their communities.