Charlie Dickinson is an Industrial and Systems Engineering student, but he is also an artist with an unusual niche. 

Dickinson took Hand-Built Bicycle 1 in fall of 2019 and fell in love with the art of bicycle building. In Hand-Built Bicycle 1, students learn how to design bike frame geometry using AutoCad software. They then build their custom-fit bike from scratch, using miter tubing, bending it, and welding it all on their own. 

Hand-Built Bicycle 2 is much more hands off. Dickinson is thankful for the freedom that class advisor, Director of Art and Art History Steve McGuire, gives to the students. Bikes are worked on “essentially on [their] own time” and the class is extremely collaborative. Dickinson says that he and the two other art department students operate as a team and lend help to each other on their own individual projects. The metal shop in the Visual Arts Building is their home base, and the structured, independent-study-like nature of the class allows them to come and go as needed. 

Dickinson will graduate from the ISE program in the Spring of 2021 and plans on entering the bicycle or golf industry post-graduation.