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Renaissance man could well describe William Karels. So could groundbreaker.

At the close of the past school year, the mechanical engineering senior learned he would receive the Duane Hanson Scholarship, becoming the first South ��ֱ���� State University student to receive the $5,000 award from the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers.

He also is only the second SDSU student to receive a scholarship from the international society of more than 50,000 heating, refrigerating and air-conditioning professionals. For the 2013-14 school year, Mitchell Hoesing received a $5,000 general award from the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers.

Karels had already received an award from the South ��ֱ���� chapter of the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers this spring.

Miles, music give balance to mechanical engineering

While the Milbank native holds a 3.6 GPA, his abilities extend far beyond the classroom.

He is a sousaphone player in The Pride of the ��ֱ����s Marching Band and pep band, performed with the concert choir for two years, has been involved in undergraduate research with the Sun Grant Initiative and in October plans to run his second marathon this year.

Growing up the son of high school band teacher and a woodshop instructor, Karels took interest in both his parents’ vocations.

“Music has been a great stress reliever and social outlet during college,” Karels said.

This summer he balanced his engineering activities with a lot of running. In June, Karels ran the Fargo Marathon, his first 26.2-er. In October he is running the Twin Cities Marathon. In between (Sept. 20), he will run his third Jack 15 road race.

Internship: working on Bel Brands expansion

Those miles give him a lot of time to think about mechanical system for the Bel Brands cheese plant expansion that is to be constructed in Brookings. Karels spent his summer as a mechanical engineering intern with ISG, an architecture, engineering and construction firm that takes buildings from concept to completion.

One of those buildings is the $150 million doubling of Bel Brands plant. Karels was one of several ISG engineers who worked on mechanical systems for utility piping and other mechanical systems within the plant as well as the air conditioning needs for the office wing. He did the work in Autodesk Revit, a building information modeling software he had not used before.

Karels said that “learning by doing” was the aspect of his internship he most enjoyed. “I like learning computer CAD (computer-aided design) programs in general. It’s always fun to sink your teeth into learning a new one of those.”

During his time at ISG he got to assist with seven other projects.

Intrigued by information management

“Learning about constructing a building has been interesting, but I expected to learn about that,” said Karels, who added that the most interesting aspect of his internship was learning about how the company operates. For example, “Cataloging of information is something you don’t really cover in school. With the Bel plant there were hundreds, if not thousands, of emails between ISG and Bel. It was important to stay organized to ensure smooth work across the team.

“Being in an actual company environment is different (from school). It’s cool to see workflows companies create and the process for onboarding new hires.”

This was Karels’ second internship. In summer 2024, he was back in Milbank working at the Valley Queen Cheese plant. There he worked with AutoCAD to update year-old process diagrams for the plants glycol and city water distribution system. 

Perhaps his most interesting project there was using the plant’s computer control system to view historic consumption data. He analyzed data on a five-minute basis across the month of June to generate trend data for analysis of water and power consumption.

“It was interesting to see how that data mapped out. The food process folks were interested in knowing where cooling capacity spikes occurred” Karels said.

He also garnered some attention at ISG when heat transfer calculations needed to be worked out on paper. Karels was tabbed “because I’m the person who had it most fresh in his head. It’s cool to see the pen-and-paper style engineering, while used sparingly, is still used.”

Exploring undergraduate research

Karels started doing undergraduate research in January 2025 with mechanical engineering professor Steve Gent, director of the Sun Grant Initiative. 

He undertook a couple of projects for Gent. One was doing CAD modeling on stent-graft implant devices using Autodesk Fusion 360. The other was doing economic assessments of Sun Grant Initiative research projects in other labs “to see how feasible it would be to phase up to a more manufacturable scale,” Karels explained.

The Sun Grant searches for uses for ag byproducts, particularly lignan, which is plant fiber. Karel’s evaluation assessed “how much electricity goes into these processes, what kind of filtration equipment is needed, are there notable toxic byproducts” and other factors. “We were looking holistically at all these factors to account for them in future lab testing,” he said.

Time at SDSU filled with adventure

In his final year at SDSU, he hopes to build on the fantastic experiences he has already had at State, which include:

• Touring Norway and Sweden during winter break of his sophomore year with the concert choir.

• Performing with the pep band for the women’s basketball team’s March Madness games in Connecticut this year.

• Marching in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade with The Pride of the ��ֱ����s his freshman year.

• Being inducted into Pi Tau Sigma, the mechanical engineering honor society, in February.

While Karels has taken some graduate-level courses already, his plan after graduation is to enter the workforce. “I have a lot of interest in the energy conservation side of mechanical systems design and want to apply that to facilities of all sizes.”