Tech is Advancing—
Before mechanical designers built products on computer screens, they drew them with pencils on paper. Classrooms were filled with drafting tables instead of monitors. Students measured every line, angle and dimension by hand. There were no digital models to rotate. No 3D printers to test an idea. Just skill, precision and a lot of patience.
In 1981, one of those students was Jeff Quackenboss.
He arrived at Moraine Park to study mechanical design, and he left with far more than a career. He found lifelong mentors, met the woman he would marry and planted roots that would eventually bring him back—not as a student, but as an instructor.
After graduating from Moraine Park, Quackenboss began his career at Beloit Corporation, designing massive paper-making machines. When the economy slowed, he found new opportunities designing lawn and garden equipment, marine packaging and trailer components before eventually supervising mechanical and electrical design teams at PEMCO.
It was there, while training employees and writing engineering standards, that he discovered a passion for teaching.
“When I was looking for something different, I knew whatever I did, I wanted training to be part of it,” Quackenboss said.
An instructor opening at Moraine Park gave him the opportunity to return to the place that had launched his career and work alongside the instructor who had inspired him years earlier.
Over the next 24 years, Quackenboss helped shape Moraine Park’s Mechanical Design program while watching the industry transform around him. He witnessed the evolution from hand drafting to sophisticated 3D solid modeling that fundamentally changed how engineers think about design.
His classrooms evolved just as quickly. Today, students don’t just create digital models. They hold their ideas in their hands. Using 3D printers, students build working prototypes to test how parts fit together before they ever reach manufacturing.
“It’s one thing to see it on paper. It’s another thing to see it as a solid model. But it’s a third thing to hold it,” Quackenboss said. “Seeing students take an idea and bring it to life is what keeps me passionate. They inspire us, they ask questions and they challenge us to keep learning. We don’t always know the answers, but we can always find them. That’s what makes this work so rewarding.”
After retiring following 24 years of teaching, Quackenboss is looking forward to spending more time with his wife, whom he met during Moraine Park’s Winter Festival when they were both students. He retired on May 19, the couple’s 42nd wedding anniversary.
More than four decades after he first walked through Moraine Park’s doors, Quackenboss leaves as part of the College’s history, having witnessed remarkable change. Yet through every technological advancement, the College’s purpose has remained the same: preparing students for meaningful careers.
