On Oct. 12, Mn/DOT received the Employer of the Year Award from the Minnesota State Council On Disability for its commitment to recruiting, hiring and retaining individuals living with disabilities.

Mn/DOT received the award for its Seeds-Pathways program, which is a collaborative effort with MSCOD, the Department of Employment & Economic Development, Rehabilitation Services, Minnesota Management & Budget and the Department of Human Services.

Agencies that receive the Employer of the Year Award demonstrate outstanding achievements in the world of work and make significant contributions that increase public awareness of Minnesotans with disabilities.

“Due to the support of Mn/DOT leadership and the expertise of external partners, we have been able to successfully hire and retain extraordinary talent,” said Emma Corrie, recruitment programs supervisor. “Since January 2008, Mn/DOT has hired 15 students and seven other individuals with disabilities.”
  
The Pathways to Employment program was established to create a coordinated statewide strategy to facilitate the competitive employment of Minnesotans with disabilities. The program aims to increase the employment rate and earnings of people with disabilities and meet the needs of Minnesota employers through full use of the state’s work force.

In December 2007, Mn/DOT and DEED signed an Interagency Partnership agreement to pioneer the Seeds-Pathways pilot program. With more than $100,000 in funding from DEED, 10 students with disabilities were successfully placed into offices across the six Mn/DOT divisions. Three of the 10 pilot-year students have now been hired into full-time positions.

For more information on the Pathways to Employment program, visit http://www.deed.state.mn.us/pte/

By Diane Beck

Jon Huseby began his duties as district engineer in District 8 Willmar on Sept. 30. Huseby succeeds Dave Trooien, who retired on Aug. 14.

Huseby is responsible for state highway and transportation activities in District 8, which consists of approximately 200 employees throughout southwestern Minnesota.

During his 26-year career, Huseby has spent more than 21 years in public service, including a 20-year stint with Mn/DOT from 1983-2003. While at Mn/DOT, Huseby served as district engineer in District 7 Mankato, assistant district engineer in both District 7 and District 8, maintenance operations engineer in Metro, research services engineer in the Materials and Research Office and other positions as a graduate engineer. 

Huseby has also worked for the Hennepin County Transportation Department and, most recently, a private consulting engineering firm.

Huseby has had the opportunity to view issues from many perspectives—urban to rural, public to consultant, and engineering to political.

“I’ve been very fortunate to have good experiences in both the public and private sectors during my career. However, my true passion is public service,” Huseby said. “Those of us working in the transportation field have a wonderful opportunity to influence society in a positive way by planning, building and maintaining transportation systems.”

Huseby earned a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from North Dakota State University. He has been involved in the Minnesota Society of Engineers and Surveyors, Minnesota Society of Professional Engineers, city of Eagle Lake Planning Commission and the Civil Engineering Advisory Board at Minnesota State University-Mankato.

Huseby can be reached at 320-231-5497 or at jon.huseby@dot.state.mn.us.

By Sue Bousquet

The Office of Information and Technology Services recently hired a consultant to evaluate the current Open Text software used for electronic document management and determine if there are options that better meet business and technology requirements.

Based on the findings, the consultant recommended that Mn/DOT manage computer-aided design and drafting files and associated project files in Bentley ProjectWise and all other documents in IBM FileNet at the Office of Enterprise Technology.

More than 80 employees who use Open Text and ProjectWise were interviewed by the consultant. Employee feedback was evaluated based on several factors:

• The number of current and future business and technical requirements met
• Overall cost
• Required the least amount of custom code and third party software
• The amount of organizational change
• Potential to reduce the amount of external support for configuration and customization
• Future EDMS product direction
• Mn/DOT’s desire to perform development and design with in-house resources

Division directors discussed the consultant's findings and agreed that further research should be carried out in the form of a pilot project using FileNet services from OET.

To view the study and updates about current EDMS projects, accomplishments and reference materials, visit http://ihub.dot.state.mn.us/itweb/edms/. For more information about EDMS, contact Nancy Melvin at nancy.melvin@dot.state.mn.us or 651-366-3060.

Greg Ous began his new role as assistant division director for the Operations Division on Oct. 7.

Ous began his career at Mn/DOT in 1987 as a graduate engineer in District 2-Bemidji, where he rotated through Construction, Design and Hydraulics offices.

After spending a little more than a year in Bemidji, Ous transferred to District 7-Mankato, where he worked four years as a project engineer before being promoted to resident engineer. Ous was involved in a variety of reconstruction projects, including the Hwy 169 project south of Mankato to Blue Earth. Most recently, Ous served as an assistant district engineer with District 7 in both Maintenance and Program Delivery roles.

“I’m looking forward to the different things we can do to make operations more efficient and more manageable and to also align those things with our strategic vision and directions,” Ous said.

Ous can be reached at 651-366-4810. He is located on the fourth floor in the Central Office building.

The September 2009 edition of New Library Materials is now available at http://www.dot.state.mn.us/library/newlibmat.html.

New Library Materials is a compilation of new book titles and other resources added to the library collection during the previous month. It is published electronically each month by the Mn/DOT Library.

In preparation for the Office/Outlook 2007 upgrade, the library has added computer software books for Microsoft Office, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Publisher, Visio and Vista. Please check the library catalog http://mdt.mnpals.net or contact the library for any materials needed.

If you would like to be added to the library’s distribution list, call 651-366-3791 or e-mail library@dot.state.mn.us.