Student-Athlete
Bertelsen says running helped keep him focused as he finished his masters.
Until his last year of graduate school, being a student always meant being a student-athlete for Jake Bertelsen (WC ’18).
In the 2023-24 school year, Bertelsen ran out of NCAA eligibility for competing with Miami University’s men’s track and field and cross country teams during his second year of graduate school. Bertelsen found himself missing the training and the running in meets.
So, he focused on competing in road races.
Bertelsen placed first out of 15,924 participants in the One America 500 Festival Mini-Marathon. He covered the 13.1 miles in a 1:4:04 on May 4 in Indianapolis. Later that month, he defended his thesis, “Facilitating Water Droplet Removal from Wind Turbine Blades Using Surface Wettability Gradients,” to complete his work for a Master of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering at Miami.
“The principles that gave me success in the thesis were the same ones that gave me success in running,” Bertelsen said. “The hard work, being disciplined and determined and getting what needs to be done assured success in both endeavors.
“I found (running) was a great stress reliever. It was a nice outlet to unwind after a busy day in the labs.”
Bertelsen traces his training ethic and his love for science back to Worthington Christian. He credits teachers Ruth Beschta and Patrica Boyd for instilling in him a curiosity in science.
“(In elementary school), I didn’t have that motivation (towards academics). I just had my head in the clouds at that point,” Bertelsen said with a laugh. “Those two teachers were very influential in developing my interest in science and mathematics. They sparked intrigue in those topics, eventually leading me to pursue mechanical engineering in college.”
However, Bertelsen’s love for running came to him almost by accident. He tried soccer and football, but he discovered he excelled during the conditioning weeks more than during the regular season.
“So that started to clue me in that maybe running would be something I could do well,” he said. “Track and field coach Rod Zody ran for Miami, and his dad (Charles ‘Chuck’ Zody) was a former track coach.
“Zody understood the science of the sport very well, and I credit him greatly for helping me become a Division I athlete.”
Bertelsen had a successful prep career at Worthington Christian, where he set school records in the 1,600 meters (4:18.62) and participated in the Warriors’ Division III state championship performances in the 4X800 meter relay in 2017 and 2018.
At Miami, Bertelsen earned Academic All-MAC honors in the five years he competed with the RedHawks. In cross country, Bertelsen was second-team all-MAC in 2022 after cracking the top 10 in the conference championship as Miami went on to win the MAC title. In track, he finished fifth in both the 1,500 and 10,000 and sixth in the 5,000 at the 2023 MAC Outdoor Championships.
At the end of his senior year at Miami, Bertelsen thought he would have to leave the life of a student-athlete behind. That winter, he was applying for various jobs and reached out to Dr. Andrew Sommers for a letter of recommendation.
Sommers, who taught a heat transfer class Bertelsen had taken the previous fall, invited him to be a student grader during the spring.
“Eventually, he floated this idea of pursuing my master’s at Miami, and he had just gotten a grant approved for a project involving wind turbines,” Bertelsen said. “It turned out to be a very good situation for me.”
Bertelsen’s participation in cross country and track and a stipend for a research project helped him pay for grad school. He received a year of eligibility after COVID shut down Miami’s athletic department in 2020.
“It was like being red-shirted by default,” he said. “I ended up getting a tuition waiver and stipends for performing research related to this topic.”
Bertelsen’s research involved wettability gradients to prevent ice growth on the blades of large modern-day windmills.
“Ice can damage the wind turbine’s motor and lead to ice throw, which is when large ice chunks break off and are flung from the turbine blades,” he said. “That can be pretty dangerous to people and structures near these wind turbines.”
Because of his research in that area, Bertelsen was asked to present at the International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition in New Orleans. He hopes to publish his research in the Journal of Applied Thermal Engineering.
“Now I can’t help but think about my thesis every time I see those wind turbines,” Bertelsen said. “I have fostered a greater appreciation for them and the engineering involved in keeping them running.”