Mark Schwendau has taught drafting and CAD for 40 years in all levels of education; high school, area vocational center, community college and university. He even taught in several Illinois prisons including Joliet!
He has a Bachelors degree in Industrial Education and a Masters degree in Industrial Management from Northern Illinois University. He holds a 6-12 Illinois teacher certificate. He also holds double minor degrees in OSHA safety and Illinois Driver’s Education for training cars, trucks, motorcycles, and deaf drivers.
Mark has appeared on television promoting drafting education 7 times in the Chicago and Rockford television markets. Some of his appearances are on YouTube. Mark has written 7 books on the subjects of drafting, CAD and employment practices for students of same. He has also written numerous trade journal articles and sits on Tech Directions (formerly School Shop) Editorial Advisory and Peer Review Boards.
In 1982 he became the first secondary teacher in Illinois to teach CAD as a regular part of his drafting program. He wrote, and was interviewed, for many journal articles on CAD.
His most famous article was published in School Shop in the spring of 1983 and was titled “Purchasing a CAD System”. This article launched Mark into the National spotlight as it helped many drafting educators transition to CAD. The most lucrative piece he wrote was titled “The Future of CAD”. This article won him $1,200 and a
Second Place finish in a Design Graphics World magazine writing contest. As a sideline, he was Illinois’ first CAD dealer for T&W Systems CAD software.
At Kishwaukee College, Mark designed courses in CAD Management, 3D CAD Modeling, GD&T, Technical Illustration and LandCADD. He has also designed courses in CIS in Windows 95/98, website design and web animation with Flash. He regularly taught online courses in WebCT, Blackboard, Desire2Learn and Moodle.
He designed both the first faculty and program websites of his college and his CAD program website went on to become the top ranked college CAD website of the world!
Mark has won numerous teaching awards including honorable mentions in the ISBE’s “Those Who Excel” teaching awards program where he was twice ranked as one of the top 20 teachers in the sate as a runner up for Illinois Teacher of the Year.
Mark retired from Kishwaukee College in 2016. In 2017 he became a consultant for Rockford Career College (RCC) and AHED where he developed their first CAD program. RCC is the 5th oldest college in Illinois dating back to 1862. In 2018 he went to work as a CAD-CAM technician for Accurate Metals Illinois (AMI), also of Rockford. He worked there for 3 years until 2020 when the COVID crisis took his job. At AMI he assisted with the introduction of bringing text fonts to their metal cutting operations as well as the introduction to laser cutters to their operations.
