Even as a child, David Farnsworth liked to plan and organize. He kept a diary, made lists for backpacking and studied maps, ever mindful of the functional elegance of perfection and the rewards of self-discipline. This proclivity toward order and method helped shape early success in the precision sports of gymnastics and diving, advancement to Eagle Scout, his exacting work as a civil engineer, and a 4.0 GPA in high school through his MBA. Whether derived from nature or nurture, this bent for what’s useful settled teenage questions about his future career.

“I guess I was a very practical person,” says Farnsworth, power generation and engineering leader for Great River Energy’s Coal Creek Station at Underwood, the largest power plant in North Dakota. “I couldn’t waste time because I didn’t have the money and had to get done with college as soon as possible. I was determined to do something where I could make a decent living.”

Farnsworth, a well-known speaker and advocate for the state’s energy industry, is one of three senior leaders at Coal Creek Station, where he manages outages and engineering and construction projects. His groundbreaking advocacy the past 10 years has helped forge educational programs and incentives to bring more people into the power generation field. With government agencies, labor unions, energy providers and institutions like BSC, he has helped initiate partnerships and training infrastructure to address the pending worker shortage in North Dakota’s energy corridor.

Farnsworth led an industry group to review training programs statewide and brought its recommendations to BSC. The college responded by expanding the welding program and created two new programs: Mechanical Maintenance Technology, and Instrumentation and Control Technology. He also served as advisor on these initiatives and was a member of the assessment and curriculum committees for BSC’s new four-year degree in energy management.

With other key leaders at Great River Energy, he worked to form a partnership between GRE and BSC. The company bought a $1.3 million controls simulator for use in power plant classes, contributed $1 million toward the National Energy Center at BSC, and $44,000 worth of tools and equipment for the new Mechanical Maintenance building in Mandan.

“BSC has been very responsive to the needs of industry,” says Farnsworth, whose studies revealed a gap in what state colleges were teaching and what power generation companies needed.

With an engineer’s problem-solving vision and a personal profile keyed for leadership, Farnsworth has brought focus and solutions to a potential industry crisis.

“Affordable energy is such an essential component in society for our standard of living and ability to move forward,” Farnsworth says, “but fossil fuels are finite and environmental challenges will shape our future.

Progress won’t be measured by politics, but by those who solve the technology issues for new and clean energy sources. That’s where people of my type will be able to make a contribution.”

Farnsworth has spent his entire career in the energy generation field. A nationally recognized expert in nuclear power plant outages, he trained the U.S. Navy while working for Westinghouse at the Naval reactors facility in Idaho. Experience took him to Washington Public Power Supply System during construction of two nuclear power plants. Southern California Edison invited him to assist in two nuclear plant startups near San Diego, later assigning him as outage manager at San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station near San Clemente.

While working full-time, Farnsworth earned his MBA in 1984 from Southern Illinois University taking 20-hour, weekend classes over three years. An innovative program for its time, it involved university professors flying in to teach at military bases.

After 13 years at Southern California Edison, he and his wife Arlene (Nistler), a native of Beach, moved to North Dakota in 1996 to raise their three sons. Two have engineering degrees and Stephen attends BSC in engineering.

Farnsworth grew up in Bismarck with five siblings, and high parental expectations that emphasized college. BSC suited his needs perfectly. He could live at home and keep his job at D&E Supply unloading boxcars and semi-trucks. Economically and academically, it was a good decision, he says.

Inspired by enthusiastic BSC math instructors Don Bigwood and Paul Swanson and chemistry professor Frank Koch, Farnsworth also took guidance from Mike Wickstrom in engineering. He tutored math and chemistry and performed in two musicals with Jane Gray Stewart, singing, dancing, and showing off his gymnastic skills in “George M.” He was an NCAA competitive diver at NDSU, where he received his civil engineering degree in 1978. That year, eight of the Top 10 engineering students were BSC graduates, and David Farnsworth was among them.

“That speaks well to the programs at BJC,” he says. “I made full use of my college experience there. I wanted to be well-rounded because engineering is very technical, and I needed more than that.”

Today, he still swims, and learns foreign languages on his daily commutes. His latest is Polish for a summer trip to Warsaw to deliver a technical paper on power generation at Coal Creek. By entering the world debate, Farnsworth wields the power of science to create change. In that hope, he says, “Maybe some of my greatest contributions are yet to come.”