Eastern Michigan University engineering students will be heading to Pennsylvania this week to participate in an off-road vehicle competition.
In the nearly empty parking lot next to Rynearson Football Stadium, the students were adjusting the motorized, one-person Baja racing car preparing for a run around the lot.
The SAE Baja Competition takes place late this week in Montgomery, Pennsylvania near Williamsport. It brings together students from across the globe who designed and built their vehicles to test how they perform on the rough terrain.
EMU Baja Team advisor Andrew Mansfield says it’s a great way for students from various engineering programs to work together on a project.
“They run the whole show, they control who does what thing, who handles the design aspect and the building and the business side. They work it all out, and they run their own shop and make all the parts and do everything.”
Mansfield says students have been working on the design and build of the car for more than five years. This is the first time it will be leaving the EMU campus for a competition.
Recent graduate Kara Bishop is one of the mechanical engineering program students participating in the race. She says she joined the team two years ago to get a more hands-on experience.
“Our classes are very theory-based and heavy math-based, so I knew I needed some type of hands-on to get the full engineering picture. Also, at the time, I wasn’t really sure if I wanted to do engineering, so I thought this would be a good way to explore and just see what it's about.”
The SAE Baja Competition runs from Wednesday to Sunday. It includes a series of events that ends with an endurance race to see how the one-person, all-terrain vehicle performs under various conditions.
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