How much funding/sponsorship does your University provide?

[Joshkb]

Hi all,

I am part of a new team from BU and am curious as to the sponsorship value your school (overall, college of engineering, etc.) has allocated to your team. Not sure if I will get many responses with a $xx,xxx value or more machining time and facilities usage.. any info would be helpful. As a new team, I would like to know how established teams are supported through their school.

Thanks,
Josh

[Jay Lawrence]

You will probably get a huge range of answers for this....

From memory, we got something like $AUD20,000 directly from the uni, but there was a range of other funding (both in $ and machining) from a range of sponsors. Our uni workshop was also fairly supportive (both in terms of giving us access to tooling and machining parts for us). That may seem like quite a bit of support, but we had built up a system of complicated engineering for a number of years and so this is not necessarily reflective of the requirements for a young/successful team.

[MileyCyrus]

You will probably get a huge range of answers for this....

From memory, we got something like $AUD20,000 directly from the uni, but there was a range of other funding (both in $ and machining) from a range of sponsors. Our uni workshop was also fairly supportive (both in terms of giving us access to tooling and machining parts for us). That may seem like quite a bit of support, but we had built up a system of complicated engineering for a number of years and so this is not necessarily reflective of the requirements for a young/successful team.

We must of got better at asking after you left, Jay. I know that it got to $55,000 AUD recently from different parts of the University alone, along with machining, a fairly nice workshop, use of the faculty vehicles etc.

[Claude Rouelle]

There are no black or white answer to this question; rather different shades of grey but IMO if Universities should give as much as possible access to laboratories, software uses, time and advice from their teachers, they should not give any money. FS /FSAE is a real professional life exercise where future graduates can practice, with the creation and the presentation of sound arguments, the search of budget (and/or free of charge technical collaboration) from the industry outside their school.

In my humble opinion, the universities should not give any credit for FSAE / FS work either, otherwise you will get many students showing up just to perform the minimum and get their credit (or in India to get the competition participation certificate).

I am a lucky person who is paid to have fun. I made my passion a job, not the other way around. My passion was and is still my #1 motivation. And then as unbelievable as it looks and yes with some pains sometimes, money and opportunities came and still comes to me and my company. Not running on gold but possibilities that makes us look with some confidence to the future.

Why I say this? The passion is what drives you and in some cases that is what makes you find money. Inside out, not outside in.

[tromoly]

My school gave $10k USD, which covers both car and competition cost, so really about $8k for the car. Facility-wise, there's a machine shop with a couple mills, lathes, and basic CNC mill that's usable form 8am-5pm. If we wanted to use the waterjet or more advanced machines we had to beg the Industrial / Manufacturing department to let us use their machines, and that also included getting the assistant dean who got the machines in the first place to get us access. Donations of material and machinery time is a must, a few local companies always help out and are awesome.

Oh, and for the record (Claude close your ears), my school ran/runs FSAE as a senior design project, whatever you do don't run your program this way.

Moral of the story: work within your means, whatever those means may be.

[jd74914]

There is definitely going to be a wide range of answers here...

We are eligible for up to $24k/yr of funding from the Undergraduate Student Government due to our student club status through a rather arduous funding process (read: you really have to work hard for the money). No funds come from the general University or School of Engineering; all additional monetary funds are from sponsors. The SoE does provide us with a large off-campus shop and some capital equipment (old CNC mill, lathe). We've either purchased or found sponsors for the dyno, welders, hand tools, etc. Members also have access to an on-campus machine shop, though generally only seniors are able to take the safety class to use it. Almost all complex machining is done by a few generous sponsors and most simple machining is done by members.

Receiving funding this way is rather interesting in that the school (especially SoE) has very little oversight over spending. With this comes both positives and negatives; on one hand purchasing is rather fast, but on the other dishonest leadership can easily mismanage or squander money on useless items. My person recent experience has convinced me that more educated oversight [from a university level] of the spending process would be wise.

This goes towards what Claude is saying, but I feel that an engaged faculty adviser is near a necessity for a high performing team. I don't think this person needs to be qualified to give technical advice, though that would be helpful, but must be ready to arbitrate team problems and help with sponsorship. With an entirely student run team settling serious [personality, ethics, etc.] problems is difficult. Until recent years, my experience had been that elder students (seniors, grad students) generally were respected enough by junior members to allow feedback/correction of actions. Lately, it seems that incoming classes really lack respect for established members and will not make corrections without faculty intervention. On the sponsorship side, many companies like working with students, but others feel more comfortable with an additional "professional" contact for overarching continuity, etc.

James

PS: Shoot me a PM or email if you guys have any questions...helping out fellow NE teams is always nice.

[stever95]

Before I was treasurer we got ~$5k from the college of engineering, ~$5k from the university if we begged for it. Fund-raised another $5k and made a car. Probably received <$2k per year in gifts (free parts) and discounts, and ~$2k in free dyno time from a great local shop. Machine shop was free for students to use, but it didn't have everything.

So for about $20k, a dozen people could build a car and bring it to a competition with most expenses paid.

After I was treasurer, the university agreed to give us $10k per year no matter what (didn't have to kiss up to convince them for it), we have ~12 sponsors compared to 1, and get free LiFePo batteries, free SAE-certified welding on occasion, and rights to a practice lot on university property.

I like to think now that money's not a limiting factor in any way, the group can seriously focus on design / revisit the management structure / come out with a good product.

[Claude Rouelle]

" I like to think now that money's not a limiting factor in any way" Alleluia!

[Jay Lawrence]

Miley (lol!)

Yeah my bad, I didn't have the exact figures on me. We did get $20k from the university itself, but we also got money from the Sydney business school as well as the engineering faculty, which would have totalled about $55k. I imagine the situation is reasonably similar now

[Freddie]

Just for the sake of disagreeing with Claude, or well, not only for that sake, I'd say make sure that you do get credit for FS/FSAE. Though, try to get as little credit as possible. By having it as a course, at least here (Sweden) all members are covered by student insurances throughout manufacturing, testing and competition. Hopefully, you won't need it, but if something happens ...