Why does your school support FSAE?

[Horace]

We're having some trouble after our first year in getting the ME department at our school to endorse the project. I was wondering what are some points that you guys use when you have to tell the administration at your school why FSAE is important to your school and why it's almost necessary in a good engineering school.

Thanks you

[Kyle Roggenkamp]

I'd be interested in hearing what people have to say about this as well. Our school doesn't really support FSAE either. We are hoping to get our entry fee covered this year.

Our school, for whatever reason, doesn't seem to understand the value of this program. They do however, see the value in an electron microscope that nobody has used yet. But that only cost 250,000 bucks... [/RANT]

[alumasteel]

I suspect the weariness for endorsement often stems from the apprehension of the magnitude of an FSAE type project. They see a large cost, not only monetarily, but in students' time as well (particularly smaller teams). I would suggest presenting your overall management and planning approach, similar to the way you might recruit any other sponsor. If they see a well managed team that will be capable of completing the project while maintaining class commitments, they may be more accepting of the project. This requires regular communication with the department. Let them know in advance what your (realistic) goals are for the coming year, and keep them up to date on your progress as your significant deadlines approach (and make sure you meet the deadlines). Along the way, show them the design work that has been done so they can see the tangible educational value of the project.

In addition to the design and manufacturing skills learned by the current students, another conspicuous reason for the department to endorse the project would probably be recruiting new students. When showing prospective students the facilities, being able to show them a race car that they will have the opportunity to work on is a plus. This may become apparent to them if you have just completed your first car.

Remember... communication is the key. Being constantly prepared to talk to the department about the project will help keep team management on track, and a team this is managed effectively will generally perform effectively.

[L B0MB]

It has taken our team 6 years to get the university behind us fully thanks to a core group of guys who put in huge amounts of effort in team management, engineering, recruiting, gaining sponsors, ect. Its hard to get their backing with no tangible results occuring but its hard to get results with no backing... Its a catch 22 situation.

A professional appearance will help with full timeline, budget, team shirts, website, and team goals all helping to persuade them the team is serious

[Aaron@Kaist]

I feel your pain!!!!!


but luckily we were able to gain support from our University and this is how:


1st, you have to set a mission, and goal statement for your team....what will you try to accomplish as a team? What are you 1 year 5 year 10 year plans for the team? What is the purpose of this gathering? Our purpose was to a) create a team environment for undergraduate students, b) create a learning environment for product oriented engineering, c) help create some kind of brand image and value for our school by promoting the project in the long run. We also made it very clear that we had no intentions of stopping as a FSAE team, but wanted to further develop this program into a comprehensive applied science program for undergraduate students from various backgrounds and eventually become the grounds for improvement in industry due to the quality of the alumni that graduate.

2) Showing the school you are able to get support from outside the school is important. Their logic is that if industries that operate on profit see reason to invest in your program, it is a credible base for them to believe that they can invest as well. But the ironic thing is, it is hard to get support from industries without support from the school. Since your team actually doesnt exist until you are recognized. We solved this problem by obtaining sponsorship from all the major places that sponsor most FSAE teams, such as Solidworks,Altair engineering,and on and on, and we used that as a base for convincing administration.

3) for funding, you have to prove that you are able to wisely spend that money, and you have to convince them you have a system in place to increase efficiency. However, it is important to let your administrators know the exact cost for operating such a program as you will ALWAYS need more than what you thought. We started out by asking for 12,000 dollars but ended up requesting close to 50 thousand dollars, considering expenses needed to set up our workshop etc.

4) Show your decision makers how the team is going to evolve over the years, and be ambitious, it is always better to think big. Make sure your presentations are professional looking and clean.

5) create a team, and go to meetings with key team members. It is important to show that you have a group of dedicated members showing the same amount of passion as you.

6) Go to the big dog first. When I first started this team, the protocol was to apply for financial support through the team of student affairs, but I emailed our president directly. Screw the red tape. The one person who is going to be able to single handedly help you avoiding red tape, and feel your passion, its gonna be your dean or president. Find out what his goals are and vision statement is. Allign your goals and purpose with his, and he will like the words coming out of your mouth.

7) Plan your engineering portion alongside the administrative. This was the biggest mistake I made in managing this team, assuming the technical guys would take care of it all. Managing both sides at once is crucial.

Thats all I can think of hope that helps. There are probably many more qualified people to talk about this subject, but since I just started my team around 5 months ago, thought I'd take a shot. Good luck with your efforts, and remember that with enough effort, you can convince them because it is after all their duty to educate undergrads before research or contributing to society.

[Anvit Garg]

I have spent the last 1.5 years trying to get the ME/Engineering college to let us do FSAE. To add insult, the Technology department allows their students to participate in ALL SAE competitions.

We started to make progress and became impatient. So we did #6 on Aaron@Kaist's list. BIG MISTAKE. See, we were dealing with the head of ME, the new president of UH was trying to improve our school by having students email her suggestions/complaints. She took our email, and sent it all around campus. A few days later, I get a brief email from a Dean of Engineering to come in, and the subject title said SAE CAR.

I take off work and come in all excited... I get chewed out by some arrogant douche bag and he talks down to me for 15 minutes. Following that the head of the ME department calls my cell phone and chews me out and wants all the names of the people that contacted the president. Since I was one of those people, I decided to take the blame. As a result, we lost the only faculty member who was our FSAE adviser.

Ok on a positive note, one of the major problems is that in the event of an injury, the faculty adviser is NOT covered legally for any lawsuits incurred and he/she has to pay out of their pocket. Unless your university has some protection, or makes it a university sponsored thing. At my school, the Honors college has a PURS research scholarship. I decided to get with our former faculty adviser and propose a research on a hybrid performance vehicle (FSAE Hybrid), compared to the other proposals, the scholarship was approved thus making it a university sponsored event. Also, if you have a CAPSTONE program, and the professor approves of your FSAE project, it again can be approved by legal means.

The ONLY thing UH has helped us with is to allow money to be donated to the College (which is a tax exempt organization) who in turn cut us a check. I just am hoping it is for the entire amount, and that they don't charge us a handling fee.

The ONLY thing the Department Chairs or the Deans care about is numbers (warm bodies). So you have to sell them this project as potential for recruitment. Since I have a good relation with most of the ME professors, they allow me to come into the freshman ME seminar classes and present our team to help recruit students. Sell it that way.

What I don't understand is that the Graduate students are where their bread and butter/slavery comes from, don't they want me to stay?? I mean the majority of the people on my SAE team are honors or are in the accelerated graduate program. I guess I can take my butt to a college that respects their students.

[Anvit Garg]

If the above post is too long, just remember:

Please do not "screw the red tape" because you will end up screwing yourself like a big dog.

No insult intended to the original poster, just going off personal experience when dealing with people who don't care.

And also, they dont care about what kind of engineers they produce, only numbers. Its a sad but true truth. Whats in it for them?

(Anyone who disagrees, think back to a few of your engineering classes, I am SURE you can pick out a few that you would never trust operating something designed from them. It happens everywhere, I have been in the Army since 2003, and there are quite a few that I would not want standing behind me or leading others onto the field...)

[samphlett]

FSAE did not exist when I was at university. We did mind-numbingly boring design projects, where we got to design some hypothetical widget that would never be built or tested. Zero interest. Zero relevance.

Over in www.eng-tips.com (http://www.eng-tips.com) there are many discussions about how best to educate new engineers and how to equip them with the skills and experience required to perform in industry. I cannot think of anything better that FSAE.

[exFSAE]

I don't know if I'd say the ME Department supported us as much as tolerated us. Some faculty really liked what we do, some don't.

Our first ever FSAE year that produced a car was 1998 I believe. Start simple. For our senior design / capstone project you can either do one of the "canned" projects given from industry, or you can propose something. These guys proposed a FSAE car, and one faculty member was cool enough to champion it. Department gave them $1000 (same as any other project) and off they went. Lot of out-of-pocket expense, and the car was literally built in a closet-looking room off in the corner.

Our campus lawyers would never officially sanction us since its a massive liability, but so long as we stayed out of trouble we kept under their radar.

From there, build momentum. Try to tap into any student projects funds around on campus. Get as many sponsors as possible. We brought in a lot of on-campus recruiting, did tours etc. HS kids loved the racecar. We got to make some friends in the faculty and leverage that a bit.

The folks who did support us recognized the value in the program. You learn a hell of a lot more practical knowledge than almost any other senior design project. The networking is huge. Many major employers specifically seek out SAE Collegeiate Design graduates.

[kapps]

That's how we started as well... sr. design project that had minimal funding. Now, we've grown a bit and get a decent amount of money from SGA ($6k this year, $4k previously). The MMAE department helps us out by paying for our entrance fees for the race and we have several sponsors that help us out with parts. We're finally getting a couple monetary sponsors as well. Still, we are barely scraping by and all the dedicated guys end up spending their own money on things towards the end.

One of the big things we stress to new members and administration is that FSAE gives Engineering students a chance to practice what they are taught and go beyond the classroom into real Engineering. I probably learned more doing research for FSAE than I did in most of my classes. How many new members have you had come out and not know the difference between a mill and a drill press? At our school, we have a manufacturing class that is mainly for industrials but ME's can get into it as well. If you don't take that class, it's possible for an Engineer to graduate and go out to the workforce without ever being inside a machine shop. How can you design a part without knowing the capabilities of the machine that will be making it?

[JamesWolak]

What really helps us is that all of our other projects fail miserably and we make sure to point it out.

[Scalesy]

We got 11k from SGA last year because basically 2 of us went and cried about the expense of going to California (which was true). Having a lot of members is very important, they like supporting clubs with a lot of members with different majors, instead of just a handful of ME majors.

What really helps when you make a campaign for money is to bring pictures, or even the car itself to them. Most of these people doing budgets have NO IDEA how fsae differs from every other club out there.

A race car definitely costs more than paintball...

[Ben Mies]

I've been looking into this topic a great deal, particularly over the last month or so.

Within our institution, the Formula and Baja vehicles have historically been solely Senior Design Projects. Funding came into the ME dept to then allocate into the groups. Of course, funding was limited and outside sponsorship is always a necessity. This year, for a number of good reasons, funding was decreased and will be decreased further next year. Hence, the close look at the funding situation.

As senior design projects, it is not, necessarily, in the ME department's best interest to fund the competition effort. Their goal is to provide a good design project to 2 groups of around ten seniors. Thus, going to competition is not a necessity, nor are the public relations matters. A great portion of the funding, necessary for being competitive, is not in the car itself but in marketing, promotion events, travel, spares, etc. So, it becomes necessary to find funding sources outside the ME dept.

Think about the press generated through a well run FormulaSAE effort. Shouldn't the admissions dept want to capitalize on that? 5k should be chump change to a well run admissions dpt and this could cover a lot of your travel expenses and team apparel. In exchange, show up to promo events around campus and make a promo video for the admissions dept. Both are things you should do for recruitment purposes anyway.

Think about the management and marketing opportunities available and try to draw in support (students, advisers, and money) from those departments on campus. Senior projects for them are available within the intent of this competition.

Same goes for accounting and business.

Electrical Engineering and Computer Programming could jump on board as well.

Hell, you could even get the Civil Engineering dept to play with tire to track models if you were really good. The opportunities are rather unlimited, you've just got to appeal to different markets.

The student government should love this group as it gives students from all areas something to do.

Those are a ton of funding options available within the 'normal' engineering school. And, we haven't even gotten to outside sponsors yet. You need to be creative, passionate about the personal and school growth available through FSAE, and a good talker.

All of this, combined, involves a hell of an organizational effort, and realistically, achieving a sustainable source of funds, without a lump sum donation, will be a lengthy process. But, efforts made in this manner are impressive to everyone, and when they see the involvement and depth in the program, they'll be more likely to say yes when you inevitably ask for more.

[Prohet][]

I completely agree with you Ben. I'm from the electrical school at my uni and I was practicly shunned for going to the mech school to work on the car. I even tried to convice the heads that the project could benifit the electrical schools but they weren't interested.

Besides that, our Mech school puts in alot of money. I won't mention a figure but its alot more then any other uni puts in that I know of. Its a one off payment though and comes with practicly no support. The school expects a return with exposure but the return could be much better if the gave less money but more support with supervisors and people who beleive in the project.

I wouldn't be suprised if UniSA stops competing all together in the future though, we have had some tough years with organisation and I think the only thing that will save the project is for someone to come in for a few years and get paid to supervisor part or full time and get whole uni behind the project and make sure students are doing the right things with organisation.

[suspended_embedded]

Our university is still not convinced even after 8 months of prodding that this thing will give students much to learn. They think that it will do no good to mankind !!!!
The big guys are busy with their paperwork etc. so no time for students. Yes, they can sign any letter to grant us credibility though which has helped us to get a naught in our bank account.

After this much time of convincing, even the top brass of govt. and companies and also with just an year left .....with a heavy heart we may have to shelve it even.... http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_frown.gif http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_frown.gif

[Umur Selek]

This is what I did:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZMv411jElQ

and more here : http://rfr.rutgers.edu/


Some schools only care about the money that comes in the account. More attractions = More students = more money.

At least I believe that's how our school works. So we try to do everything we can to get our name (therefore the school's name) out there. And word gets around quicker than you can think.

Hit up the newspapers and magazines around you. Get the school newspaper do a piece on you guys. Hand out newsletters to keep people updated..etc.

None of us teams can expect to get help without helping them in some way.

We struggle every year and spend thousands out of our own pockets for something that we love to do but we've learned to adapt to it and every year, we try to spend less money out of our own pockets.


Good luck!

[Rotary Sprocket]

Universities will support FSAE if you can show the administrators how it will benefit their school. This can be done by describing how your team can potentially increase the number of students enrolled in the engineering department, by giving the university exposure at competitions and other SAE sanctioned events, by proving that you can complete a project on time because they won't waste their time on you if you never finish anything and finally describe how the real world experience you will gain from the team will assist you in life after college. I know myself, along with other alumni, can credit many of the skills and knowledge I gained to FSAE.