‘Not like your high school science fair’: UNM engineering students build race cars and rockets — and job-market skills

Tucked into the southwest corner of the University of New Mexico’s main campus are three labs where a specific group of advanced mechanical engineering students spend most of their time — in class, on the weekends, even at 3 a.m. some days. They describe the work they’re doing as a full-time job, and more.

The students are building electric vehicles, solar-powered boats and rockets from scratch, in less than two years, to compete in international competitions.

UNM’s School of Engineering requires students to complete a senior design program to graduate. All of these hands-on, nontraditional education courses are offered as options.

“We are training engineers; therefore, the engineer must prove that he or she is an engineer, can work in a team, can design, build, test and so on, a product,” said John Russell, a professor in the university’s Department of Mechanical Engineering.

He also runs LOBOmotorsports, a three-semester course that prepares students to compete in the international collegiate competition Formula SAE. The students are responsible for designing, building and racing a small formula-style race car.

But in the bigger picture, the skill sets taught help the students immediately enter the workforce upon graduation.

“It’s not like your high school science fair,” Russell said.

Past a software lab, 3D printing and design area, and an aerodynamics facility, seven racing cars in various stages of assembly sat in a small, walled-off space at the LOBOmotorsports building on Wednesday. In the corner of the room sat a mostly red electric racing car — No. 267.

It’s the most recently built competition racing car, just back from F-SAE last month and awaiting the results. Recent graduates Tim Crepeau and Andrew Suplicki led the team that competed against more than 100 other teams from around the world in the electric vehicle racing car category.

“It’s everything-engineering,” Suplicki said.

Judges score the cars based on a series of technical inspections and dynamic events. This year, the battery box inspection created some challenges for the team. After dousing the car in water, the students have to prove it can still run for two minutes without short-circuiting. Russell said the team this year reached 1 minute and 45 seconds.

Despite the technical troubles, the hands-on experience is the real win for the students. Crepeau credited his current internship with Sandia National Laboratories to having participated in LOBOmotorsports. An alumnus of the course who works at Sandia saw the reference on Crepeau’s application.

He’s entering graduate school at UNM in the fall and one day wants to build his own race car.

“Coming out of the program, even just knowing how to weld is huge. That’s something that really gives you an advantage,” Crepeau said.

A building over, a small wooden trophy sat in another much smaller lab. It’s awaiting a first-place plaque, a recognition that the UNM Solar Splash team designed, built and piloted the best solar-powered boat in the international competition held last month.

Solar Splash is another senior design course that goes beyond the black-and-white scenarios presented in academia, said faculty adviser Peter Vorobieff. What should a student do if a part doesn’t arrive on time, he asked; can they build it instead?

“It is a stress test for their skills and their temperaments, which I think provides some very useful real-world experience,” he said of the two-semester course. “Plus, it also gives the students a good understanding of technologies whose combination will most definitely be more prominent in the immediate future.”

Preparing students for rapidly advancing technologies is also a priority over at Lobo Launch, the two-semester rocket-building senior capstone option. Across University Boulevard, recent graduate Luis Quintana waited outside a bright pink building that houses a sprawling assortment of partly assembled rockets.

Quintana competed on a team with seven other students in early June at this year’s International Rocket Engineering Competition in Midland, Texas, formerly hosted at southern New Mexico’s Spaceport America.

“This is our rocket,” he said inside the dimly lit lab, gesturing to a 110-inch miniature rocket in two pieces. “Unfortunately, it didn’t deploy the main parachute, which is why it fell apart.”

But, he added with a laugh, UNM beat New Mexico State University and New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology.

This year, UNM’s rocket lab wrecked $30,000 worth of rockets — a test and trial process that’s crucial to learning in the field, said rocket engineering Professor Fernando “Doc” Aguilar. He added that the equipment isn’t cheap.

Aguilar is currently in talks with the university seeking more funding to help professionalize Lobo Launch, including hiring a full-time program manager. He also recently secured two unpaid mentors to assist the students, starting in the fall semester.

All three capstone programs rely on fundraising through private sponsors in addition to university money.

All of Aguilar’s rocket lab students have been hired right out of college or accepted into a master’s degree program, he said.

“My students, when they graduate, they hit the ground running,” he said.