“It’s all or nothing this time.”
That’s what Purdue Calumet SAE (Student Auto Engineering) President, Terrence Bennett, said to me when I asked him about the importance of the Formula SAE race car that him and his team of 4 other students were currently working on.
Their dream is to build an actual race car that will take place in a competition at Michigan International Speedway. But the reality is, their graduation depends on it.
The FSAE project, as it is called, has been a dream at Purdue Calumet for the past seven years. Along the way ambitious engineers would give it a go, but due to a myriad of issues it never came to completion. It was just a fun project to the builders of the past, something that if it didn’t get completed was not the end of the world.
Plus, as is the case when you’re doing something for the first time, it was hard to get students involved on the project with no final product to showcase; all past members could do was try to sell prospective kids on words and a dream.
“It was hard to get people to join because this has never been done,” Bennett told me. “We don’t have a car built so when people came to the meetings there was nothing to show, we just had ideas.”
Bennett saw these issues, and knew that if this dream of having a race car built at Purdue Calumet was ever to come to life that the stakes were going to have to be raised. Commitment had to be all in. And if meant staking his graduation on it then so be it, him and his team care that much about getting to Detroit and being the first students to complete the project that seemed like it could never be done.
“At Purdue Calumet we have to do a Senior Design Project to graduate,” said Bennett. “And this our Senior Design Project. This is a big interest now and we’re all invested in it.”
And just like that this project went from a fun idea to an all-or-nothing venture. And Bennett and his team are treating it as such.
The team worked hard to become an official student organization to give the club merit. One of the members made the trip out to Detroit to the last FSAE race to see just what it takes to build and race one of these cars. Another, who worked with an Indy Car team, was able to secure a Formula 500 race car to give the team an idea of how to build the car. Because, as Bennett puts it, “none of us have obviously ever built a race car before.” And they’re all furiously creating and handing out fliers to secure sponsorships and donations to raise the approximate $20,000 they need to complete this project.
“Everyone on the team is very ambitious about getting this done,” added Bennett.
There’s hope now for this project, Bennett concludes, because they finally have a team who is fully-committed and pulling in the right direction. A team that is going to see this project all the way to the finish line.
If you are a Purdue Calumet student looking to get involved in the FSAE project, or just someone who would like to find out how you can help, feel free to email the team at fsae@purduecal.edu.