What We Do

SAE Baja is student driven design challenge that helps students improve many important design, organizational, and management skills. The overall goal of the club is to build a small off road vehicle with which we can compete against other schools in a variety of events. The goals of the events help guide the design process and the vehicles success in the events provides a gauge against other designs as well as guidance for future designs. So far we have successfully built two cars and competed in the mid western competition in 2006. Here our conservative designs performed reasonably well, but racing just gives you that drive to be the best, to take it up to the next level.

Because we are a completely student run organization, we face many additional challenges in addition to designing a car. In particular we have to provide the organization and structure needed to accomplish a project of this scope. This real world aspect of design is what sets Baja apart from textbook learning and small-scale projects. Management, marketing, and full-size fabrication are all aspects of design that so often get missed in class, but play a huge part in the success of our Baja team.

For me, participating in Baja has been a good experience because of the real world experience it gives me. At the beginning of freshmen year the Baja design project plunged me straight into engineering and design that I am not going to experience in most of my classes. For example from day one, we were designing a small trailer to carry important tools and supplies when we were testing the car. In this project, we started with no leadership or specific direction. Much like in a real design situation, we had to as a group establish what we wished to accomplish, subdivide tasks extensively and in the end integrate our individual components.

Overall I'm really glad that I've been able to participate and would encourage you to check out the pictures of what we're doing and consider how you can help make Baja possible at Olin.

Spencer Backus
Class of 2010