Student Team Projects
Not all learning at the College of Engineering takes place in the classroom. Much of it occurs in group activities -- in student clubs, in student chapters of professional societies, in co-operative internships and in special team projects. These venues are ideal for learning about practical applications of engineering skills, time management, interpersonal skills and leadership.
Because group activity is now an essential learning experience, Michigan Engineering fosters a number of team projects.
Baja Racing
Concrete Canoe
FEGI
Formula Car
Human-Powered Helicopter
Human-Powered Submarine
Mars Rover
Solar Car
Steel Bridge
Baja Racing -- Off-road racing is a punishing test for automotive products. So the Society of Automotive Engineers, 
through its student chapters, conducts the Baja Racing program, challenging participants to design and build vehicles that can take on rough terrain, climbing, accelerating, and maneuvering, and endure more punishment, than a highway could provide. With support from a number of sponsors, Michigan Engineering's Baja team is a regular competitor, building off-road vehicles that demonstrate a superior level of mechanical design, safety and endurance, and the ability to take on rugged landscape. Yet another part of the competition requires the team to present a polished engineering sales presentation.
Concrete Canoe -- Throughout each semester, the 
Michigan Concrete Canoe team works together to design, fabricate and race a canoe made from concrete. The team then races its canoe in various sprint and slalom events as part of an annual collegiate competition. A team's success depends not only on its performance in the race but on the fabrication and presentation of the canoe. The American Society of Civil Engineers' student chapter oversees this project, which promotes the design of new concrete mixtures and encourages the involvement of undergraduates in advanced research, project management and intercollegiate competition.
FEGI -- The Field Emission Get-Away Special Investigation (FEGI) project involves students at the University of Michigan Student Space System Fabrication Lab as well as students from Penn State University. The objective is to study cathode technology for controls that stabilize spacecraft in an extraterrestrial environment.
Formula Car -- This project assembles a team that must design, build and race a small formula car that's high-performance, low-cost and easy to maintain. In an annual race conducted by the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE), judges rate the cars on their safety, cost, design and presentation, as well as their performance in a series of events including acceleration, skidpad, autocross and endurance. The SAE formula-car competition is the largest engineering student competition in the world, attracting teams from 140 universities in the United States, Canada, Mexico, the United Kingdom, Korea, Japan and Venezuela.
Human-Powered Helicopter -- In 1980, the American Helicopter Society introduced the Sikorsky Prize, an offer of $20,000 to the first group that demonstrates controlled human-powered vertical flight. To date, the prize is
still up for grabs. And members of Michigan Engineering's Human-Powered Helicopter team are hard at work, trying to build a craft that will do what no other has been able to do. The Human-Powered Helicopter project, a directed-study program in the Department of Aerospace Engineering, is a good example of the educational tenet that the search for an elusive answer is more instructive than finding it. The Human-Powered Helicopter team is an international group with students from the University of Michigan and the Warsaw University of Technology (Poland).
Human-Powered Submarine -- The principal objective for 
this team is to make innovative use of materials, hydrodynamic design, buoyancy, propulsion and underwater life-support in the design of a human-powered submarine -- these are technologies and problems that have intrigued and puzzled engineers for more than 200 years. The secondary objective is to increase public awareness of underwater technology.
The highlight of the team's work is the biannual International Submarine Races (ISR), held in an indoor tank -- one of the world's largest -- at the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Bethesda, Maryland. The competition dates to 1989 and, today, attracts competitors from around the world. In 2001, the team took first place among two-person submarines in the 6th ISR.
Mars Rover -- The Mars Rover program is an ongoing research project in which a
student team designs, builds and tests prototypes of manned rovers for use in a human mission to Mars. A Michigan Engineering team designed and built one of the world's first prototypes, called "Everest," basing it on an Army FMTV cargo truck. If a crew of four were to reach the Martian surface, Everest would be able to carry them up to 1000 kilometers. The team has tested Everest at the Mars Desert Research Station in Utah and at a Michigan rock quarry.
Solar Car -- One of the more visible team projects, the Solar Car undertaking involves a cross-section of students from the colleges of Engineering, and Literature, Science, and the Arts, and the schools of Art and Design, and Business. 
The group designs, builds, tests and races a vehicle that runs on solar power and batteries, and reaches freeway speeds on the same amount of electricity it takes to power a hair dryer. It's an impressive feat, but there's more to the Solar Car project than engineering. Students also attend to the business of developing a vehicle, keeping accounts, securing sponsors and marketing the team to generate interest. The Michigan Solar Car teams have won three national championships -- more than any other school -- and have finished in the top-10 in three international competitions. Whereas students don't receive credit or compensation for participating in the Solar Car program, their efforts do attract recruiters from automakers and other manufacturers.
Steel Bridge -- Yet another highly visible undertaking, the Steel Bridge project assembles a team from the student chapter of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE). 
This team designs and builds a working scale model of a steel highway bridge. The completed structure must sustain a vertical load of 2,500 pounds and a lateral load of 50 pounds. Judges rate each entry on speed of construction, weight, efficiency and aesthetics. The Michigan Steel Bridge team won the 2003 National Student Steel Bridge Competition, finishing first in a field of 44 competitors. More than 150 teams participated in regional competitions leading up to the final event.
