Proposals

Abstract

Students in the College of Engineering are now, more than ever, looking for ways to gain hands-on engineering experience throughout their college careers. With the recent shift to a Direct to College admissions system, students are joining engineering clubs earlier on and finding ways to get involved with more discipline-specific engineering experiences. Aside from the DTC change, the Department of Aeronautics & Astronautics has in recent years experienced a surge in applications, indicating high undergraduate interest in the field. The Society for Advanced Rocket Propulsion (SARP) provides a great way for students to gain hands-on, aerospace experience. Indeed, with the increased interest in aerospace, we have also seen a surge in applications to join our team. With over 200 student team members this year, we are modifying our team structure and adding goals to accommodate a larger team. We strive to provide meaningful opportunities to all students; however, we are doing this without any large increase in resources or funding. This year, we have secured an unfurnished workspace in the KWT building for assembly operations. Purchasing additional equipment and tools will allow us to expand our research and development projects in new ways, in turn giving us the capability to support a greater number of students who wish to learn about rocketry. With additional resources, we envision a larger student organization that is designing, building, and flying multiple sounding rockets per year - something other university rocketry teams have found success with. Adding physical resources of equipment & tools is a critical first step in the expansion of our organization. Interest in our team has been demonstrated - next is expanding our capabilities and programming to support the learning and technical development of all students who show interest in joining.