November 15, 2002
The mechanical engineering department’s award-winning Formula SAE car was a recent crowd pleaser at J.J. “Jake” Pickle Elementary School in Austin, where wide-eyed grade schoolers flocked to their gymnasium to view exhibits on topics ranging from science and technology to drama, business, geography and nursing. .
The November 12 event—attended by UT president Larry Faulkner, Austin school superintendent Pat Forgione, Commissioner of Higher Education Don Brown, and numerous state and local education officials—was the kickoff for “Closing the Gap”, a statewide outreach initiative, authorized by the legislature and directed by the Higher Education Coordinating Board, to attract more Texas public school students to the idea of attending college one day. According to Brown, Texas has fallen behind in the percent-age of its residents pursuing higher education, “leaving Texas on a path to becoming a less educated, less prosperous state.” The current campaign is aimed at helping the state bring 300,000 additional academically prepared people—beyond the 200,000 additional students anticipated based on current trends—into higher education by 2015. It targets low-income groups and areas of the state where participation in post-secondary education is historically low.
Comparable activities were held concurrently in two dozen other cities across Texas including Dallas, Houston and San Antonio.
Among the six local universities to participate, each championing a different subject area, UT Austin was charged with promoting science and technology. UT’s booths reflected the Department of Mechanical Engineering, the physics department and Texas Memorial Museum.
Professor Ronald Matthews, Carl J. Eckhardt Fellow in Engineering and faculty sponsor of the Formula Car SAE team, is the original founder of collegiate Formula Car design competition which has grown from four teams competing at UT Austin in 1981 to the more than 50 from all over the world that sent entries to the 2002 SAE World Congress and Exhibition in Detroit last spring. The cars vie in a variety of autocross and design categories.
Mechanical engineering sophomore Rex Travis and Alan Stanard, a graduate student in mechanical engineering, showed the car to classes of children aged kindergarten through third grade. “We fired up the car each time,” Travis said. “The kids really liked that.”
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