International Education Outreach: A Report on the SAE Baja Workshops in India

Abstract

The Baja Collegiate Design Series is a competition that presents engineering educators with an opportunity to offer students a meaningful, hands-on, team learning experience. Each year as many as 140 Baja cars are entered in the Baja SAE events across the US and around the world. Each team's goal is to design and build a prototype of a rugged, single seat, off-road recreational vehicle intended for sale to the non-professional weekend off-road enthusiast. The teams are judged on ergonomics, functionality, and producibility of their cars in addition to a combination of static and dynamic race events. The Mechanical Engineering department at Tennessee Technological University (TTU) has long been affiliated with the Baja SAE competition, having hosted the event 5 times and placed in the top 10 over 80% of the time since 1977. SAE India recognized the value of this hands-on experience and initiated a similar program for universities in India in 2006. In order to provide the required experience and expertise for the Indian teams to compete in the international competitions, SAE-India partnered with TTU to conduct workshops and advise Indian college students on building and racing a competitive SAE Baja vehicle.

This paper presents a report on a recent trip over a period of 16 days by a group of nine students and two professors from TTU to conduct workshops and interact with about 1000 Indian college students at three different sites. They held demonstrations using TTU's 2011 winning vehicle and gave technical presentations on various aspects of designing, building and racing a winning vehicle. In addition to visiting some industries in Pune, India, the team toured the Jaipur foot factory (jaipurfoot.org) and enjoyed some cultural immersions, visiting the Taj Mahal, Golden Temple and Jaipur Palace along the way. Overall, it was an extremely beneficial experience to students from both countries as summarized in one student's journal entry:

"We brought home a ton of pictures, stories, and experiences to share with everyone here. I think we learned as much, if not more, than everyone we were teaching at the workshops. I think we made a great impact going over there, and we formed a lot of strong partnerships and relationships that will hopefully carry on into the future. I know I am more culturally connected than when I left, and I think I will have a better time understanding our international students here as well. I'm so grateful that I got to be a part of this amazing journey."