Dr. Donald Visco, interim dean of the College of Engineering, is pictured on the far left with these Seiberling Learning Center students, along with UA President Matthew Wilson and Soap Box Derby Vice President Bobby Dinkins.
University of Akron President Matthew J. Wilson today announced that the College of Engineering is partnering with the Soap Box Derby on its Gravity Racing Challenge (GRC) STEM Team Competition. The college has been named the presenting sponsor of the competitions held in Akron, Cleveland, Columbus and Marysville, Ohio.
“This is a collaboration we believe will help more students not only become proficient in the STEM subjects of science, technology, engineering and math, but also excited about them,” said Wilson.
In 2016, 166 teams of students in grades 3-12 participated in the Akron GRC STEM Team Competition, which is the Derby’s education-based STEM initiative that aims to engage students in critical skills, including project-based learning, problem solving, critical thinking, life and career skills, measurable outcomes and experiential learning. Students work in classroom and after school settings to build a Soap Box Derby car to race in the competition.
“We look forward to exposing more students to our STEM-based education programs through our collaboration,” said Soap Box Derby Vice President Bobby Dinkins. “We’ve partnered with the College of Engineering on several projects recently and feel this is a perfect fit because so many of the kids who become involved with Soap Box Derby racing are future engineers.”
University of Akron President Matthew Wilson and a future Gravity Racing Challenge competitor take a selfie at Seiberling Community Learning Center.
The new partnership is a continuation of an ongoing relationship between the SBD and UA’s College of Engineering. In 2015, the National Science Foundation awarded a $750,000 grant to UA’s College of Engineering and Lebron James Family Foundation College of Education, SBD and Akron Public Schools (APS) to formally design, integrate and evaluate the impact of curriculum around the Soap Box Derby Mini-Cars. As part of that project, called Zipping Towards STEM, senior engineering students at UA worked with APS eighth-grade teachers in the classroom to help reinforce the engineering design process and technical content associated with the Mini-Cars project.
The College of Engineering will also place three teams of UA freshmen in the Soap Box Derby’s new pilot collegiate engineering design challenge. These teams will build cars and then compete against other colleges in the first year of this new Derby initiative.
“A student participating and excelling in the GRC is someone we think would be attracted to engineering and STEM careers in the future,” said Dr. Donald Visco, interim dean of UA’s College of Engineering. “I can imagine those students, several years from now, going to school at The University of Akron and participating in one of our many award-winning student design teams, such as the Formula race car team, NASA robotics team, our Akronauts rocket team or the many other teams and organizations within engineering that span our disciplines, whether engineering or STEM.”
An excited student talks about participating in the Gravity Racing Challenge with reporter Jennifer Jordan of Fox 8 News.
Media contact: Dan Minnich, 330-972-6476 or dminnich@uakron.edu.