Academic Credit for FSAE participation - benchmarking study.

[Mark_Silverberg]

As a long time FSAE judge (over 20 years) and an automotive industry professional I have been asked to discuss the FSAE competition and program at one of my former universities. The purpose of this visit is to make university officials aware of the importance of a strong FSAE program.

One area I would like to discuss is academic credit for FSAE participation. While some schools do allow class credit, in others FSAE is purely an extracurricular activity.

If you could provide me with information regarding your school’s practices it would be greatly appreciated. I am sure others on the board may find this interesting as well.

If you could share the following information it would be greatly appreciated.

Country of school

Type of school – public or private (primarily applicable to the US)

Credits available / possible for FSAE participation by academic year


1st year /freshman year
2nd year / sophomore year
3rd year / junior year
4th year / senior year


Name of school (optional)


Time of FSAE participation –such as

Present student
Within the last five years
5 -10 years ago
More than 10 years ago.

I am basically trying to create a benchmark as to what credits should be available to FSAE participants and if the availability of credits for FSAE participation has increased in proportion to the status of the competition.

Your cooperation would be greatly appreciated. I will try to provide a summary of results if there is sufficient response.

[JulianH]

Hey Mark,

we can benefit from credits at our university, as for your questions:

Switzerland
Public
3rd year Bachelor students (14 credits for the whole year, max. 16 people)
ETH Zurich

I was a team member in the last four years (got my 14 credits for the 2012 season) and are now just advising the new team.


Cheers!

[cal_len1]

Mark,

USA

Public University

Credits are only available to seniors, as they can use it as their senior capstone project. 6 credits are available. If students participate with less than senior status participate, it is all extracurricular.

South Dakota School of Mines and Technology.

I am currently a senior on the team.

Callen Schmalz
SDSM&T Formula SAE
Drivetrain/Corners Lead - 2013-2014
Drivetrain Lead - 2012-2013

[UW-P Kevin]

USA

Public University

No formal credit available. Could do as independent study (1-3 credits) if extremely motivated, or use class projects that pertain to the car. If it were turned into a credit producing project, there is a possibility we would loose funding from the university as a "student organization"

University of Wisconsin-Platteville

Present student on team (~4th year of participation, and am a team captain)

Kevin Mikulski
University of Wisconsin-Platteville Formula SAE
Team Captain 2013-14
Aerodynamics/CFD Captain 2012-2014
Driver Interface Co-Captain 2012-13

[tromoly]

USA

Private University

Twelve students are assigned to be "on" the team for their Senior Design project as deemed fit by the professor in charge of the class, the students receive a total of 4 credits spread across two semesters for their FSAE project. Involvement by anyone other than those 12 individuals is extra-curricular.

Bradley University

Present Underclassmen on team, 2nd year of involvement.

[exFSAE]

I'll preface this by saying there's what was done (the FSAE program at my uni no longer exists), and there's what could have been best practice - at least in my experience now as an engineer in the automotive (specifically racing) field for the past 6 years.

How it was:
United States
Public university (University of Shall Not Be Named) within the past 5-10 years
Mainly you got credit for two semesters as a senior with "FSAE" being your capstone project. You could also do an independent study any other year. A handful of us did them, mainly as juniors, on design-related projects on the car. Mostly freshman, sophomore, and juniors were all onboard on a purely volunteer basis though.

With that said, I think it could have been done much better. The faculty advisement was fairly hands off, which was nice having freedom, but also meant us idiots just ran the thing however we wanted. Ultimately wasn't in the long term goals of the department and was shit-canned within a few years of my graduation. In retrospect I think best practice would have been to have much more faculty involvement and have the program open as an "engineering projects" class for juniors and seniors of several majors. It's a great opportunity for a multi-discipline collaborative project, why not embrace it as such?

[jd74914]

USA

Public University

3 Credits available via elective class (open to sophomores and up, ~20 slots). Members can take the class more than once. Note that the class is geared towards FSAE, but is not associated with FSAE. Associating a class with the organization would cause it to loose funding as it would cease to be a club/student-run organization.

Present student (7 years of participation and currently working on my MS)



Editorial Comments:
For the record I have never taken the class; it was offered after my time as an undergraduate. My experience has been that it does not meaningfully increase FSAE participation. In fact, in the two years the class has been offered, only 1 or 2 students who had not previously been on the team joined. I think this is because the general engineering public sees it as a way to get easy elective credit, so they have no motivation to join the team. Interestingly, many of the most dedicated team members have not taken the offered class.

In general I feel that the education value of the class is sub-par (when compared to other classes) because no professors have expertise in the area or time to dedicate to putting together a good curriculum. In my opinion it dilutes the merit of the actual project because the overall school sees class output and not always actual team output.

[mdavis]

US
Public school
Credits available / possible for FSAE participation by academic year
FSAE is a volunteer project/student group for anyone but only Seniors were able to get class credit for it. There are 2 ways for seniors to gain credit: as a senior design project or as part of the senior departmental electives.
University of Cincinnati, a 5 year Mechanical Engineering program with mandatory co-op (freshman year is 2 semesters of study, then alternating school and co-op for 3 years, including the summer before senior year being co-op, then a full year of class for senior year).

Volunteer in 2011-2012 school year, then I used FSAE for my department electives as a senior and did a separate senior design project.

We also had fairly lax input from the professor that ran the team/was the adviser for the Student group. Well, that was the case for 2013, as we had ~5 guys that were coming back to the team that had been involved in some capacity during the up to 4 years before our senior year. That meant 1 guy being involved all 5 years, and I had the 2nd most "experience" with the 1 full year of time on the team. In years where there hasn't been much (or as in some years, any) involvement from the seniors before their time being in charge of the team, he takes a much more involved role. It's good in that he understands that he doesn't know everything about cars (he's a Vibes guy), but it's also a bit of an issue since he has pet projects that he pushes. The way to get around these pet projects and to do well was basically to ignore what he said about technical guidance on the car, and do what we wanted. He also went to bat for us a decent bit when it came to the University (big university politics suck). Unfortunately, he is getting close to retirement, and there isn't really anyone else within the university that seems to want to take on the adviser role for the team, so who knows how long that will last. I think the biggest thing is getting buy in from other professors (even within the Mechanical Engineering department) and their support, even if it just means allowing a current team member to come into their class and make a presentation about the team/project without telling people not to get involved because they will flunk out right after the team member walks out the door.

These are just my observations as a team member, and should not be construed as the thoughts/opinions of anyone else within or affiliated to the University of Cincinnati.

-Matt

[uG]

Hi all,

Canada
Public
Three third year "personnal project" credits
And six fourth year "capstone credits" (but hard to set up, since capstones projects often don't have the same timing issues than FSAE teams)

Polytechnique Montréal

Present (grad) student.

Regards.

[mbastani]

USA

Type of school – public

Credits available / possible for FSAE participation by academic year

1st year /freshman year: 1 Credit Hour/Semester
2nd year / sophomore year 1 Credit Hour/Semester
3rd year / junior year 3 credit hour/semester
4th year / senior year Senior Design fulfilled or 3 credit hour/sem

Present student

[Jay Lawrence]

Australia

Public university

My recollection is that anyone at any stage in their degree can do a 'special topic' on the car, which wis for 6 credit points I believe. I was powertrain leader and did not do one. Typically, those who sacrificed general uni marks because they spent a lot of time on the car were the ones who did special topics, in order to bring their marks back up. You can also do your final year thesis on the car (as I did), which is 12 (standard) or 18 (honours) credit points. Thesis projects almost never made it to the car, special topics often did.

University of Wollongong

I finished up 4 years ago

[Thibault HUGUET]

France

Public

Credits available / possible for FSAE participation by academic year

Each third year (school in 5 years after "baccalauréat") student must choose a project and FSAE is a possibility. If I remember well, 11 ECTS for the year for project. 1 Day per week is dedicated for this. We are totally free and without real help from our school about knowledge.

Voluntary is possible, mainly for ex team member, but for second year too in order to show them competition, the cars... Of course, some ex team members help the current team.

I'm active member, but my year of project was last year. It's my third year of work in FSAE team but the first was mainly to see and understand how to do for our year !

[kcapitan]

Canada

Public University

4th year students are allowed to design a part of the car for their Capstone project (a full year course worth 1 credit out of 5.5 credits required in 4th year)

All other students are 100% voluntary

I was on the team for four years and graduated last year.

University of Western Ontario

[Mbirt]

USA

Private University

No formal academic credit is available, but an independent study can be substituted for the 4 credit senior design/capstone course to cash in on the higher-level design and development we've already done.

Kettering University

Present student

[Will M]

USA

Public

An independent study is possible for Juniors and Seniors (does not replace cap-stone/senior design)

Finished 5 years on the team in 2012.

-William

[rz-jacks]

USA

Public

6 credits for 4th year / senior year. 3 in the fall as a "technical elective" for the design part, and 3 in the spring as "senior design" credit.

Present student

Purdue University

[bob.paasch]

Hi Mark:

Another data point:

USA
Public
4th year bachelor students: senior project: 4 credits fall, 4 credits winter
Oregon State University, Global Formula Racing
Faculty Advisor, 14th year

So some explanation. OSU operates on the quarter system, 3 terms per year (fall, winter, spring), 180 credits to graduate, so 15 credits per term is a nominal load. My first year, 1999, we had 5 seniors do their senior project on the FSAE car. They got a total of 4 credits for FSAE, 1 credit fall and 3 in winter. In 2002 I moved the SAE senior projects to a separate class, at 3 credits/term for two terms, 6 credits total. In 2005 we bumped that to 4 credits/term, 8 total, and that's where we are today, still a separate SAE section of senior capstone that covers FormulaSAE and BajaSAE. In addition, we have a Catia/Google class we teach for SAE that is 1 credit fall term and required for all SAE seniors. We have a sophomore level projects class in motorsports engineering that my GTAs teach, 1 credit each in fall and winter term. Project credit, generally limited to 4 credits, is available to team captains, to students that want to continue their senior project work into spring term, and to underclassmen who in my opinion are putting in extraordinary effort.

We are a combined School: Mechanical, Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering. About a third of the MIME seniors do their senior capstone on SAE: Baja or Formula. This year that's 45 seniors on Formula, 22 on Baja.

[BeunMan]

Netherlands

public (by law, no numerus fixus)

Credits available / possible for FSAE participation by academic year (The system is a bit different from the US one but should translate to the international standards of Bachelor/Master systems)
1 -- 1st year (Start BSc, Mech.Eng. students need to do a internship of 3 weeks and can do this at DUT Racing, nothing special as it is too late into the FS year to design/build actual things for the car. Should be fun though)
0 -- 2nd year
30 -- 3rd year (end of BSc, see below)
0 -- 4th year / (Start of MSc)
0 -- 5th year (end of MSc)

Delft University of Technology

Within last 5 years. Situation is still the same.

Little explanation about how you get these 30 points:
In you 3rd year you need do do a minor track (with respect to the master field of expertise) of 30 ECTS/points (of 60 in a year so half of that) in either a different field of study or specialization. The 'Dreamteam'-minor track is a specialization of the department of Mechanical Engineering, but is open to all students of the TU Delft. You need to apply for this minor and get selected by the teams (Either the Nuna solarcar, DUT Racing (FS), Ecorunner and a lot more are available but places are limited to about max 10-12 per team). Of the 30 ECTS about 4 of them are in planning, teamwork and management courses, 18 as an assignment given by the teams/selected by you (design, build and validate your part using the things you learned during your BSc) and the remaining 8 is additional courses which you might need to be able to design the part. During the 6 months there are several evaluations about your work with PhD's, Professors and former team members who will grade both the way you design your part (process) as well as the design itself.
I did it myself and it is quite though. You won't easily get a good grade (about max a 7 out of 10 where 6 is enough and everything below is a fail. I have no idea how this relates to the A-F scheme) and it take a lot of work but FS does that anyway ;) . No easy points here, but if you are going to put serious effort into an FS team it is a good way to also get credit for it.

There is currently no way to get credit any other way.