University of Florida College of Engineering Department of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering ASME UF C/O Dr. Anil Rao Gainesville, Florida 32611-6250 314 MAE-A, PO Box 116300 http :// www . mae . ufl . edu / asme / To whom it may concern, My name is Kevin Wilt, and I am the President of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) at the University of Florida (UF). Our chapter’s mission is to serve the growing mechanical engineering community at UF by providing opportunities for students to grow into professional engineers and become leaders in developing solutions for tomorrow’s real world problems. In carrying out our mission, we aim to provide essential opportunities, resources, and a networking hub for mechanical and aerospace engineering students. We strive to enhance the member’s experience and prepare them for a successful career during and after college. To make this vision a reality, we implement three strategic initiatives: 1. Integrated Design Teams 2. Community Outreach Events 3. Professional Development Programs Design Teams We currently sponsor six integrated design teams. Our first and longest standing team is the Human Powered Vehicle Competition (HPVC) team. On the HPVC team, engineering students work in teams to design and build a lightweight, composite, bicycle-like vehicle to compete against other universities across the nation. Working with the larger VEX Robotics Competition (VRC) league, our VEX team competes at the international level with robot designs. In this competition, students are challenged with designing, fabricating, and programming a remotely controlled robot to complete given objectives. The objective changes every year, encouraging the team to stay in a constant state of design. Every year, we also organize a Student Design Competition (SDC) team to represent UF at the regional Student Professional Development Conference (SPDC). The SDC challenge for this year has not been released, but last year the challenge was to design a remotely controlled vehicle that was able to negotiate around obstacles, navigate to inspection points, and bring a sensor back to the designated return area. The given objectives were inspired by the tragedy at the Fukushima nuclear facility, in addition to finding a solution to remotely determine levels of radioactivity and inspect for damage, and this year’s challenge is expected to be similar in structure. Also in the past year, ASME has joined together with the American Institute of Aeronautics & Astronautics (AIAA) and UF’s Formula Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) racecar team to pioneer the establishment of a Research and Development (R&D) team. This R&D team is now in place to explore, analyze, and validate research initiatives of the SAE team in order to give them a competitive edge in their international competition. The Foundation for the Gator Nation An Equal Opportunity Institution 1
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University of Florida College of EngineeringDepartment of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering
ASME UF C/O Dr. Anil Rao Gainesville, Florida 32611-6250
314 MAE-A, PO Box 116300http :// www . mae . ufl . edu / asme /
To whom it may concern,
My name is Kevin Wilt, and I am the President of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) at the University of Florida (UF). Our chapter’s mission is to serve the growing mechanical engineering community at UF by providing opportunities for students to grow into professional engineers and become leaders in developing solutions for tomorrow’s real world problems. In carrying out our mission, we aim to provide essential opportunities, resources, and a networking hub for mechanical and aerospace engineering students. We strive to enhance the member’s experience and prepare them for a successful career during and after college. To make this vision a reality, we implement three strategic initiatives:
1. Integrated Design Teams2. Community Outreach Events3. Professional Development Programs
Design Teams
We currently sponsor six integrated design teams. Our first and longest standing team is the Human Powered Vehicle Competition (HPVC) team. On the HPVC team, engineering students work in teams to design and build a lightweight, composite, bicycle-like vehicle to compete against other universities across the nation. Working with the larger VEX Robotics Competition (VRC) league, our VEX team competes at the international level with robot designs. In this competition, students are challenged with designing, fabricating, and programming a remotely controlled robot to complete given objectives. The objective changes every year, encouraging the team to stay in a constant state of design. Every year, we also organize a Student Design Competition (SDC) team to represent UF at the regional Student Professional Development Conference (SPDC). The SDC challenge for this year has not been released, but last year the challenge was to design a remotely controlled vehicle that was able to negotiate around obstacles, navigate to inspection points, and bring a sensor back to the designated return area. The given objectives were inspired by the tragedy at the Fukushima nuclear facility, in addition to finding a solution to remotely determine levels of radioactivity and inspect for damage, and this year’s challenge is expected to be similar in structure. Also in the past year, ASME has joined together with the American Institute of Aeronautics & Astronautics (AIAA) and UF’s Formula Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) racecar team to pioneer the establishment of a Research and Development (R&D) team. This R&D team is now in place to explore, analyze, and validate research initiatives of the SAE team in order to give them a competitive edge in their international competition.
I am excited to announce two new programs starting this fall semester. ASME will be taking part in a joint venture with the College of Medicine at the University of Florida to rejuvenate the Wilmot Gardens on the UF campus. These gardens are a rehabilitation tool utilized by UF & Shands to help recuperate patients from the Veterans Memorial Hospital and Shands Hospital in Gainesville. With support from the College of Engineering, our students will design, manufacture, and implement a new greenhouse in the gardens, as well as create gardening tables for handicapped patients. Along with this garden team, ASME at UF is also taking on the challenge of creating an underwater Remote Operated Vehicle (ROV) to compete in the international Marine Advanced Technology Education (MATE) competition. This team approached our leadership in the past year to create a new competition on the UF campus. They will compete with teams from all over the world in a competition that is highly integrated into high schools and colleges all over the United States. In their first year, they worked closely with a distinguished professor at UF to optimize his Vortex Ring Thrusters (VRTs) and are ready to now implement them on the full sized vehicle. We support all these different design teams because we believe they provide ASME members with a great platform to develop solutions to a range of design problems and begin cultivating the problem solving skills and experience that industry needs.
The Foundation for the Gator NationAn Equal Opportunity Institution
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University of Florida College of EngineeringDepartment of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering
ASME UF C/O Dr. Anil Rao Gainesville, Florida 32611-6250
314 MAE-A, PO Box 116300http :// www . mae . ufl . edu / asme /
Community Outreach Events
Reaching out to the surrounding community is a high priority at ASME. Every year, we take part in a program called GatorTRAX. GatorTRAX is an initiative that provides students from the local Gainesville community in grades K–12 with opportunities to learn mathematics and to stir excitement about engineering with free hands-on activities. Through GatorTRAX, we collaborate with other engineering organizations on campus to coordinate regular classroom instruction sessions, Saturday engineering programs, and campus tours. In addition to reaching out to students in the Gainesville community, we strive to connect with our fellow engineers on campus.
Last semester, we worked with several professors to coordinate ASME member-lead review sessions for core undergraduate engineering classes such as Control Systems Engineering, Mechanics of Materials, and Mechanical Statics. These sessions proved to be a tremendous success as there were more than 40 students in attendance. The feedback and testimonials we received from the students was overwhelmingly favorable as they reported feeling more confident before an exam and scored higher. Due to this positive feedback, we plan on continuing these review sessions. Our organization annually participates in the nationally recognized Engineering Week (E-Week) reaching more than 2,000 engineering students and community members in total through both events. E-Week is a week long, campus-wide celebration about why it is great to be an engineer.
Professional Development
We realize that becoming an engineer does not happen overnight, so we host and attend events to prepare our members in making the transition from engineering student to engineering professional. In the past, we were given the privilege of touring the SpaceX launch facility and aircraft hangars at Tyndall Air Force Base. In these tours were exposed what real-life engineering looks like. We invite industry speakers to come to our chapter meetings and teach us about current products and opportunities the company offers. This allows the members to appreciate companies even more by learning their inner-workings and what is available for them. Additionally, through our attendance at in-state ASME conferences, members gain valuable insight into emerging technology and have opportunities to network with other ASME chapters. We have found that professional development is something that is best started early, so this year we are starting a mentorship program with AIAA to reach out to incoming freshman class to improve retention rates and encourage campus involvement.
Another incredible event we were privileged to be a part of last year was Intel’s “STAY WITH IT” event, which is a speaker series created in conjunction with the President’s initiative to decrease dropout rates in STEM fields. Working alongside coordinators at Intel, we were able to bring in speakers Dr. Kevin Bowcutt, a chief fellow of hypersonic research at Boeing, and Mr. Dan Priestly, a design engineer at Tesla Motors. Both of these gentlemen spent the afternoon interacting with students in a session sponsored by Rockstar Energy Drinks, and then gave speeches to a large crowd about what it means to them to be an engineer, and why the student’s classes are necessary to becoming an engineer.
The Foundation for the Gator NationAn Equal Opportunity Institution
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University of Florida College of EngineeringDepartment of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering
ASME UF C/O Dr. Anil Rao Gainesville, Florida 32611-6250
314 MAE-A, PO Box 116300http :// www . mae . ufl . edu / asme /
As president of ASME, I am writing to invite your organization to consider making a $500 contribution to help us meet our financial goals this year. At this point, we have raised $10,000 out of our goal of $24,189 and with your donation we can move one step closer to fulfilling that goal. For a breakdown of our budget, see page 4. Your support is critical in financially enabling us to provide our design teams with resources, outreach to our community, and travel to engineering facilities and conferences. We believe that every contribution made goes beyond what meets the eye and is an investment into the next generation of engineering leaders. Any support you are able to send will significantly benefit our members, community, and university as a whole. Some of the benefits your organization will gain from supporting our chapter include:
● Mechanical engineering talent pipeline for Intern/Co-op candidates and full-time hires at your company.● Company logo on ASME UF apparel, website, and acknowledgement of donation in the ASME newsletter.● Recognition at general body meetings, website (www.mae.ufl.edu/asme) and outreach events.● Recognition at all ASME competitions to include VEX, HPVC, SDC, MATE, and R&D at the international SAE
competition.
The executive-board and I are committed to our goal of providing opportunities for students to develop into professional engineers and become tomorrow’s integrated team leaders, designers, analysts, and managers. All of our actions must be measured by our success in achieving this goal. If you are interested in helping us reach this goal by making a donation, please contact our Vice Chair External Mike Schulz at [email protected] with your interest. If we do not hear back from you within two weeks, he will follow up with you to discuss your potential donation. Thank you for your thoughtful consideration of our request!
Sincerely,
Kevin WiltASME UF President
The Foundation for the Gator NationAn Equal Opportunity Institution
Innovation round during the ASME-HPVC competition of spring 2013. Our team won 2nd place in innovation and 9th place overall.
Innovation round during the ASME-HPVC competition of spring 2013. Our team won 2nd place in innovation and 9th place overall.
Innovation round during the ASME-HPVC competition of spring 2013. Our team won 2nd place in innovation and 9th place overall.
Innovation round during the ASME-HPVC competition of spring 2013. Our team won 2nd place in innovation and 9th place overall.
ROV prototype created by our MATE team lead while in high school. UF will be competing for the first time ever in the competition in 2014.
ROV prototype created by our MATE team lead while in high school. UF will be competing for the first time ever in the competition in 2014.
ROV prototype created by our MATE team lead while in high school. UF will be competing for the first time ever in the competition in 2014.
ROV prototype created by our MATE team lead while in high school. UF will be competing for the first time ever in the competition in 2014.
ASME VEX Robotics team competing at World Championship tournament in Anaheim, CaliforniaASME VEX Robotics team competing at World Championship tournament in Anaheim, CaliforniaASME VEX Robotics team competing at World Championship tournament in Anaheim, CaliforniaASME VEX Robotics team competing at World Championship tournament in Anaheim, California
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University of Florida College of EngineeringDepartment of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering
ASME UF C/O Dr. Anil Rao Gainesville, Florida 32611-6250
314 MAE-A, PO Box 116300http :// www . mae . ufl . edu / asme /
The Foundation for the Gator NationAn Equal Opportunity Institution
Dr. Kevin Bowcutt speaking at the “Stay With It” event to students from ASME, AIAA, and IEEE.
ASME first general body meeting with attendance over 200 students.
Research and Design Team photo. The team is made up of members from ASME, SAE, and AIAA.
Student Design Competition team competing at student professional development conference.Student Design Competition team competing at student professional development conference.Student Design Competition team competing at student professional development conference.Student Design Competition team competing at student professional development conference.Student Design Competition team competing at student professional development conference.
Research and Design Team photo. The team is made up of members from ASME, SAE, and AIAA.Research and Design Team photo. The team is made up of members from ASME, SAE, and AIAA.Research and Design Team photo. The team is made up of members from ASME, SAE, and AIAA.Research and Design Team photo. The team is made up of members from ASME, SAE, and AIAA.
ASME first general body meeting with attendance over 200 students.ASME first general body meeting with attendance over 200 students.ASME first general body meeting with attendance over 200 students.ASME first general body meeting with attendance over 200 students.
Dr. Kevin Bowcutt speaking at the “Stay With It” event to students from ASME, AIAA, and IEEE.Dr. Kevin Bowcutt speaking at the “Stay With It” event to students from ASME, AIAA, and IEEE.Dr. Kevin Bowcutt speaking at the “Stay With It” event to students from ASME, AIAA, and IEEE.Dr. Kevin Bowcutt speaking at the “Stay With It” event to students from ASME, AIAA, and IEEE.
