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An informative podcast from your elected UNLV Student Government Officials.
Unknown Speaker 0:02
Okay, so hi rebels My name is Isaac Hernandez. I'm the current student body president y'all.
Unknown Speaker 0:07
My name is Diana Makarem the current student body vice president. We are yours. Hey, everybody. So if y'all tuned in last week, y'all heard that one of the big things that we want to accomplish this year is strengthening our SOS clubs organizations on campus, and bringing up student engagement all around. With that. We actually have some special guests joining us today. So I'll go ahead and let them introduce themselves.
Unknown Speaker 0:35
Hi, guys. My name is Drew blue har. I am the president of Baja SAE rebel racing, also known as the Society of Automotive Engineers here on campus.
Unknown Speaker 0:45
Now this is used to find me, I'm just an old grad student used to be involved with this as an undergrad and just assisting those guys nowadays.
Unknown Speaker 0:54
Nice. So real quick, tell us a little bit more about what y'all are, what rebel racing dies and how your organization looks
Unknown Speaker 1:03
like. Okay, yeah, cool. So the Society of Automotive Engineers is our formal name on the Involvement Center. So you can find us there, but as we are known as rebel racing, we are the Baja SAE chapter of the Society of Automotive Engineers on campus. And essentially what we do is we compete in a collegiate Design Series put on by the Society of Automotive Engineers. And the basis of it is building a off road prototype racecar and competing against other schools and races around the country. Throughout the year.
Unknown Speaker 1:36
My my family would love the idea of because it sounds like off road. They're very adventurous. But I'm sure you also partake in competitions. And that's probably your bread and butter. Am I right? Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 1:48
yeah. So the whole club is really centered around the competitions. Generally, there's two to three of them a year. And so we spend all year designing engineering building this car. And then in addition to that, we also have to give a few presentations about it and do a few other things in regards to, you know, the business aspect of engineering and just business in general. Really, yeah. And you guys have a competition coming up soon, right? Yeah. So we'll be heading to Tucson, next Wednesday, for our final race of the season, hopefully wrapping it up really well, this is going to be the last time our car is in its current form. They've made some big rule changes for next year. And so we're gonna have to start a brand new design cycle after that, but we're really looking to do do well at this Tucson race.
Unknown Speaker 2:33
And these, you mentioned for these competitions, it's not necessarily just the racing portion, there's also a business aspect. And me and Diana, we also kind of got to get some insight on how it works. So for the business majors listening out there, I think, I think y'all need to step it up. Definitely look into Baja, they are fantastic. And if you don't know what industry you want to go into, look into the automotive industry, this is definitely an industry that is going to pick up in the coming years. But Baja has definitely set an example for a number of majors to be able to get involved. But tell me what is the what is the environment? Like? Because I'm sure it's very community based. And then you also mentioned that you all build the car itself that does get race what is I guess, what is the makeup of I guess, have a routine in terms of how you guys do prepare for a specific competition. Or if you guys are trying to enhance something, what does that kind of look like?
Unknown Speaker 3:30
So the club kind of operates on a few different design cycles, we like to call them so essentially, you know, if we're building a brand new car, it's a brand new generation, that'll be the start of a whole cycle all the way from frame design into actually building it, and testing it and developing it and so on. If it's a year where we have a car and we're in the development phase, we'll go out and we'll make small adjustments here and there, sometimes not so small as well, that will give us a you know better edge to make the car faster. In addition to that just as a whole. Everything is done by students, for students with the intention of them learning. With that being said, it's really the students actually come together as a really like fundamental team to make sure that, you know, we're all achieving the same common goal, which at the end of it is to do well on these competitions.
Unknown Speaker 4:20
Yeah, one of the things that, you know, we talked about with them last week is actually we had the opportunity to go down and get a tour of the shop. And we actually, you know, we also got to drive our our five, right, and so that's the old car that they used to use. And for somebody who tends to have a lot of curves like her her way which she drives it was really nice to have the experience of driving that car and if like one of the things is that if you go full speed, like every single speed bump that I got, it was it felt so smooth like that shock absorption was amazing. It was I don't know, I had a lot of curves I have a lot so it was pretty cool. Um, but one of the things that I also saw was how closely you got Eyes are also working with, like faculty and the relationships that you guys are building with, like different advisors and people that like faculty that support your organization. So what does that what are those connections look like?
Unknown Speaker 5:11
I think I'll actually let you sit take this one, he's got a lot of experience.
Unknown Speaker 5:16
Like working with faculty is kind of really fun in that aspect. Because at the end of the day, they have the same goal. You just want students to learn as much as they can. So we're kind of the biggest faculty advisor that we have our staff advisors are Jeff and Terry, shout out to those guys in the shop. Those guys are kind of real world application. That's all they do. They've seen it in labs, they know how to test stuff, they know how to be like, hey, that doesn't sound great, you should probably take a look at that. And Terry has been the machine shop director for a couple of years now. I think 10 or so he's approaching. And then before that he owned a business where he built like racecar engines and all this stuff, like 40 years, who has so much experience going out racing and all that stuff. So he really gets us in that mindset of okay, like we're out there to when we're out there to not test when we're on the track. When we're racing. That's like, make sure that your car is broken here before it's broken. They're gonna break it here, fix it here, go all the way out to competition and get it done. Right. And then you also have your kind of more academia side, like Dr. O'Toole. He's been like a real big supporter of us. He's been teaching us a lot about composite materials, kind of getting a lot of us even thrown into grad school after like, that's kind of a big shout out to him for me being in grad school, I guess. Like, yeah, like, he was like, Oh, you've done Baja, like here, like during your four years of BA Let me teach you all these skills that will transfer over now that you're in grad school. Like it's just a perfect segue kind of thing. That culture is kind of increasing a lot more with the faculty, also, like from the school itself, like Dr. Whitfield has been a huge supporter from day one. Like he jumped in and he started running with us. He saw Oh, you guys got
Unknown Speaker 6:43
out the President when
Unknown Speaker 6:46
he literally walked in. He was like, Oh, you guys do racecars? I love this. Yeah, he actually got a chance last year to come down around the shop. And he actually actually drove the car to save our five. He drove that around. He enjoyed it. He had a real blast with that. So yeah, it's this kind of that community sense with everyone around like faculty, staff, you name it, even the students?
Unknown Speaker 7:04
Yeah. Yeah, one of the things that you mentioned was a real world experience that, you know, some of the staff was able to bring in to help you guys with competition. Looking more beyond graduation. How does your involvement and your experience right now with Baja, how is that really helping you out for, you know, after after graduation or after grad school?
Unknown Speaker 7:31
Or alumni is kind of like our alumni base. We're really insane these days. I mean, we have two of our graduates like two of our graduates like alumni from the program. They're working for Stewart, Haas racing, that's like a NASCAR top team kind of thing. We have two other students working all the way up north and the Nevada automotive testing center. So they like test like all these like crazy military vehicles. Like shout out to the business people. Throw it, throw her name out there, Gianna. Cognito. She used to be our president, she she's actually a complete business major and accounting, getting her I think CPA now or whatever. But like, she literally got a job in Tesla got a job in KPMG. She even got an internship offered and Volvo all because of like the amount of involvement that she had, even though she's like a business major. She was involved in Baja, like, it taught her so much skills that they were like, Oh, we want this, like we want you guys to come and work for us. It's been it's been pretty cool with how all of our alumni recently has just kind of been spread out all around the country all around the world. But yeah, it's a fun time.
Unknown Speaker 8:28
Yeah. So companies, they recruit from these events. And we try to, you know, if you go and you look at a job description for something new and apply to, we try to give you all the tools that meet all those bullet points on there.
Unknown Speaker 8:39
And you know, we mentioned business a lot. I know you guys have to do corner like a sales pitch. I don't know how to explain it. But it feels like a sales pitch almost as part of that competition. What does that look like?
Unknown Speaker 8:50
Yeah, so that was actually an event we did really, really well. And because we got first place? Yeah. So this year, we had to pitch a race idea. And we got a little bit of a home field advantage. So the SEMA show that's typically in town, they wanted to kind of do a race slash sponsorship event with them, like a theoretical one. Hint, hint, that might be something that turns into a real thing. Fingers crossed. Yeah. Basically, we had to put together the sales presentation. And it was actually engineers who gave the presentation this year, but with some help from an advisor, who was part of the club's a business major was a business alumni Excuse me. And yeah, we they put together a presentation selling their idea of how they had put on this event. And it turned out really well and the judges really liked it. So they presented to you know, like the VP of sales of Honda. Yeah, it's really a shark tank style presentation.
Unknown Speaker 9:45
That sounds like my cup of tea. I, myself might join just so I can get involved in the business aspect of it, but I just mentioned it because I kind of see the world a little bit differently than I think a lot of people would but I think Everything is a business. I mean, I think what we're doing right now just talking and having a conversation, you can turn that into a business, it's the same thing, you go to the gas station, that is a business, if you go out for a walk, someone probably can turn walking into a business. So when you see there I mean, you can walk dogs, and I mean, that's a business and you can make money off of it. So there's a lot of ways that you can really get your foot in the door. But I just see Baja as more than a social club, because I think that's a lot of the times when you have incoming freshmen, and they find out what you all do, like, Oh, you guys, race cars, you do these competitions. And it's like, what, what more do you do, and I just kind of after hearing what you've been describing as everything within your organization as a whole, you guys do a lot of team bonding, I think I'm pretty sure one key thing that you guys can definitely take away from joining an organization like yours as you will probably make some of the best of friends in college just by bonding together, working on the cars together and going to the competitions. And I'm sure you guys have dealt with hardships, but you've dealt with successes too. And that kind of really brings the community together. So I understand every aspect of it. And I'm thinking of it as a business. But detracting from that there's so much more that students can gain just by joining an organization and saying they're a part of it. Because if you're not really working with anything that you guys are doing in order to formalize or put things together or build the car, or even go out to competitions like that, that really is what's going to get your foot in the door. And I'd highly encourage everyone that is listening to take a look into the Society of Automotive Engineers on the Involvement Center. They are very, very interesting. I think one thing that really sold me was when we took a trip down to their shop, and we all got to, you know, drive their cars. And I think every single time I would see a speed bump or a curve, I'd instantly like want to slow down. I think it was speed up. Step on the gas pedal and just Yeah, and I did it. And I'm just like, I didn't I didn't feel anything, it was kind of like just being on the cloud. You didn't you really didn't feel anything. So just kind of thinking about that itself. A lot of work goes into it. So just acknowledging that people worked on that specific aspect of the car to make sure that it didn't have any kind of problems with its suspension or how much See this is why I'm struggling with the technicalities of the words. But yeah,
Unknown Speaker 12:29
as you guys know, we're a business and poli sci major are not engineering majors.
Unknown Speaker 12:34
Funny enough, you're like mentioning the sharks, like I think like we're the only ones are like, like one of only two three teams in the entire series that make our own shocks is actually that's a senior design coming up this year. He's gonna redesign this whole thing. So we're looking forward for it, honestly.
Unknown Speaker 12:50
Yeah, so just to give a little background on that, if you aren't familiar with how the shop relates, looks down there, they actually from the way that it was explained to me, you know, y'all can jump in at any time to correct me. But um, the way that they explained it was they pretty much just get like a whole like bunch of metal and they essentially like design all of these pieces, like the shock specifically out of that little like, all out of all that metal. So I'm sure it's a lot of like designing it on programs on the computer, like making sure that the measurements are all correct on there, before you actually go in and go to all the machine all the big big, big scary machines that are in the shop and you know, making it actually come out the way you need it to think you just
Unknown Speaker 13:32
forgot the blood sweat and tears. You know, I didn't injured in the shop like or be safe about it. But this one of tears definitely isn't there.
Unknown Speaker 13:41
Yeah, definitely. But the friends that I have that are engineering majors every time I see them on any type of program, I'm like, you know, I I'm glad that's not me right now.
Unknown Speaker 13:51
I was just I was fascinated. Like, when they would hand me a metal piece. I'm looking at it like, what does this do? I don't know, moments that that happened, by the way, honestly. And I mean, it was it's, I guess there was a feeling of just kind of like, do I belong here in a sense, but I'll be honest, the people within the shop for your organization that made it feel very welcoming. And every single time you would I didn't feel done would feel confused about something they would explain it to you. And then sometimes if it didn't make sense, you just asked the question like, can you? Can you explain that?
Unknown Speaker 14:23
There were? Yeah, there were a lot of moments where I was like, and I kind of looked at each other like what it what is this that they're talking about? Like and then was just like, can you just repeat this?
Unknown Speaker 14:34
I started drew like probably same thing for you. Like when we all started, we didn't know a bunch of like when I first started I was like barely hands on with tools. Like I learned all those tools because like we were all there at some point, right? Like you gotta
Unknown Speaker 14:45
Yeah, yeah. So just talking a little bit more about that, you know, these guys are talking about the shop in particular, they're referring to the Mendenhall Innovation and Design Center. It's a beautiful space we have access to as engineers on campus. Basically, it's a great place to be Go do your homework, but it's also there's a computer lab in there and attached to it is the College of Engineering machine shop. There's kids running through there all the time with great ideas, senior design people, all their RSP shows. And basically, if you have an idea, that's the place to turn it into reality, and something that you'd hold in your hands, it's really really special. It really
Unknown Speaker 15:19
did seem like a dream factory, like, engineers
Unknown Speaker 15:23
will have people from the community that would come in and be like, hey, like, we have this like, Awesome idea for like this perpetual motion machine, we're like, that, theoretically is not gonna work. But sure here will entertain you. Like, oh, we'll go through this cycle we have Yeah, even senior design teams and like other RSO shows and stuff, they'll come in with, like, these crazy ideas of wanting to build this and that. And I mean, ball heavily has been involved in like helping other ourselves within the shop, too. Because just the amount of experience and time we've placed in to the shop, like a lot of times we'll have other ourselves, I'll reach out be like, hey, like, we're trying to, like machine this thing, right? And like to see how we can do this kind of thing. Right. So it's been a fun experience for us, too.
Unknown Speaker 16:02
Yeah, one of the things that was really interesting, though, was, you know, going back to what Isaac was saying was the kind of community and welcoming environment that you guys created for just all students I know even me when knowing absolutely nothing about engineering mind you just going around saying, Oh, little ducks that were everywhere. And I, you know, I'm sure there's some sort of inside joke regarding those ducks.
Unknown Speaker 16:29
They have enough information.
Unknown Speaker 16:31
And for viewers listening, just just to think of the duck as an actual duck. It's not a metaphor reference for rubber, rubber ducks just around their shot. And I wouldn't be explaining something to me. And I turned my head. I'm like, so does that like duck do anything? Like no, it's just a rubber duck. But
Unknown Speaker 16:50
like, is the duck the mask? Oh, like, what are we doing here? No, but it really was interesting. Just to see the whole community and I'm sure for a lot of freshmen, especially, I don't know if y'all have felt this with like the incoming freshmen engineering freshmen. Yeah. Like they are so eager to just learn and get involved, which I'm really I'm excited about. We talked about this last week, too, but I'm really excited to see those. Those freshmen but you guys also I believe you guys, new members, our like just prospective members. This last weekend, right?
Unknown Speaker 17:25
Yeah, yeah. So we took them out into the desert, out at Prim, and we let them drive the cars and have a grand old time and grilled up some burgers. It was a good time.
Unknown Speaker 17:34
Yeah. See, I was going to ask the question like, what's your? What's your sales
Unknown Speaker 17:38
pitch to try to get people to join car?
Unknown Speaker 17:41
I mean, it really is the car. So I mean, if you're, again, if you're someone listening to this right now, and if you're just wanting to experience some kind of welcoming environment and community on campus, definitely look into Baja. Because they will. I mean, they'll let you drive their car. Yeah. That's their sales pitch. But I mean, other than that, when I mean, if you guys and when you guys do table on campus, is there something specific that you tell students try and pull them in to join in on the Involvement Center?
Unknown Speaker 18:10
Yeah, you know, we definitely like to communicate how how this is going to help you in the future. I think Emma on our team, she said it best, you know, everyone on the team is they're there for each other, but they're also there for you know, themselves, you know, we have a lot of self motivated people, but, you know, working in a team environment and making sure everything runs smoothly, that we get done what we need to get done. That's, that's really what we're there for. So
Unknown Speaker 18:36
interesting. I am. I mean, I think I think you sold me.
Unknown Speaker 18:41
Yeah, he's, he's about to be yours.
Unknown Speaker 18:44
Thank you, guys. So I already came in today with a presentation all nice and laid out just to show you guys how I'm gonna sell Baja to all these sponsors that you guys received. But I mean, could you guys name a few different sponsors that you do receive support from just so this can also attract some other potential people that want to join? Because I'm sure that's something that pulls people into, it's like, oh, you're sponsored by so and so like, that's cool. I know them or I know someone within that org. So who are some of your key sponsors?
Unknown Speaker 19:12
Yeah, so I'll talk about that a little bit. We work a lot with the Trophy Truck Builders here in town. So guys, like we're racing engines, by Andersen racing, Collins motorsports monster tooling is huge. They provide us with a lot of tools that we need to make the parts that we get.
Unknown Speaker 19:29
Put like Southpoint in there. The Gong family has been really like supportive of our program like they've been wanting to really help us over the years. Definitely you see some on campus.
Unknown Speaker 19:38
Oh, yeah. Can't cannot. Yeah, I
Unknown Speaker 19:41
was about to say like, you guys definitely are one of our biggest supporters on the UNLV campus. But like, Yeah, from outside of campus, it's yeah, there's, there's a lot of people in town that really support us. I kind of want to see these students grow.
Unknown Speaker 19:54
Yeah, I'm really hoping to see not just y'all but like, the awareness of what y'all do grow, not just in UNLV, but our like overall community, I think that Vegas is really moving a in a very engineering direction with all the community like with all the talking, especially with, what's it called? The Elon Musk. Yeah. So but just with that, like we're seeing Vegas go into a very different direction, where in the past, we've just been mainly hospitality based. And with all these additions in our infrastructure, I think it's gonna be really interesting to see how our students given that we are they like primarily commuter campus with locals, seeing how they take this and are able to grow our community even more.
Unknown Speaker 20:44
I mean, the ones that we also definitely see that everybody coming in town like, besides Tesla, all those guys are hos like the most Foundation, or one of our biggest sponsors from kind of the outside world of UNLV. But they're also coming into town too. So it's like, almost creating this perfect setup where like, okay, like you've learned all these experience from this program that you're being a part of, like, he'll come work for us, that kind of thing. So it's, it's pretty interesting, honestly, how seeing that relationship is with the community. And like, wow, we always have been even this year, we've been doing this a lot where we get involved with, like the College of Engineering like events to try to, like get more people to engineering. So we have this ik Ed, which is introducing kids to Engineering Day. So I have always been a part of that. I believe last week or so we went off and donated some robotics components do a school up in, I think it was what lead Middle School?
Unknown Speaker 21:33
Oh my gosh, yeah, that's in what's not necessarily a Northtown. Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 21:37
but kind of Centennial, but not centennial.
Unknown Speaker 21:40
It's a STEM Academy. So lead lead actually just got transferred into being a STEM Academy about four or five years ago. I like when I was when I was in middle school. LEED was like the, our sister school in a way. And I went to cram for a short time. And it was interesting to see that transition with lead, like my cousins were going in there. And then they transferred into the STEM program. And they had a lot of fun. Like, they
Unknown Speaker 22:06
saw their robotics stuff. And we're like, wow, this is fun. I think we do like the first robotics competitions. Jeff, he's kind of the main technical inspector for all of the events that happened in Las Vegas. So whenever this whenever that happens, we go out and we help like inspecting, we take a look at all the different robots that these kids are building, or like helping them out. Like we even have, like a lot of them, they'll see us there. And then they'll come and like their first engineering year. And they'll like see us on the seminars and like orientations and stuff and be like, oh, yeah, you guys are the same guys. And then that's kind of a segue for them to join bas too, because they they've seen our faces, they know who we are. So it's kind of fun. We have like a lot of a lot of our incoming freshmen are actually from those programs. So it's like, kind of a two way street like we help the community build up and then the community kind of helps us with, yeah, more students at home. So everyone wins, I guess.
Unknown Speaker 22:53
Yeah, it's really exciting. And I'm, I'm kind of looking at it, I'm really looking forward to not just saying like the community girl, but also one of the things that I really saw when we went down to the shop was just the amount of diversity that I also saw it like within your guys's organization. So seeing the amount of students that wanted to get involved from all these different types of backgrounds, all these different types of aspirations and goals, they all wanted to come in and see what Baja was doing and how to make their impact on that car. Because I feel like at the end of the day, because of how you guys built that car from pretty much the ground up. You know, everybody has their own little impact and Lauren little legacy with that car.
Unknown Speaker 23:32
It's like you walk by it, and you're like, Oh, I remember when I spent like, two nights to get like the brake system working is working to get that. Yeah, it's a lot of memories. Like think about it. You're traveling across the country, like, however many students with you, depending on the year kind of thing. So it's a fun time.
Unknown Speaker 23:52
Yeah. One of the things that you guys mentioned also, it was the traveling, I feel like traveling together is just a huge way to bond. I know that Isaac and I, we we did a conference, like during the summer and we took a couple of seats on people out and the amount of bonding that happened on that trip was next level, we
Unknown Speaker 24:11
learned so much about each other.
Unknown Speaker 24:15
And also, like when stuff goes wrong, like during these trips, I think that my flight got like cancelled and like delayed like so many times, and I was gonna miss it. It was it was just that. And I feel like the amount of stuff that goes wrong in a trip and the way that y'all are able to fix it also says a lot about how you are able to work as a team but trauma bond.
Unknown Speaker 24:35
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think I think for us, it's more of a trauma bond. But I mean for the organization, it's more it builds character and it builds more resilience
Unknown Speaker 24:45
and tears. There's a little bit of a little bit of it. Yeah, I
Unknown Speaker 24:49
mean, like at the end of the day, think about it. Like when you get a flat tire inside of the road and you're like, Okay, we need to like stop and fix it. Like it's not like the most happiest environment ever No one wants to get rolling. We want to get to comp site kind of thing. You're out there in competition. It's always stressful, stressful, like people are on their edges. So a lot of a lot of that going on really does.
Unknown Speaker 25:09
I would expect engineering majors to be excited when there's a flat tire, honestly. That's just Yes.
Unknown Speaker 25:17
When you don't have a deadline to
Unknown Speaker 25:20
you know, I just I'm imagining a whole bunch of engineers on the side of the road looking at that tire and be like, who's gonna do this?
Unknown Speaker 25:28
Yeah, I just be staring at it. Like, is something gonna happen? Yeah, honestly. Honestly, I'd have to google something like how to change a tire and whole process but I'm sure with with your organization, you have a lot of people that I mean, I think you really said it best drove was that the fact that it's like everyone's there for each other, but you're also there for yourself. So even when you go on trips, I'm sure that's a for each other kind of mindset. But when you're in the shop, you're really doing it for yourself, because you're honestly developing as a person in general.
Unknown Speaker 25:58
And at the end of the day, I feel like those like those late nights, for those of y'all that don't know, you know, the they're in the shop to like, late, late, late hours. What time did you leave the shop last night?
Unknown Speaker 26:07
Last night? I think I got out of there like 1112 but that was 1000. Glad to be here at 10am. Right? Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 26:14
sometimes you see like the light of day shine and up as you're leaving kind of thing.
Unknown Speaker 26:18
Yeah. So with that, I think that that's all the time that we have. So if you guys are interested in joining, rebel racing, they are going to be Society of Automotive Engineers on the evolvement center. Definitely get involved get in touch with them. And like if you want go go and get going. Car Yeah, join
Unknown Speaker 26:36
join at least one buy the shop. We'll
Unknown Speaker 26:37
we'll see what we can do there. Nice.
Unknown Speaker 26:40
We promise. We don't
Unknown Speaker 26:41
bite. And did you too want to shout out your social medias for the organization or even your personals if you want to.
Unknown Speaker 26:48
Yeah, so the organization, main one we're on is Instagram. So we're rebel racing UNLV rebel racing on Instagram. There's a link tree there to discord and a few other things involving center. And then my personal is Dube. D o b.lu. Har. My last name Liu H AR on Instagram. That's my main forum. So yeah.
Unknown Speaker 27:10
All right. Thank you so much for joining us guys.
Unknown Speaker 27:15
Thank you all for listening. To find more details do visit www.unlv.edu/c s un.
Unknown Speaker 27:22
And if you guys want to stay up to date with more events, go ahead and follow us at at UNLV Sisa.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai