Women Engineers Rule Racing Day

Westmont’s 12 junior engineering students battled in a three-part competition for their Machine Design course that included racing and jumping the 500-piece remote-control (RC) car they made in front of Kerrwood Hall on Dec. 5.

In the end, the women shined with the team of Grace Morgan and Ainsley Martin taking top honors. The team of Landon Vanderhyde and Kyler Hanson claimed second and the team of Abigail Lingel and Celeste Marquez won third.

In the first race of the afternoon, Grace and Ainsley’s vehicle, featuring a paint-splatter design, struck a traffic cone and was disqualified. “We were stressed after the first race went badly,” Ainsley said. “I play on the women’s soccer team. I thought this was like any other game: You go down in the first half, focus on your own game, and come out in the second and play it through to the end and get it.”

They came back to win second in the racing portion after Grace impressed the judges with her 60-second elevator speech. “Building our RC car gave us a chance to see how concepts we learned in class applied to the real world,” she said. “This project brought engineering principles to life and deepened our understanding of machine design through teamwork and problem-solving.”

Landon and Kyler’s lightweight, speedy, red car dominated the jumping event, blowing past the end of the tape measure on the second attempt.

But when Dan Jensen, Allder professor of science and technology, added up the final scores, Grace and Ainsley finished 5 points ahead.

The secret to success? Ainsley said she and Grace paid attention to each of the 500 pieces, so they wouldn’t have to go back to fix problems. “We were cautious about doing things correctly the first time and understood why we were doing each step of the process,” she says.

President Gayle D. Beebe gave the winners trophies and announced that the Office of the President had donated $2,500 to the engineering program to host a similar event next year.