Get ready for the final part of our Solar Splash 2018 interview series!!! As we have been saying in all of our interview posts, some of us from the UPS Battery Center blog were able to attend the last two days of the 2018 Solar Splash Competition! That is how we were able to converse with the amazing teams, in turn making these interviews for you!
Today, our final interview, set on June 8th, is with the 12th time Solar Splash championship*, the Cedarville Solar Boat team! More specifically, it is with Andrew and Will, two members of the champion team. Cedarville University runs the Solar Splash competition as a senior design project which both Andrew and Will previously participated a bit in. However, this past year, which happens to be their senior year, was the first time they were both part of the official team! Being seniors, Will and Andrew graduated with electrical and mechanical engineering degrees this past May. Attending the Solar Splash 2018 competition was one of their final accomplishments for their undergraduate degrees. Keep reading to get to know them more.
Question #1: Reasons Behind Joining the Team
I suppose the reasons are quite easy to guess as Cedarville has won more Solar Splash competitions than any other university. However, I wanted to know what motivated them personally to finally join the Cedarville Solar Boat team. I also wanted to know what goals they had for the competition. Here is what Andrew said:
Andrew: “I guess one of the reasons I chose the solar boat team over other projects was the interdisciplinary experience. I definitely got a lot of that! So our goals for this year were to win again, we won for the past 3 years and we’ve done well for the past few days so we’re hoping it will happen again this year.”
At this point of the competition, they Cedarville team was doing really well! Just the day before, they had scored the second fastest time in a race since 2010!
Will added that they’ve worked on this for “two semester. We haven’t spent the entire year working entirely on it as cedarville team is actually working on another boat for the Dutch Solar Challenge.” How exciting!!
Question #2: Favorite Experience
The Solar Splash competition comprises 5 days of races and challenges. While that is exciting and fun, there is a lot behind the scenes that happens and I wanted to know what Will and Andrew’s favourite moment or learning experience had been!
Andrew started by saying that for him, “the learning and the different opportunities to kind of work with my hands, tied together the education we got in the classroom on a real life project so it was very satisfying to fully understand the system and see everything fit together.”
Will’s favourite moment was “driving sprint yesterday and breaking the fastest time record of the last 10 years. I mean that was pretty big. I actually had never run the race and it was my first time!” He hadn’t even practiced or ran the race before so that is quite impressive!
Question #3 Plans for the Future:
I’ve ended every one of these interviews with a question about future plans. So here is what I asked them:
Q: What are you goals for after the competition? You both just finished undergrad, so what are you plans for the summer or the future? Some of the other team members I spoke with are thinking of pursuing graduate degrees or are currently enrolled in graduate schools, so do you mind telling me a little bit about what you two plan?
Will: “Sure, I’m not pursuing a master’s degree at this time. I actually just got a full time job with a manufactoring company and I’ll be working as a support engineer for their engineering program.”
Andrew: “Yeah I’m planning to go into the industry as well as opposed to post-grad education. I’m looking forward to it!”
I was very happy to have had the opportunity to speak with Andrew and Will! Everyone at the UPS Battery Center blog wishes them the best of luck and congratulates them on winning this year’s competition as well!
We hope you’ve enjoying our little interview series! If you’d like to learn more about the Cedarville Solar Boat team, check out their website here: http://solarboat.cedarville.edu/
*This interview was done before the end of the competition*
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