Sharome Burton, Christopher Paulson, and the MSU Texas Formula SAE Team returned from their first SAE International Collegiate Design Series competition May 16-22 in Michigan with many achievements.

Nope, they didn’t win a championship on their first try. But a trip filled with rich experiences and promises of future opportunities was a win no trophy could match.

The Formula SAE series competitions are part of SAE International’s Collegiate Design Series (CDS). Competitions challenge teams of university students to design, fabricate, develop, and compete with small, formula-style vehicles. The competitions give teams a chance to demonstrate and prove their creativity and engineering skills compared to teams from other universities.

The first car the team developed is on display at the Clark Student Center.

“We, as a team, improved, and we learned what it’s like to be in a real professional environment,” said Burton, the head of chassis/body and incoming chief engineer for MSU Texas Racing. 

Burton is a mechanical engineering and computer science double major. He has previously competed with MSU Texas Cycling. This competition was very different, but the same desire to improve is required for long-term success.

“It was an example of what education is with creative competition and design competition,” Burton said. “It gets the best out of you and forces you to adapt real-world skills. What I really enjoyed was the chance to see and identify problems, be adaptable, and get to work.”

Paulson, the MSU Texas Formula SAE Executive Director and a mechanical engineering major, believes the best is yet to come after his experience in Michigan.

“We had a fantastic time and learned incredibly valuable information,” Paulson said. “We are confident we can design a very strong car next year that will allow us to compete with some of the schools that have been doing this for years. We have some key members returning and new members joining. We are incredibly grateful for the support that we have received from the university and community, and we are ready to represent Wichita Falls again in 2023!”

Marcy Brown Marsden, dean of the McCoy College of Science, Mathematics & Engineering, was proud of the first MSU Texas SAE team and believes the future is bright. “It is a remarkable feat that the MSU Texas Formula SAE team completed a car in their first year of work. This year, there is so much good that I don’t doubt the team will make a quantum leap next year to an even better car!” she said. “The team has already started working on next year and what they can improve upon.”

Brown Marsden said the team had strong evaluations from industry judges who were impressed by the work from a first-year team.

Burton said the work has already begun for 2022-23. And he hopes even more MSU Texas students will join the team. “It’s a great chance for incoming freshmen, too. The more people we can get into the organization, the more we can do. And for incoming freshmen, they have a chance to leave an imprint on the car and the team. There’s so many things that can be done.”

Burton is in software development and he said that came up in all the interviews he had on the trip. He believes he’ll have an opportunity to seek an internship at Tesla, a company that greatly interests him. “It was really a great opportunity for us to put ourselves out there and get a head start to putting what we’ve learned into an internship or a job,” Burton said. “They know the caliber of students involved (in FSAE). We got requests from Apple and Boeing.”