Think Fast
The Lyle School “Cheerios” These engineering Mustangs challenge stereotypes – and sometimes gravity – as SMU cheerleaders. The students, all members of the Red Squad, and their majors are, from left, first-year student Alana Collinsworth, mechanical engineering; senior Kelby Herzog, mechanical engineering and math with a minor in business; graduate student Ambrel Mitchell ’10, computer science and math; senior Lindsay Neese, electrical engineering (biomedical); senior Sam Kenney, engineering management, information and systems, and economics with a minor in business; first-year student Ashley McNeil, mechanical engineering (biomedical); and senior Brooke Wright, chemistry with minors in environmental engineering and business.
Engineering isn’t just for engineers anymore. The Lyle School’s campuswide Innovation Competition, now in its second year, nurtures scholarly cross-pollination by encouraging students in other SMU schools to enter.
Of the three teams selected as finalists in the first contest, “a good half of those students didn’t have any relationship with engineering other than they had an idea worth testing,“ Orsak says.
Like the IDEs, the Innovation Competition allows students to transform their inspirations into tangibles, Huntoon says. “We can partner students with no technical experience with people who can help them bring their ideas to life,” he says. “What matters is an interesting idea, and we want to hear it with no filter applied.”
Junior Raven Sanders, an electrical and audio engineering major, led the winning project for an audio-mixing system. “Traditional soundboards are
complicated and require considerable training to learn,” Sanders explains. She came up with a spherical design that operates more intuitively, allowing sound designers to control audio tracks by touch.
The team, which included computer science majors Austin Click, senior, and Travis Maloney, junior, and senior mechanical engineering major Jason Stegal, cleared a number of real-world hurdles to reach the top, Sanders says. The cost of developing the sphere was prohibitive, and a software company they’d hoped to partner with didn’t respond to their queries.
So the team did exactly what the competition promotes: They regrouped and devised an innovative workaround by creating a flat-screen device, writing their own program and pulling an all-nighter to complete the project successfully on time.
The project was featured in the December issue of Design News magazine, an engineering publication that focuses on the design of consumer and industry-specific products and systems.
“I will be putting a patent together and a team to build a spherical device as my senior project,” Sanders says.
That “innovate-then-patent” exercise is exactly what Greg Carr ’79 envisioned for the competition, which received generous support from his firm, Carr LLP. Carr, who holds an undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering from SMU, now practices intellectual property law in Dallas.
“On average, the issuance of a patent creates from three to 10 jobs,” he says. “You can’t underestimate the importance of innovation to the future economic health of our country.”
The Human Touch
From day one, Lyle School students are encouraged and empowered to make a difference in the world.
For hands-on opportunities, the Hunter and Stephanie Hunt Institute for Engineering and Humanity was established in December 2009. Hunt Institute projects focus on finding innovative, affordable solutions to such poverty-related issues as safe and affordable housing, clean water and sanitation, and functional roads and transportation systems.
Programs of the recently established Linda and Mitch Hart Center for Engineering Leadership also play a pivotal role in developing tomorrow’s well-rounded engineers, according to Dean Orsak. The leadership training builds on current co-op and internship programs, adding personal and team experiences that allow students to hone essential leadership skills – including the abilities to develop and implement strategy, communicate clearly and function effectively in a group.
The Hart Center will work with faculty across campus. For example, students who need to polish their presentation skills may be steered toward a theatre class in Meadows School of the Arts. A competition offered in collaboration with Cox School of Business will introduce participants to the mechanics of a business plan.
Approximately 750 Lyle School undergraduates are participating in Hart Center programs this semester.
“Leadership requires students to be fully engaged in the world, to recognize the staggering problems facing us today and feel empowered to contribute solutions,” Orsak says.
“Engineering is a contact sport,” the dean adds. “It’s hard work, but at the same time, the satisfaction of knowing that you are doing something meaningful can be deeply moving.”