Marshall Fowler: Baja SAE Williamsport

00:00:00 Sumer Beatty: Welcome to Tomorrow Makers, where we explore how we learn, live, work, and play now and in the future. I'm Sumer Beatty. 00:00:10 Carlos Ramos: And I'm Carlos Ramos. So exciting today. 00:00:13 Sumer Beatty: This was an amazing episode. We have Marshall Fowler with us today, and he is the president of Penn College Baja SAE Club. 00:00:22 Carlos Ramos: And an engineering design major here at Penn College. In his final year. 00:00:26 Sumer Beatty: Oh, and what a year to go out with a bang. 00:00:30 Carlos Ramos: Absolutely. International event. The Baja SAE Williamsport Endurance Race. The Baja team has been participating in this for a couple of decades and has always had to travel for it. And now it's in our backyard. 00:00:43 Sumer Beatty: Yes. So Marshall is saying 15 hours they traveled last year. So, yeah, to just go 15 minutes over the hill is pretty fantastic. And we couldn't be more excited to host it. So it's coming up on May 16th through the 19th. And Marshall's going to give us a little preview of what, what his team is doing in preparation for this big event. 00:01:03 Carlos Ramos: Yeah. A little bit of that preview, a little bit of how you can get involved, whether you're someone here at the college or whether you're someone in the public, how you can just go to, to watch the, the race, and then some advice for up and coming engineering technology students, those that are, you know, You know, want to have that hands on experience working with metal, in, in any capacity. Really good stuff today. 00:01:26 Sumer Beatty: Yeah, it's amazing. Thanks for joining us and we hope you enjoy. Here we go. I had extra coffee this morning. Warning. I 00:01:42 Carlos Ramos: didn't have any coffee. I, maybe I, can I. Get like second hand buzz here. 00:01:45 Sumer Beatty: Yes, I'll try to stay not close enough so you can smell my coffee breath, but far enough away to just exude that energy. Are you a coffee drinker? 00:01:54 Marshall Fowler: I'm more of an energy drinker, honestly. 00:01:56 Sumer Beatty: Oh, okay. Gotta be careful with that. 00:01:58 Carlos Ramos: Those could sneak up on you. 00:01:59 Marshall Fowler: Yeah. Stick to one a day. 00:02:01 Carlos Ramos: What, what's your energy drink of choice? 00:02:02 Marshall Fowler: Celsius. They're really good. 00:02:04 Carlos Ramos: You know, that's, I'm, I'm with you there. The, except for, I don't know, I think too much of that, that fake sugar. 00:02:10 Marshall Fowler: Yeah. 00:02:11 Carlos Ramos: Well, I don't know. Is it stevia that's in that or what, what's the. 00:02:14 Marshall Fowler: I'm not actually too sure. 00:02:16 Carlos Ramos: Just some mystery. 00:02:17 Marshall Fowler: Some mystery powder. 00:02:18 Carlos Ramos: Sweetener. 00:02:18 Sumer Beatty: I drink it every day, but I never read the label. 00:02:22 Marshall Fowler: It works. Makes my work productive. Makes me go. 00:02:25 Carlos Ramos: Hey, if that puts you guys on the podium, then, you know, whatever it takes, right? 00:02:28 Marshall Fowler: You say the car is built on no sleep and Celsius. 00:02:32 Sumer Beatty: I hear a sponsorship opportunity for Celsius. Put a sticker on that car. 00:02:37 Carlos Ramos: And we'll find the hashtag, but I would assume hashtag Celsius. 00:02:40 Sumer Beatty: Yeah. Let's do it. 00:02:42 Carlos Ramos: A little bit of free advertising here for them. But you know what? I do see them in like so many hands around campus, like it came from nowhere, I thought. I don't know. 00:02:53 Sumer Beatty: I'm out of it too. I don't know. We had another student on a while back that was talking about it. 00:02:58 Carlos Ramos: I thought like Red Bull was all the rage, but I guess I'm, I'm like totally out of touch. 00:03:02 Sumer Beatty: Do they even make that? Maybe it is the same thing. They just rebranded it as Celsius. 00:03:06 Carlos Ramos: Maybe. 00:03:08 Sumer Beatty: Check the labels. See, I'm in a conspiracy mood this morning. 00:03:14 Carlos Ramos: All right. We've got Marshall Fowler with us. Correct me if I've got your, your major wrong, but I believe you are engineering design. 00:03:22 Marshall Fowler: Yep. Engineering design technology. It's the four year bachelor degree. And I've also done the two year associate's degree as well. 00:03:28 Carlos Ramos: Okay. And that's the engineering CAD. 00:03:30 Marshall Fowler: Yep. 00:03:30 Carlos Ramos: And you're, you're in your last year. 00:03:32 Marshall Fowler: Last semester. 00:03:33 Sumer Beatty: Whoa. I'm so glad we had you then. 00:03:36 Marshall Fowler: Final 14 weeks. 00:03:38 Sumer Beatty: Oh, how does that feel? 00:03:40 Marshall Fowler: Weird. Three years went by in a blink of an eye. It was crazy. 00:03:43 Carlos Ramos: And you're going out with a bang. I mean a huge, huge event here on campus. I mean, we'll get into that, but I know Sumer's got a, a flow. She likes to get to it. I just want to get right into it. 00:03:55 Sumer Beatty: It's okay. This works too. I think that. All of us on campus here know what Baja SAE is, but for anyone listening and that made it this far that just like, what are they even talking about? I'd like to tee it up. We know what your major is. we are also the president of Baja SAE club here on campus. Can you tell us a little bit about that, what that is so we can just kind of set the stage? 00:04:17 Marshall Fowler: Yeah, absolutely. Baja is a club here on campus where we design, build and manufacture a single seat. All terrain vehicle that we then go and race against other colleges that are doing the same thing from across the country and across the world. there's teams from Canada, India, Brazil, Mexico. They're all coming to the United States to race these buggies that are being designed by colleges and universities. What makes us a little unique, we're designing and manufacturing about 90 95 percent of everything that's on the car. From gearboxes, frames, everything. We're all doing it. After class, sometimes during class if we talk to our professors, but most of it is outside and at night. 00:04:58 Sumer Beatty: Wow. 00:04:58 Carlos Ramos: So you say that's different from other colleges and universities that are participating. What does that look like for them when they don't have, because we've got some pretty amazing manufacturing facilities here for our students. 00:05:09 Marshall Fowler: Yeah, absolutely. If let's say a team couldn't, they designed something, can't manufacture it in house, they can have it sent out to other companies to have it built. Whereas we, when we design it, we go out into the, or we go right out the door and throw it on a machine and produce the part. 00:05:25 Carlos Ramos: That's great. That gives you, maybe a leg up in, in the testing because you have a test track, not the track that you're going to be, where you haven't even seen that track. 00:05:34 Marshall Fowler: I haven't seen anything. I'm dying to see it. I can't wait. 00:05:37 Carlos Ramos: And I don't know, you're not even allowed to see it until like race weekend. 00:05:41 Marshall Fowler: We see it the same time everybody else sees it. 00:05:43 Carlos Ramos: Wow. 00:05:44 Marshall Fowler: Yeah. I'm really excited. It's going to be, it's going to be an amazing event. 00:05:47 Sumer Beatty: So I'm curious, when you were looking at colleges, did you know Baja was happening here? I'm sorry, when I say happening, not the actual event, but did you know there was a, a club on campus? Or how did you, how did you get introduced to Baja? 00:06:01 Marshall Fowler: So, that's actually a funny story. That's kind of one of the main reasons I came here. I was on a tour, with my mom and we had just left the CAL Lab, which is right across the parking lot from where, the Baja room is in the MTC building and the team at the time had their car out in the parking lot and they were doing a little testing. I was like, Oh, that's really cool. I wonder what that is. And then when we went home, I did a whole bunch of research on what Baja was, the Penn College team. I watched all the YouTube videos on it. And then I was like, yeah, this is what I want to do. And then when I came here, like the second day I emailed them and set up a meeting with John, who's our advisor. And then it just kind of jumped right into it. 00:06:45 Sumer Beatty: That's really cool. Now that you're here, you're, you're racing, it's so much fun, and then you said you're going to graduate, so I hope there's a, there's a plan beyond the bar. 00:06:54 Marshall Fowler: Yeah, we're still, we're, I'm going to be moving and get jobs lined up. 00:06:58 Carlos Ramos: Nice. So you have, you already have your job lined up? 00:07:02 Marshall Fowler: Kind of. I'm still in the, I have a couple offers, I'm still looking around, trying to figure out exactly what I want to do. I want to stay in the manufacturing industry, but I'm not sure exactly, What I'm gonna do yet. 00:07:13 Carlos Ramos: Okay, and will that be a local I'd forgive me I don't know where hometown is for you. 00:07:17 Marshall Fowler: So actually I'm gonna be moving. I'm right now in Sellersville, PA, which is about our ish outside of Philadelphia, but I'm going to be moving to the complete opposite side of the state, to below Pittsburgh, try something a little different, some new, new area. Yeah, I'm really looking forward to it. 00:07:33 Carlos Ramos: Great, so exciting to hear you got offers on the table. It's, it's pretty consistent, especially in the area that you're, you're working in. You and your peers are just knocking it out of the park. 00:07:42 Marshall Fowler: We're trying to. 00:07:44 Sumer Beatty: So as president, that's sort of probably in it, somewhat of an administrative aspect of your ,,. Okay, so what, though, when it comes time for game day, actually, even before that, what is your role? You can tell us, like, as far as what it entails being a president, or just your role in general. 00:08:04 Marshall Fowler: So, we're kind of a smaller team, so we wear many, many different hats. my role has been, I've been a designer since the beginning, so I design the parts in CAD, make prints, and then I hand them off to, machinists, who then make the parts, but slowly as my skills have progressed, I'm also our team's welder now, and then I've also started doing some of the machining work, so we started adding on more and more hats to do, and then once I took on the role of President, it became making sure everybody else has their, projects to work on, making sure parts are getting ordered, we work with, there's a lot of paperwork that we need to deliver, through SAE, documents, roll cage inspections, all that kind of stuff. So I'm responsible also for making sure those happen. So I do a whole lot. 00:09:01 Sumer Beatty: Oh my goodness. It sounds like it. back to the welding. Is that? Is that normally part of your program, or is that? 00:09:07 Marshall Fowler: That is a skill that I picked up. I was really interested in my freshman year. So I spent a lot of time, doing practice pieces at night. Working with our advisor John, he used to weld titanium mountain bike frames. So he was really good at it. 00:09:19 Sumer Beatty: Oh, I'd like to talk about that later. 00:09:21 Carlos Ramos: I was going to say, we just got our next guest, right? 00:09:23 Sumer Beatty: Yes, he's trying to avoid me. I'm going to just throw that out there. 00:09:27 Marshall Fowler: He does not like cameras. He doesn't like the spotlight. 00:09:29 Sumer Beatty: There's no camera here, though. 00:09:30 Marshall Fowler: Yeah, he does not like anything. 00:09:32 Sumer Beatty: No, I'm going to work on that. 00:09:34 Marshall Fowler: Yeah, he worked with me a lot. we got our skills up and now I do a lot of the frame fabrication as well. 00:09:42 Sumer Beatty: Okay, that's amazing because I can't imagine too many other colleges where you can just decide, okay, I'm going to pick up a, an extra skill like that. Holy cow. And I think the way it stands, that would almost be consistent with any major who wants to learn something like that. 00:09:58 Marshall Fowler: I just put in a lot of time into it and I was like, well, this is a, I know I want to do this in the future. So I'm going to take the next four years and try to learn as much as I can on this. 00:10:08 Sumer Beatty: We have amazing facilities here for it. 00:10:10 Carlos Ramos: We do. I mean, your, your lab area is something on the order of 20 to 30, 000 feet. Is that? 00:10:18 Marshall Fowler: In terms of like the, the manufacturing lab? 00:10:20 Carlos Ramos: Yeah, the manufacturing. 00:10:21 Marshall Fowler: That, I'm not too sure about exact square footage, but it's a very decent size. Yeah. we have like 40 mills, I think 30 lathes, four wire EDM machines, a whole, abrasive grinding machine, or a, grinding area, and then we also just got a brand new, three axis, three axis hard edge machine they donated to us, which is awesome. 00:10:41 Carlos Ramos: Yeah, it's, it's really cool to see the, what, what you guys can do in that, that shop. And I've been in some real world shops and I'm like, this is just like walking into one of those only. You guys are cleaner. 00:10:55 Marshall Fowler: We try to make sure that we keep a clean shop because a lot of tours come through. yeah, we have a clean shop is a clean mind. Yeah. 00:11:02 Sumer Beatty: Oh, I like it. 00:11:03 Carlos Ramos: And then like right next door to you guys, 55, 000 square feet of welding. 00:11:07 Marshall Fowler: Yep. Yep, indeed. We have a welder, in our room. So welding and fabrication table right in our room. So we can do pretty much everything we need within that shop, which is really awesome. 00:11:16 Carlos Ramos: Now, is it just manufacturing engineering students that are involved in PCT Baja, or are, do you get them from, from welding and from the other majors as well? 00:11:24 Marshall Fowler: We get a whole, mix of different majors that come in. We get engineering design students, manufacturing engineering students, metal fab students, which is a mix of manufacturing and welding, and then we get some welding students as well. We had, We stay, most people stay within those majors, but we do get a few automotive kids, automotive business management, and a few other majors if they're really, really interested in cars and stuff. 00:11:50 Carlos Ramos: How many students are involved right now? 00:11:52 Marshall Fowler: Right now I believe we have 14 to 16 different members, which is. We've grown a lot since the time I started, I think when I started we had 10 on the team, so we're, our numbers are slowly growing, which is good. 00:12:06 Carlos Ramos: That's fantastic. How does a student get involved if they want to? 00:12:10 Marshall Fowler: Absolutely, normally, they just email us, be like, hey, I'm interested, and then they can come in the room and show them, show them around, show them the cars, show them what we do, and then slowly as time goes on they show up more and more and give them parts to keep them coming back. so much. Yeah, reach out to us through email or Instagram, always take DMs and that kind of stuff. 00:12:32 Carlos Ramos: Awesome. Now, you also drive the car to races, don't you? 00:12:36 Marshall Fowler: Yes, I do. we pick those based on who's smallest and who can kind of, take care of the car the best. cause it's a four hour long race. Yeah, whoever's fastest you'll get the fastest laps, but if you break the car halfway through you're not making laps so we kind of take a look at who can Maintain the car over the course of it make sure it's not breaking but still pushing it pretty well We have a test track that we can really if anybody who wants to drive we can monitor and see how their skills are and Put the car through basically a mini endurance race and get all our data that we need and then also seat time Which is really really crucial now. 00:13:20 Carlos Ramos: There are different aspects to each of the races, but the endurance is is the that's the big one 00:13:25 Marshall Fowler: Yeah, that's the what we call the feature event on there and that's the main event for Sunday Which is a four hour long endurance race where all the cars are on track at one time So there's 80 to 100 different teams All out there, wheel to wheel, going through mud, rocks, sand, anything they want. In the Oshkosh race, they took a whole bunch of old military vehicles, tore them apart, and just scattered the parts amongst. So they were, they were like, there was one obstacle that was twelve, rear axles, just in a row, and you had to drive straight over them. They'll take telephone poles. Railroad ties, all that kind of stuff. They want to break the cars. 00:14:05 Sumer Beatty: Oh my goodness. Somebody's having a lot of fun at the heavy equipment site right now. 00:14:09 Carlos Ramos: Oh my gosh, yes they are. Well, and I know John is, it's a little bit of a stressor. 00:14:14 Marshall Fowler: Yeah. Oh yeah. 00:14:15 Carlos Ramos: Since I've been here, especially in like the last five to ten years, I mean, I've seen you guys just, knocking out, you know, top tens. And, and I think even, was it two years ago, three years ago? You guys got a, did you top place, place top? 00:14:30 Marshall Fowler: Yeah, so there's, there's the overall, score, which is a whole mix of the dynamic day events, the endurance race, and all the paperwork side, so the static events, like business report, cost report, and design report. That's the overall. We won in 2022. We did back to back wins on the endurance race. So we were, we came in first for over the four hours out of a hundred different teams. 00:14:54 Carlos Ramos: That's amazing that not too many teams can say that. 00:14:57 Sumer Beatty: So given all of the, you've mentioned paperwork a couple times, so it kind of sounds like there's this business aspect too. And is that covered in your typical coursework for your program? 00:15:06 Marshall Fowler: it's covered a little bit. 00:15:07 Sumer Beatty: Okay. 00:15:08 Marshall Fowler: This is technically, Baja is an engineering competition that you get to drive in. So they're more focused on, the, the real engineering of it, so we have to do a design report where we present why our design is, why we think our design is the best, and then also, the business report where we have to show business information about, what, if we were to make this a legitimate business, what we would do with that, the cost report, how much our, car costs with overall and how we can make it cheaper in the future. 00:15:46 Sumer Beatty: It's such a cool way to round out these programs. 00:15:48 Marshall Fowler: Yeah. 00:15:48 Sumer Beatty: Having this other extracurricular that you're exposed to the business aspects. 00:15:53 Marshall Fowler: It takes the, takes what we're learning in our labs and lectures and puts it into a real world hands on application before we actually get out. into the real world and we have to make sure that the parts are accurate and are correct because it's not, they don't go together and you can't build a car, you can't go race, which is, I think is really cool because it just, it takes the, the theory and puts it into it like a, oh, this is actually something I can do, aspect. 00:16:20 Sumer Beatty: Yeah, have you heard of any past Baja members that have gone out into the workforce, applied for jobs, talked to employers, and have had that feedback on, oh wow, you were part of Baja SAE? Like, does it seem like I 00:16:33 Marshall Fowler: know a lot of our, a lot of our alumni go off and do really, really cool stuff. We have some that went to SpaceX. A lot of teams, a lot of them, the employers really like to see 00:16:44 Sumer Beatty: I would think so. I mean, it's such a unique opportunity, and I had never heard of it before I came here, so I think it would at least raise some questions, like if they saw it on a resume. Can you tell me about this? What is it? 00:16:55 Marshall Fowler: It's a great talking point. It's a really great talking point. They're like, oh, what is this? And I'm like, well, I'm designing and manufacturing parts as a hobby in college. So I can actually show you and bring in a lot of people have actually brought in parts that they've made in the club to interviews to be like, Hey, this is, this is something that I've actually made. And they're like, Oh, wow, this is, you made, this is really cool. It's not just a class project. 00:17:18 Sumer Beatty: Right. And there's this passion behind it. So everybody that I've talked to that has been a member of Baja, you can just clearly hear that in their voice. It's like, there's this level of excitement that you just can't, you can't fake it. 00:17:30 Marshall Fowler: Yeah. We really like just, we like making cool parts and we like making cool stuff, so we're driven to do that and Baja gives us the opportunity to do more advanced stuff that we wouldn't get to do in class. 00:17:42 Sumer Beatty: I have so many questions about the event. I'm just imagining, okay, so this four hours, hour three and a half, how many cars are out there? 00:17:51 Marshall Fowler: So usually within the first hour, around 40 percent of the cars will break. and so there's 60 cars maybe. We, the way we do it at, PCT is we usually do two hour and two hour, so we'll switch off at the two hour mark. Used to be a one stop race with our old car, with a two wheel drive car, but now we have to do two, two fuel pits. So we'll switch drivers, at that time. So we're not having one person go all four hours, but you can do that. we had, we have done that in the past. It works somewhat well, but it's really, really taxing on the driver. 00:18:27 Sumer Beatty: Oh, for sure. So I was thinking it was going to be you sitting there for four hours. So that I had all kinds of questions about hydration and fueling. 00:18:35 Marshall Fowler: And you can do that in, the fuel pits. You can have your, we're only allowed three people in the fuel pits. So if you want somebody to give you a water bottle while you're there, you can squirt it right into your helmet. or you can just, there's not much you can do other than that. You can have a water bottle, but that's it is just go. 00:18:54 Sumer Beatty: No hydration packs because I was running long distance, you know, you would, 00:18:57 Marshall Fowler: It's extra weight. 00:18:59 Sumer Beatty: Oh, okay. Okay. Oh boy. So you're trying to dehydrate yourself out there. 00:19:03 Carlos Ramos: You're going to be cutting weight here. 00:19:04 Marshall Fowler: Yeah. Going to the gym right now. 00:19:06 Sumer Beatty: Oh my goodness. 00:19:08 Carlos Ramos: Two hours. That's, that is a long time. And for someone who hasn't seen this yet, well, we'll post the video, a couple of videos. Cause I think we have several videos that feature, Baja. But I mean, this is your body is taken a beating on some of this stuff. There's not. there's not much creature comforts on these vehicles. 00:19:30 Marshall Fowler: We're trying to make them as light as possible. We have some padding in the seats. But other than that, we're, we're just going all out. We want to try to make the car as light as possible and you can tough it out for two hours. It's only two hours. 00:19:44 Sumer Beatty: So how do we, do we know and can we say how much your car weighs? 00:19:50 Marshall Fowler: That we are not sure of yet. So we're still, that's this year's task is we're building a whole new car right now. Last year we had just modified. our existing two wheel drive frame to fit four wheel drive into it, but this year we're designing an entirely new chassis and an entirely new four wheel drive system, so we're doing a whole lot more And we're hoping to get our weight down substantially from last year, but we're in the Mid 300s right now. 00:20:21 Carlos Ramos: And just looking at your shirt because you you have a PCT Baja shirt on and it's got the the render, you know the the one color rendering there of a 00:20:29 Marshall Fowler: Yeah, this was one of our members family member had taking one of our pictures and outlined it and showed us and was like, that's awesome. We want that on a t shirt Yeah. 00:20:39 Carlos Ramos: I mean that where I where I'm seeing the weight is probably the weights probably all hidden underneath a couple panels And yeah that engine but the the tires 00:20:50 Marshall Fowler: Right now we're working on our front, on the front of the car. The rear of the car is pretty well tuned out because that was all two wheel drive stuff. But now we're working on the front of the car where we've added a front diff, drive axles. Because with the new four wheel drive requirement, we had to add a whole bunch of different gear boxes, front suspension stuff. Everything changed up there. So that's what my capstone is right now, is redesigning the front suspension to make it a whole lot lighter. 00:21:18 Carlos Ramos: Well, and that'll change how, obviously, how the back responds, too, if you're not, you know. 00:21:22 Marshall Fowler: So, we'll do a whole bunch of testing to make sure that everything is working together. we'll find some other off site location to go to, do a little 00:21:33 Sumer Beatty: What's your time frame for completion? 00:21:37 Marshall Fowler: We're hoping to have by mid April. Mid April we'll have a completed car. 00:21:42 Sumer Beatty: Not a lot of time before. 00:21:43 Carlos Ramos: And the race is mid May, right? 00:21:44 Marshall Fowler: Yeah, so it'll give us one month to actually test and tune. that was one of the challenges last year is we did not have time to test and tune, and we didn't do as well because we just had so many parts to make, and we had a very, very young team. We only had, like, soft freshmen and sophomores last year, and I think I was the only junior on the team. So we had no seniors, one junior. Freshman and sophomores. So, we did a whole lot with what we had, but we did not have time to test and tune. We left. I think we got there an hour before the race, before we needed to like actually stage. 00:22:20 Carlos Ramos: Oh my gosh. 00:22:21 Marshall Fowler: So we drove through the night and got there at 5 o'clock in the morning. We had left here at 10 o'clock at night. 00:22:28 Sumer Beatty: Oh, so that's a really sweet advantage to just driving up over the mountain to the site. 00:22:33 Marshall Fowler: It's 15 minutes up the road instead of 15 hours, which is really, really nice. 00:22:38 Sumer Beatty: Gotta love that. 00:22:39 Marshall Fowler: Yeah. 00:22:39 Sumer Beatty: What does your role look like? And maybe it's just. You're dedicated to the race and that's your part of the weekend. Is the team involved in any of the Volunteer work during the event or anything like that. 00:22:52 Marshall Fowler: So we may help out a little bit after the race I know at least I'm gonna be staying up here for another two days to help clean up the event But I don't think that we're gonna be doing any official things with the race we kind of were there as a team, like any other, like any other race that we would. Yeah. So we'll show up the same time that everybody else does. We'll line our trailer up and treat it as if it was a race out in Wisconsin or California. 00:23:19 Sumer Beatty: How far have you gone for a race? I think 15 hours. Where was that? 00:23:23 Marshall Fowler: That was Oshkosh, Wisconsin last year. That was a very long drive. 00:23:28 Sumer Beatty: Oh. Lots of memories though. Lots of time to have fun and just hang out and 00:23:33 Marshall Fowler: yeah, you learn a lot about people 00:23:39 Carlos Ramos: Now will the public get to engage in this event? 00:23:41 Marshall Fowler: Absolutely. Yeah, so we have a volunteer portal up on our PCT, yeah, PCT Baja page on Penn College's website. If you go into there There's a link that'll send you to the SAE Form to, if you wanna volunteer or sign up, tells you, asks you which areas you're interested in and what tasks you might wanna do on that. 00:24:02 Carlos Ramos: Okay, great. Now that's, May 16th through 19, right? 00:24:05 Marshall Fowler: Yep, yep. It's a Thursday through Sunday. 00:24:08 Carlos Ramos: Okay. Yeah, we'll definitely add that link down into our show notes as well, so definitely check that out. I, I actually just filled my form out yesterday. 00:24:15 Marshall Fowler: Awesome. So what did you choose? 00:24:16 Carlos Ramos: I, I said put me anywhere. 00:24:18 Marshall Fowler: General? 00:24:19 Carlos Ramos: Put me in the game. 00:24:20 Marshall Fowler: Awesome. 00:24:21 Carlos Ramos: I wanna be in the pit. 00:24:23 Marshall Fowler: They'll have fun. It's really cool. It's a really cool opportunity. There's just, there's nothing really else that I've experienced like that at this level of college and university level where these kids are learning. That's the whole aspect of this, is a learning opportunity. And to see the way that different teams interact and go about the different challenges is just, it's a really awesome, really awesome event. So, what other schools are involved that you're like, 00:24:48 Carlos Ramos: yeah, these kids got it going on? 00:24:51 Marshall Fowler: we're, I mean, we're going up against top teams like Michigan of Ann Arbor, RIT, ETS, Montreal, Cornell, And a whole bunch of like big Ivy League schools that are, they're, they're making awesome, awesome kick ass cars, and they're just We're trying to keep up with them. We're doing our best. 00:25:13 Sumer Beatty: Do you have a rival? 00:25:14 Marshall Fowler: Not really. This competition doesn't really We don't really have that big rivalry when we're going against everybody else. but we're trying to keep up with the really big schools. We don't have one specifically. 00:25:28 Carlos Ramos: We'll get some Ferrari/Red Bull action going here. 00:25:32 Sumer Beatty: And Celsius. Come on, we're pushing for that. So anything you're looking forward to most on race weekend? 00:25:44 Marshall Fowler: Well, it's going to be, I don't know if it may be my last race. But there's another one in September that I might come back for. And this one, well it's going to be, it's home, kind of. 00:25:57 Sumer Beatty: Yes, that's special. 00:25:58 Marshall Fowler: I'm really looking forward to seeing, a lot of our families are going to be driving in. So, I mean, these events are in, Oshkosh, they're in Tennessee, they're in Kentucky, they're, they're far away. So like my parents always like, I don't want to come see your event, but 00:26:15 Sumer Beatty: it's a lot of driving, 00:26:17 Marshall Fowler: it's a lot of driving. So it's going to be really cool to see all of our family members there and be like, Oh, they finally get to see what 00:26:23 Sumer Beatty: Yes, Here's what's happening. 00:26:24 Carlos Ramos: we've been talking about forever. And they're like, Oh, I see you would do it, but it'd be awesome to see Rhys. So it's going to be cool to have a whole bunch of our family there and friends, to see. Our actual race. That's probably what I'm looking forward to. 00:26:36 Sumer Beatty: Yeah. as far as back to the volunteering, I mean, we know on campus here we were invited to volunteer. Is that something anyone can do? 00:26:45 Marshall Fowler: Okay. Yep. Anybody can volunteer. Nice. Parents, friends, all of them. 00:26:50 Carlos Ramos: How about sponsors? How do they get involved in this? 00:26:54 Marshall Fowler: So that's also on our, PCT Baja page. On the, on the Penn College website and then also on our Instagram if teams wanted to. If sponsors wanted to reach out, they can DM us or there's an actual portal in there where they can donate, to either the event or to the team. 00:27:10 Carlos Ramos: Wonderful. Well, we could probably talk about the event all day long. Absolutely. and, but I, I know Sumer, you got a lot of other things that you wanted to, to touch on. 00:27:19 Sumer Beatty: I'm sure you've had lots of really amazing moments out there in the car. Is there anything that you were like, if somebody asks you to tell your favorite story or something cool that happened, is there anything that sticks out to you? a really awesome memory out there. 00:27:34 Marshall Fowler: There's a couple really, there was a just a couple really cool times. I guess there's really cool obstacles at different courses. there was some really, really cool ones at Rochester that were just these really, it was a really cool viewing area. So you could see all the cars coming down. It was super muddy. One of the memorable ones was Oshkosh. That was an absolute mud fest. And we were, we had to wade through like. 6 to 8 inches just to get to the track. It was completely flooded, the entire walkway there, and so everybody, it wasn't just the drivers that were muddy, it was every single team member was just covered, covered in mud. That was a very, that was a memorable one, because like when we got back to the hotel, we, the cars were, we had to clean the cars, we had to clean everything before we, You could proceed because we were just all covered in mud, but it was really cool because it was a camaraderie like, oh, it's not just one person that's messy right now. It's the entire team that is caked in mud right now. 00:28:36 Carlos Ramos: So May 14, 15, bring the rain. 00:28:39 Marshall Fowler: Yeah, well, we're hoping no rain because I don't want mud again. That was mayhem. 00:28:46 Sumer Beatty: Is this open to viewing, public viewing too? Like anybody can just go and check it out? 00:28:51 Marshall Fowler: Yep, there will be a, It's a spectator area that friends, family, people from the community can come and watch and just sit there and have a good time, watch, watch the races. 00:29:04 Sumer Beatty: I hope the community knows how special this is and I hope people come out for it. 00:29:08 Marshall Fowler: Yeah, it's going to be a great, great opportunity for the community, for restaurants, for hotels, for all the different eateries and everything in the community because there's, well, as you think there's about. 12, a minimum of 12 people about per team, and there's over a hundred different teams that are signed up to come. That's a lot of people that are here, and they're in, they're hungry. They're always hungry. 00:29:34 Sumer Beatty: Yeah, speaking of food, any special places you'd recommend if anyone's listening to this? Where should they get their dinner? 00:29:40 Marshall Fowler: Don Patron is great. 00:29:41 Sumer Beatty: You like Don Patron? 00:29:43 Marshall Fowler: I love Don Patron. Yeah. Don Patron is a One of our favorite, that's a spot that our team goes out to a lot, we'll have a, we'll end our work day and be like, all right, it's Don, it's Don Patron night, so I'll go out to Don Patron, 00:29:57 Sumer Beatty: And is that Mexican food? 00:29:59 Marshall Fowler: Okay. Yep. Hobey's is good, Mileto's is good. Old School Pizza is really, really good pizza. I very much enjoy Old School Pizza. 00:30:08 Sumer Beatty: What do you think is the most rewarding part of being on this team? 00:30:11 Marshall Fowler: We get that question a lot. I think it's really cool to see your, your work, go out and have a purpose. Because a lot of pro class projects, it says like, all right, you're doing one task, you're, you're modeling something. And then at the end of it, it's like, okay, you turned it in for a grade where this. You model something and then you hand it off to the next process and you get to see your thoughts and your ideas take shape. You get to see it get formed out of aluminum or steel or titanium or whatever it is. And you get to see it then get placed onto the car and then you get to go see that car. And it's really, really rewarding to see all the hard work that you do and all the time that you spend in the lab and, all the manufacturing time and it's really cool to see it. Have a, a dedicated purpose. 00:31:08 Sumer Beatty: Mm-Hmm. 00:31:08 Marshall Fowler: And just go and race. I really like seeing the process from concept to end product. That's where I get a lot of my, reward. When I see like the final, piece, they, they place it on my desk. I'm like, oh, 00:31:23 Sumer Beatty: I wish we had a video camera in here. Now we talk about that a lot, but he is like. Marshall's very animated and his hands are going everywhere and he's showing us how big the piece is and it's just, it's fun. 00:31:33 Marshall Fowler: We like really shiny parts. We like really shiny parts. So when, we get to take a lot of pride in our work, cause it's, the car is a showpiece. It's a piece of art, where maybe it's not art in the sense of you're painting or you're taking a photo, but you're, you're making. something that you're passionate about, and you take a lot of pride in making the parts look good, making them accurate and dimensionally accurate, but also like, the parts are, the parts we're making are pretty really, they're really cool, they're organic, they're, they're just, they're really, really cool pieces, and then you get to show them off in a, when we're, when we're in tech line or in line for a tech inspection, we often go around and take a look at all the other cars and see what other people had for their ideas. And then our car, a lot of people stop by and they're like, wow, these are really, really nice. this stuff looks really good guys. So it's really rewarding when other people come up to me like, wow, you guys do really cool work. 00:32:29 Sumer Beatty: Yeah, definitely. 00:32:31 Carlos Ramos: I'd like to pivot to, you know, where you were before you came to Penn College. you know, what school were you and what, and what, what studies did you take on there? 00:32:41 Marshall Fowler: Yeah. So, before Penn College, I was in Stone High School. I went to Penridge High School and in the high school I did, TSA, which was Technology Student Association, which was where I really found my, my passion for engineering and the hands on aspect of it, because that in there it was very similar. I say it's similar to Baja, but it's not. but it was a, it was competition based and, high school kids, well it was actually middle school and high school kids would be tasked with building something, based on a rule set. There were different, projects that they could choose from, and then they would go to a regional competition, and then if they went, did well at regionals, they could go to States. I always did CO2 dragster, so I built a little, it was like a little land speed drag car that was powered by one of those CO2 cartridges and they'd race them down these tracks and I had to build everything was built out of balsa wood it was very simple, but you could take there was a lot of technical information you could do on it to you could put graphite on the rods You could turn down your wheels to get that competitive edge. And that's where I really found my niche on Getting into the fine details of it. 00:33:59 Carlos Ramos: That's cool. I, you know, I think back to my high school years, we didn't really have anything like that. You either were on an academic track or you were on a trades track with, you know, metal shop, wood shop, not where I went to high school for, we didn't have ag there, but where I went to a middle school or it just seemed like those students, you know, that they had their paths set to graduate high school, go out into the workforce. 00:34:22 Marshall Fowler: Yes. 00:34:23 Carlos Ramos: But you had this nice. mix that said, okay, well, engineering's in there and you're not, you know, college has to be in that, that mix. what is, what do you think that looks like for a student who's coming up now who, may have those same opportunities as you had to be able to get into some type of pre engineering program in high school or an actual engineering program in high school. Or maybe for those that, that do, I don't know, metal shop and wood shop and all that's still a thing in, in high schools? 00:34:52 Marshall Fowler: I've always preached, I did wood shop and metal shop in high school. I was, I did, I have my, both my parents were, they did pottery when I was growing up, and then my dad always had a wood shop, so I was. My brothers and I were always out in the woodshop just making something didn't didn't care what it was He was just like make something to use you. It was really cool to use your Our creativity just to make whatever but that There are opportunities after high school to do whatever. Yeah, you can go the full mechanical engineering route, go to a large school, or there's small schools that the trades are always, a great option. Penn College is unique in the fact that it's a mix of both, the hands on learning, but also the, the classroom work where we were sitting in a lecture for, only an hour, but then we're spending three hours in our lab learning and trying to master the skills that we just were taught, which is really, I found that to be really, really cool. 00:35:54 Carlos Ramos: Yeah, and I just, I'm blown away by what you all do. I mean, I see freshmen in these labs, you know, coming into the, you know, into fall semester and the spring semester. I'm like, Wait, wait a minute. You just started this, you know, how are you doing these amazing things already? And then they get to, you know, senior year and it's like, Hey, you're going to go out and kill it. 00:36:15 Marshall Fowler: That's what we're here to do. 00:36:17 Sumer Beatty: Something when you said the labs, I, I've heard too, and seen it in person where some. upper classmen kind of work with the newer students too, you know, just sort of like standing by watching like, Hey, Marshall, what are you doing? Can you show me what you're doing? And so of course we have talented faculty, but I think there's this camaraderie with our students too, where they're learning from upper classmen and seeing their projects and just taking it all in. 00:36:43 Marshall Fowler: Absolutely. And that's one where the Baja club, we, we strive to do that. because if we don't. The club will die and all the all the knowledge that we have were taken with us and then the team's got to restart again and so Really trying to make sure we're documenting everything and that learning aspect of People are always afraid to ask questions. I'm like, you're not going to learn if you don't ask the questions. I can't read your mind. I don't know what you're thinking. So, we have a lot of team, members who, that's, that's all I did when I was a freshman. I was just asking the technical questions, that are well thought out. I found provided a whole different answer than other than what are you doing? You'll get a very short answer with that. But if you ask like, why are you doing this this way? Then that person, that's what I did with John. He would, I would ask technical questions and he'd throw the technical answer right back, which is really, really cool. that whole learning environment, we want to teach. We're here to pass down our knowledge because if we don't pass it down. 00:37:50 Sumer Beatty: It sounds like you've always enjoyed making things and, you know, you mentioned the wood shop and it sounds also like you're quite busy preparing for Baja, but is there any, or do you have any other projects outside of, you're laughing, yeah, anything else going on that it's maybe the projects kind of on the shelf right now, but any passion projects that you have? 00:38:13 Marshall Fowler: There were a few projects I was working on as a freshman that are still in the design phase. I don't know, I dove really deep into Baja and I dedicated everything I had to it so I didn't have too much extra time. but, I don't know, 00:38:30 Sumer Beatty: Maybe you're having, sorry I didn't mean to interrupt you, but I'm just thinking maybe when you're out of school. You're gonna have a little more free time. So maybe there's like this thought in your head. Hey, when I'm, when I have this free time, I want to make blank. 00:38:41 Marshall Fowler: Yeah, I was going through my flash drive the other day and I was like, Oh, I remember wanting to work on that project. And then I was like, ah, I got too much other stuff to do. But, right now, if, if I need a break from doing the Baja work. I work on my either my mountain bike or my longboard. One of the you had asked about soft skills, and I was joking with my roommates. We all, I would say about 25 to 33 percent of us ride longboards. 00:39:09 Sumer Beatty: Oh! 00:39:09 Marshall Fowler: The fact that we had so many in the room that we had somebody make specific longboard rack as one of the projects because we were just all longboard class and longboard around campus and then we just have this massive stack of like six longboards just on a pile and we're like, we need to do something with that. 00:39:31 Sumer Beatty: That's great. And you brought it today. 00:39:33 Marshall Fowler: I did. 00:39:34 Sumer Beatty: Here it is. 00:39:34 Marshall Fowler: I do around everywhere. 00:39:35 Sumer Beatty: You can't see it people, but it's here. Yeah. 00:39:37 Marshall Fowler: Yeah. And it's actually a really cool, opportunity because people are like, Oh, you longboard? And they're like, can I try it? And then we'll go out in the parking lot and we'll be like, like scary out there and we'll, we'll teach. I mean, a lot of the people who are on the team learned in Baja. So we're not just, we're not just teaching engineering things over here. We're teaching life skills of how to roll, how to ride a longboard. 00:39:59 Sumer Beatty: I don't know if that counts as a soft skill. I've seen some bruises. It looks pretty hard. 00:40:05 Carlos Ramos: Are you doing any downhill longboard? 00:40:08 Marshall Fowler: Not on that one, that one's a little old, but I would like to eventually. I have done some downhill mountain biking though, there's a lot of really, really great mountain biking trails around here. and I've worked with, a couple other people from the welding lab and other, I used to be an RA, so other RAs, they're very, it's just something to do to get out, which is really fun. 00:40:32 Sumer Beatty: So you are mountain biking. That's great. I think that's something we don't talk enough about. There's just, the trails in our area are fabulous. I mean, just, just amazing. 00:40:43 Marshall Fowler: Yeah, I really like it. I used to do a lot, I still do a fair amount of hiking. And within a 50 mile radius of the school, there's so many different opportunities to get out and do. Whatever you want, really. 00:40:59 Carlos Ramos: We'll have to get our friends from welding in here that, we did some mountain bike photos. 00:41:04 Sumer Beatty: You probably know some of them. 00:41:05 Marshall Fowler: Those are the people. 00:41:06 Sumer Beatty: Yeah. I do see some of the things that Nick's doing on Strava. Yeah. I love watching his. Yeah, 00:41:14 Carlos Ramos: Yeah, I kick myself every time I see see them do a ride. I'm like, why am I not out there riding? I know why but 00:41:21 Sumer Beatty: Oh, they don't mind the weather. They don't mind. It's it could be cold It could be wet the you know, the rains making the trails a little sloppy these days. They'll just they don't mind Yeah, they're out there 00:41:33 Carlos Ramos: Alright, any takeaways? I know you mentioned asking the questions earlier, but any, any takeaway, any advice for an up and coming, engineering, design student? 00:41:48 Marshall Fowler: Yeah, just, I guess I could say, get out there, and just, if you're passionate about what you do, it will reward you. If you put in the time to truly learn and dedicate yourself to trying to master a skill, it will reward you in the end. I've seen, I looked at a couple of my designs that I had my freshman year, I was like, I can do that better. I can do that better. Even after it was done, I saw it on the card, and I could, oh, if only I did this. It's like the Monday morning quarterback. be like, oh, I could do it. I should have done it this way. But, if you continuously try to improve yourself, it's so rewarding in the end, where you're just like, wow, this, this is, I'm, I'm proud of this. Getting hands real on, hands on experience transformed the way I design things. being able to see like, oh, this is how it's going to actually be made. And talking and having those conversations with the machinists really shaped the way that I actually design things. Cause they're like, well, you can't do that. No, no, no, you cannot do that. when it was, it's an innocent idea, but you're just like, Yeah, having the conversations, talk to people. People want to share their knowledge. don't be afraid to go off and ask questions. people want to share the knowledge that they have and they're more than willing to. 00:43:12 Carlos Ramos: Fantastic advice. Thank you so much for joining us today. 00:43:15 Marshall Fowler: Thank you for having me. 00:43:17 Sumer Beatty: We're really excited for the event and we wish your team good luck. 00:43:20 Marshall Fowler: Thank you. It's going to be, it's going to be an awesome event. 00:43:25 Sumer Beatty: Thanks for hanging out with us today. 00:43:27 Carlos Ramos: Don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe wherever you listen to your podcasts. 00:43:32 Sumer Beatty: Check out our show notes for bookmarks to your favorite sections and links to resources that we mentioned in today's episode. 00:43:38 Carlos Ramos: You can also find past episodes and see what's on deck for upcoming ones at pct.edu/podcast. 00:43:45 Sumer Beatty: And of course, we are open to your thoughts, ideas, and suggestions. So send those over at podcast@pct.edu. 00:43:53 Carlos Ramos: It's been real. 00:43:54 Sumer Beatty: Catch you next time.