A team of students from Campbell’s School of Engineering will compete in NASA’s Human Exploration Rover Challenge in April thanks to funding provided by North Carolina Space Grant, Dean Jenna Carpenter announced today.
The Rover Challenge — to be held April 12-13 at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama — pits engineering students from high schools and colleges all over the world competing to create a vehicle “designed to traverse the simulated surface of another world.” Teams design, build and test technologies that enable their rovers to perform on a nearly three-quarter-mile course filled with grueling obstacles.
Campbell’s team will be led by Assistant Professor of Engineering Lee Rynearson, who along with Carpenter was honored in 2017 by the American Society of Engineering Education for a paper on how to design innovative teaching techniques and learning spaces in the classroom.
Campbell was one of 10 schools this year to earn an NC Space Grant Team Experience Award, which helps undergraduate student teams participate in NASA-sponsored or other STEM-related competitions.
“We are so excited to receive this Team Experience Award from NC Space Grant to support our HERC team,” Carpenter said. “These investments by the NC Space Grant consortium to support the education of the students in our state will continue to pay dividends for years to come.”
According to Carpenter, Campbell’s “moon buggy” team consists of about 30 students.
“Opportunities such as this are just one way that Campbell provides a robust and unique hands-on approach to engineering education that gives our students a significant edge,” she said.