New STEM club marks creativity through various projects with all majors welcome to join
The Mechanical Application of Robotic Sciences (MARS) is a new club on campus that seeks to provide a community for students interested in STEM and a creative space for projects and applications relating to engineering, computer science, and applied science. The club officially marks its beginning on campus this spring and plans to begin having club meetings in the next few weeks.
The club will consist of multiple engineering projects, ranging from learning how to code to building robots.
“We have a council that comes up with a set of project ideas that we want to do, but we want to give the final say to members of the group on what they want to do because engineering is such a broad field. So we could be programming or we could be actually building something physical.” said Carson Sears, a junior engineering science major.
Members of the club will also be able to pitch any project ideas to the council for consideration.
Kat Sweeney, a junior engineering science major, revealed the club hopes to begin small by working with Arduino kits that will teach members how to code before pursuing other project ideas.
“We’re definitely looking at maybe a trebuchet competition, which is a type of catapult. So that’s something that we can put on display in front of the school for fun. And it may not seem much like coding, but you’re still having to design something with the idea of ‘Oh, I need it to launch this far, but these are the specification that I have to follow.’ So this is gonna be more of the mechanical aspect,” Sweeney said.
Sears said one project the club plans to embark on are drone shows and the possibly of a high school competition that “encourages high school students to think in an engineering manner.”
MARS not only aims to create a place for skill development in relation to STEM fields, but a greater sense of community within the program as well. Engineering science majors are smaller in number compared to other majors, as the four-year engineering science program at Lee had its official start during the fall semester. The start of MARS hopes to provide engineering science and other STEM majors a place of community.
Although MARS is a STEM club, all students are welcome to join regardless of his or her major.
“It’s gonna be the most beneficial for those degrees, but anyone with interest can join. I mean … there’s some people that just love to learn everything,” Sweeney said.
“It’s not limited to engineering students. We want engineering students to be a part of it to express what they’re learning and everything … but also we want people who might not have the technical skills of engineer to be able to still come and be like, ‘Wow, I actually learned something,’” said Sears. “I think when you intermix disciplines something greater comes out of that.”
Club meetings for MARS will have their first meeting on Thursday, Feb 22 at 6:30 p.m. in SMC 115. To learn more about the club and their upcoming meetings, follow their Instagram @mars.leeu. For any questions, email MARS club sponsor Anthony Minutolo at aminutolo@leeuniversity.edu.
