Oregon SAE > College Student Resources
Download the Oregon SAE Grant Instructions for the 2008-09 school year >>
Baja SAE Oregon 2009 web site >>
Get Involved!
Students - Contact your collegiate chapter of SAE, or go to http://students.sae.org/
Professional Members - Become a:
College project team mentor (for Baja, Formula, etc)
An official industry contact
Donor to the cause
- More about Oregon SAE's involvement with the SAE Collegiate Design Series -
One of our most valuable resources as a society are the men and women attending one of Oregon's 5 universities. Oregon SAE strives to do its part in helping develop and refine these men and women as they prepare to enter into the professional environment. A big part of that effort is supporting, in a big way, the Collegiate Design Series of competitions held by SAE.
Oregon SAE has held two regional Baja SAE competitions here in Portland and Washougal, both well executed and successful in bringing in over 70 teams from around the globe, not to mention saving our own local university competitors many hours of travel time and travel dollars.
Along with occasional event coordination, monetary support has been given to requesting teams each year since 1998 (See link above to see how to ask for funding). Funds left over from the old West Coast Meetings, the Art Dillinger T.P. Fund, donations, and membership dues have been pooled into a managed securities account through the Vangaurd group of funds. The account is administered to generate capital appreciation so that monetary support can be given to the CDS student teams each and every year. Using this method, Oregon SAE has given an average of about $3000 / yr to Baja SAE, Formula SAE, Micro Baja, and Aero Design student teams.
For our local members and donors, we thank you for your contribution to this fund, known as the Student Project and Activity Fund or SPAF. Approximately 13% of your membership dues comes directly back to this section; a portion of which has been appropriated from time to time into our SPAF. And donors, because we are a non-profit, volunteer organization, a full 100% of your donations goes directly to our SPA Fund. Hard to beat that kind of efficiency! You can be sure that your contributions are well managed by a five-member committee consisting of past-chairs of the Oregon Section; past-Chairs who care deeply about the health of the section and the opportunities provided to Oregon college students via the SPA Fund.
Oregon SAE also takes measures to assure SPA Fund monies are not misappropriated to teams which will not succeed in actually traveling to and participating in a CDS event. We use a well documented application process and a structured review process by a volunteer committee. The review committee, which is open for all Oregon SAE members to join each year, scores each progress report against set criteria then convenes to discuss discrepancies between scores and to agree on a final score. A numerical weighting process then uses the score and the monetary need of the team to determine a final grant amount for each team based on the total funds available that year.
As a section, we know how important the CDS competition experience can be to an individual. For the student, it effectively bridges the gap between the book-learning world and the "real" world. This can give an edge to not only a graduating student trying to distinguish him or herself from the rest of the graduate class, but to employers looking for well-prepared candidates with hands-on, team-based, multi-discipline project experience.
