After this semester’s first meeting failed to garner enough interest or elect any officers, the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics student chapter realized that they had a problem.
The club’s membership and activities, consisting mainly of students working on their senior design projects, have been declining since 2008, said mechanical engineering junior and Engineering Council representative Giselle Medina.
After the first meeting, associate mechanical engineering professor and faculty adviser Keith Gonthier called together an emergency board of students to save the club.
The group prioritized officer elections, said mechanical engineering junior and president Jake Roblez. After finding a partial copy of the club’s constitution, they emailed the small group of interested members to begin the election process.
Eight students now sit on the executive board with one main goal in mind: to spur interest in aerospace.
The club’s first official meeting will be Wednesday, Oct. 29, but officers are taking a group of 12 interested students to the Stennis Space Center in Hancock County, Mississippi, next week.
The University is one of six SEC schools without an aerospace engineering major. As a consequence, much of the networking offered by the school is energy-focused, Roblez said.
Of the 200 companies present at a recent career expo on campus, five were not energy-related.
Mechanical engineering sophomore Austin Ober said he thinks the lack of aerospace presence is strange because of the facilities in Louisiana, including Michoud and Lockheed Martin.
Roblez wants to make the club a hands-on experience and bring in aerospace-centered speakers, but said adding new members is his first priority.
Mechanical engineering sophomore and public relations officer Connor Joslin plans on having an AIAA presence at every student organization fair. He is printing fliers and organizing a table in Free Speech Plaza to make AIAA known on campus in the upcoming weeks.
As part of a national organization, AIAA offers many opportunities from research and scholarships to networking, but Roblez said those opportunities may be lost because of the lack of members.
“This club has a lot of possibilities for people who want to do research, people who want to network and people who want to have fun and build rockets,” said Medina. “We just don’t have the members.”
Ober said there is something in AIAA for every major because rocket science needs people with diverse skill sets.
“If you are an art major and you just like space, we want you with us,” said Roblez.
As president, Roblez is encouraging each officer to start a subcommittee to focus on a more specific facet of AIAA. He hopes having a specific interest will keep members involved in the club and later in their careers.
Mechanical engineering adjunct instructor and faculty adviser Adam Baran has worked in aerospace for more than 25 years. He said there is a large interest in aerospace at the University at the undergraduate and graduate levels.
He hopes this club will be a way for students to explore their own ideas with faculty on hand to guide them and answer questions.
Gonthier said there is a lack of resources at the University to establish an aerospace major, but the aerospace minor in conjunction with the mechanical engineering senior design project offers the full perspective. Students will get the broad scope of mechanical engineering as well as the courses focusing on aerospace.
One of this year’s senior design projects hopes to be the first step to bring rocketry to the University, Ober said. This fall, the team is designing the first “homegrown LSU rocket,” which they plan to launch from campus in the spring semester. Gonthier said this club will only be as successful as its members are enthusiastic, but he’s excited about what’s to come because of the motivated student leaders.