Members of the Hornet Racing Team set out to inspire the next generation of engineers by going to North Highlands High School to talk about the benefits of going to college.

This is the first time the team has visited a high school, said Marcos Navarro, a senior engineering major and a member of the Hornet Racing Team.

The students were broken up into small groups and the members of the Hornet Racing club pick a group to help with the project, said Phillip Holifield, a senior engineering major and the suspension design lead of the racing team.

The kids complete the project without help from their college mentors, and the high school students get to keep the electric cars they built at the end of the workshop.

The Hornet Racing club tries to visit schools one to two times a semester. When the opportunity arises, the teacher from the school that the club visits provides kits filled with materials needed for a specific workshop.

“Our club (led) a workshop on gear ratios with electric cars,” Navarro said. “One of the resources that we have for supplies for these kinds of workshops is a company called John Deere.”

Navarro said John Deere partners with the program A World In Motion, which is supported by teachers, volunteers, corporations and foundations. This program delivers hands-on activities to teachers of elementary schools, middle schools and high schools in order to educate students in the areas of technology, science, math and engineering.

Navarro said the teachers partner with Collegiate Design Series teams to host educational workshops. The Hornet Racing Team participates in the Collegiate Design series as a racing team with student members who design cars to race in a competition at the end of the year.

“It’s a very simple car with a little electric motor on it, and what is included in the kit is a bunch of different gears, The gears are very easily interchangeable,” said Mike Milani, a freshman engineering major and member of the Hornet Racing Team.“(The students) are interchanging the gears to see if they can change it for torque or for speed and they’re trying out different things.”

The team is not only trying to promote engineering, but going to college as well, Milani said.

“(High school students) can probably relate to us a little bit better because we are closer in age and we are not like their parents who have to tell them what to do all the time,” Holifield said.

The team used to receive a stipend from A World In Motion in exchange for planning these workshops. The stipend went towards the registration fee for the competition it participated in every year, but recently the club stopped receiving the stipend and was only given the kits for the workshops.

“Just because we lost a stipend doesn’t mean we shouldn’t go out and donate our time to these kids,” Navarro said.

Navarro said the team is also looking for other ways to give back to the community. and is planning to visit North Highlands High School again on Friday.

Jackie Everhart can be reached at [email protected]