The program began as a dream of 2 students, and a teacher in
1997. After 2 years of research, planning, and preparations, the
Cougar Electric Company as it had come to be called, built it's
first racecar. The first season was full of learning
opportunities, including several near-victories, something that
was very challenging in a sport that was at the time dominated by
veteran teams such as Prairie. So after that first season,
the "experienced" team came back home and started developing the
plans for 3 new cars for the 1999-2000 season.
By this time the team had grown to more than 10 committed members
who put in many hours working to get 3 new cars built in the
limited off-season, often staying until midnight or 1am as the
races approached. In the spring of 2000, the #41, #300, and #200
cars were unveiled in the season-opener at Hawkeye Downs
Speedway. During this race, Matt Miller driving the #41 Lynch
Ford car sped to an astounding speed of 57mph. The year only got
better after that, with our cars sweeping 1st, 2nd, and 3rd at a
majority of the races we attended, a major improvement from just
a year earlier!
At the end of the year, nearly the entire racing team left as
graduating seniors leaving the maintenance of the old cars, and
the planning for the 2001 season up to several incoming juniors.
With little-to-no experience in the car design/building, a group
of 5-7 core team members began the difficult task of learning
from scratch what the seniors had all known before they left.
Luckily, the new people were all a little crazy, and were able to
come up with some neat ideas for cars. Add to that the expanded
use of our wind-tunnel to test the cars BEFORE we built them, and
we all knew it was going to be an interesting season. So the
season began, our most stringent the team had run, Including a 10-
day, 5-race stretch in Michigan and Iowa that nearly killed us
all (figuratively speaking anyways). Unfortunately while we were
trying to built faster cars, we were also mentoring several other
teams to build faster cars, because we ended up getting 2nd place
in every race the entire season... only being beaten by people
that we had helped build their program, and of course...
Lakeshore!
Also in 2001, Cougar Electric was awarded the FINE (First In the
Nation in Education) Award by the governor of Iowa, Tom Vilsack.
The team was one of only five, K-12 programs in the state to
receive the award, and the first electric car program in the
world to win such a prestigious award in education.
In 2002, Cougar Electric Company continued to improve and the
#400 car successfully regained the Iowa State Championship for
the team. In Nebraska, the #200 car picked up the Nebraska OPPD
State Championship in the Exhibition Class. On top of it's
success on the track, Cougar Electric branched into the area of
hosting the first race in Cedar Rapids in two years. The first
annual Toyota Financial Services Midwest speed trials drew over
30 cars for the two-day event... the largest turnout for a racing
event in Iowa in many years!
In 2003, Cougar Electric had a group of nearly 40 students
involved in the class, as well as a mainly new group of students
taking the reigns after 8 students graduated at the end of 2002.
Class Info:
Advised by auto teacher Barry Wilson, the class is offered 2
periods per day, and currently enrolls 40-50 students per term.
All of the students are asked to give 100% commitment to the
program, and are required to obtain, and maintain at least a 3.0
grade point average. The class is open to everyone in 9th-12th
grades assuming they meet those requirements.
Our team is divided up into 6 main departments. Accounting
(Kennedy's 2nd yr. Accounting class), Chemical Engineering,
Documentation, Electrical Engineering, Facilities, Graphics,
Mechanical Engineering, Promotion, and Webmastering.
The goal of our program, is to design, build and race electric
(battery) powered race cars, while providing the students in the
program a great educational opportunity in several vast fields.
This class not only teaches students manufacturing skills to
build the cars, but also skills in teamwork, public relations,
engineering, report writing, graphic design and fabrication, and
photography / videography.
The students of Cougar Electric Company are continually
challenged with new ideas designed to stress the limits that one
person, and/or a team can achieve, and at the same time learning
to push those limits even further for more advanced learning.
Please feel free to check out the rest of our website, and
contact us, or even drop by for a visit to learn more! |
