6. Team Lux Organization

While a previous section detailed the technical decisions Team Lux has made over the past ten years, the nature of the team and its organization also deserves investigation. For most of its existence, Team Lux has been a Yale College registered undergraduate organization, and while it has received strong faculty support, it has always been a student driven activity. While this is not unique for a solar car team, it is in stark contrast to the programs at many other schools where students enroll in a 'solar car class' with professors who guide the project. In some ways, this puts Team Lux at a disadvantage, but the student-centered environment is not inherently problematic. In fact, this feature of the team has empowered students to go beyond simply designing a solar car to managing every aspect of the project.

Organizational History

Lux Aeterna (1997)

Team Lux began as an informal attempt to build a car for Sunrayce 95. The size and complexity of this endeavor kept this project from being completed, but it laid the groundwork for the future team. With the next Sunrayce two years in the future, a new organization was formed to ensure future success in designing and building Lux Aeterna. Two co-project directors were chosen, as were group leaders for the car's subsystems. Administrative functions were as important as the engineering aspects of the car; a public relations group was established to promote the team and raise funds and a logistics groups was established to obtain the support vehicles and supplies necessary to race. During this time period, Team Lux established itself as a group, forming important contacts with Yale faculty and staff, well placed Yale alumni, and local businesses. Well designed promotional materials, newsletters, press conferences, trips to the Yale Clubs of New York and Washington, and persistent effort helped generate $60,000 in cash donations and in-kind donations of materials valued at $180,000 (Berners 1999). Excellent organization and preparation led to Lux Aeterna's top rookie placement in Sunrayce 97.

Lux Perpetua (1999)

When Team Lux started work on its second car, Lux Perpetua, the existing car, Lux Aeterna, served as a valuable recruiting tool. The display of Lux Aeterna at the freshman bazaar and at events for prospective engineering students prompted many students to think about the possibility of building a car. The team bravely allowed interested freshman to drive the car around the Becton courtyard, further cementing interest in the project. This enthusiasm grew with a team excursion, including Lux Aeterna, to East Rock Park for a cookout and an introduction to solar racing. This successful recruiting effort, along with a similar trip the following year to the beach at Lighthouse Point Park in nearby East Haven, resulted in the Lux Perpetua project having the largest membership of any of Team Lux's cars.

Now that Team Lux had a complete car, it was put to use not just for recruiting, but also for fundraising and outreach. Team Lux began participating in New York City's annual EcoFest event, first bringing Lux Aeterna, and then in later years Lux Perpetua and Lux Millennia. Lux Aeterna also made numerous on campus appearances at events for prospective engineering majors, prospective incoming freshman, and visiting dignitaries. The team also arranged to give presentations with the car at local elementary schools to promote science education and energy conservation. Once Lux Perpetua was completed, it too was used for fundraising, with its first trip being to the Yale Club of Boston for a sponsorship event organized with the assistance of the YSEA.

Lux Perpetua's project director, Alex Selkirk (TD '99), did a good job with team organization and fundraising, and was successful in delegating technical responsibility to three group leaders (frame, body, and electric). An attempt was made to establish a separate business group, but this never came to fruition. This division of labor contributed to the successful completion of the project, but at times masked another problem. Each of these group leaders took responsibility for their section of the car, but this responsibility was rarely delegated further. This led to a great deal of the car being designed and constructed solely by these individuals and other team members were underutilized. This was not always the case, but when deadlines were at hand, the group leader could become a bottleneck. By having too much of the design residing in one individual's head or dependent upon his decisions, progress became dependent upon them. The car was completed only just in time for Sunrayce 99 and great strain was placed on the group leaders.[67]

Lux Millennia (2001)

Following Sunrayce 99, it appeared as if there would be another strong group of leaders for the next two-year race cycle. Junior Jonathan Burt (TD '01) remained on as body group leader and several sophomores took on the roles of project director, technical director, and frame and electrical group leaders. Under this leadership, the team enthusiastically set about designing Lux Millennia. Unfortunately, two years of heavy involvement had left many of these leaders burnt out or otherwise distracted from the project. By the end of the first year of work on Lux Millennia, nearly all of them had left the team and most plans for the car had stalled.

Although during the 1999-2000 academic year little progress had been made in the engineering of the Lux Millennia, the team was still quite active at community outreach activities. The position of 'special events coordinator' was established and Team Lux expanded its program of school visits, now taking Lux Perpetua. The team also joined the Connecticut Clean Cities Coalition and participated in several alternative energy events as well as the usual array of campus events.

A former member who had worked on Lux Perpetua, Lili Stiefel (BK '01), returned to the team as the new project director and the team was able to reinvigorate itself by recruiting new members. Her leadership added a great deal of organization to Team Lux, with formal structures such as meeting minutes and published budgets appearing. When Lux Millennia was finally completed, the team was composed of a small group that had worked quite hard to acquire their technical skills. Outreach remained important and Lux Millennia made trips to local middle and high schools, an Earth Day event, team sponsors, and Yale's tercentennial celebration.

The John Lee (2003)

Design of the John Lee differed from Team Lux's previous cars, as most of it was performed under the auspices of engineering department independent research projects. Two team members, David Johnson (SY '04) and Maro Sciacchitano (SY '03), undertook the design and analysis of the John Lee's frame and body as a two semester 'special project' for the Department of Mechanical Engineering during the 2001-2002 academic year.[68] The following year, Michael Glickman (JE '04) developed the John Lee's data acquisition system as an Electrical Engineering special project, while Andrew Lin (SY '03) and George Burkhard (CC '05) designed and constructed the car's carbon fiber rims as another Mechanical Engineering project. Michael Glickman went on the following year to develop the John Lee 2's electrical systems as his Electrical Engineering senior project.

The completion of Lux Millennia overlapped with the initial design of the John Lee, so there was a smooth transition to the new project and new group leaders were chosen. With both the frame and body group leaders designing the car as part of an academic special project, the majority of the car's work fell on them. As with Lux Perpetua, the majority of the project was being handled by only a few individuals and the overall team size shrunk significantly.

During the summer of 2002, a constitution was drawn up in an effort to provide greater structure for the group and create elected leadership positions.Under the new constitution, leadership would be shared between mechanical, electrical, and business directors, with one designated as team president. With the small team size, no one could be found to reliably fill the roles of business director or team secretary. The actual result of this new structure was that virtually the entire electrical system was designed and built by the electrical director, Michael Glickman, while all other aspects of the car were dealt with almost single handedly by the president and mechanical director, David Johnson. There were several other students who also put in significant amounts of time and effort on the John Lee, as well as a few less involved team members, but it was still a very small group of people working on the car. This left fundraising, outreach, and recruiting mostly ignored and little time to be spent on training new members.

The John Lee 1.5 and 2 (2004, 2005)

Despite the disappointment of not competing in ASC 2003, planning for the Phaethon generated enthusiasm and the nine members successfully took the John Lee 1.5 to Greece. The trend of a shrinking team continued over the next two years, however. In the 2004-2005 school year, all three leadership positions - mechanical, electrical, and business - were filled for the first time. However, the team then consisted of only these three directors, along with one other long-term member in the 'senior advisor' role. With so few people working on the project, construction was slow and fundraising efforts were limited. Because of this, the John Lee 2 was not road tested before NASC 2005, letting a flaw in the suspension go undiscovered until scrutineering, when it was too late to repair the problem.

Considerations and Recommendations

Despite attempts to improve the structure for Team Lux and the effort put in by its dedicated members, Team Lux has struggled to keep afloat as a team. As the number of members has decreased, so too has the scope of the membership experience. Recent efforts have focused on the engineering of the car and neglected the business and outreach aspects of the project. In order to retain its value to the university and to its members, some reform of Team Lux is necessary.

Team Lux must find balance between the demands of solar car competitions and its academic nature as a university activity. Racing provides the apparent goal for the team, but as an educational institution, Yale should expect more than the prestige of championships in return for its sponsorship. Even if Team Lux were winning races, university sponsorship obliges Team Lux to also have educational goals, teaching and shaping the students who participate. Difficulties with issues of membership and administration have led to a history of poor continuity and accountability. It is necessary to address the problems the team faces as a volunteer organization, particularly in the retention and training of members and in the documentation of the project.

Class/Volunteer Dichotomy

Team Lux has always been driven by a core group of extremely motivated individuals aided by a larger group of supporting team members. In recent years, the size of the team has been steadily decreasing, leaving only the core group to carry the entire project. At schools where the solar car project is run as a class, students enroll in that class and form this core group. A class structure provides instruction, guidance, and motivation. At Yale, where the solar car team is an all-volunteer activity, members must seek their own training, provide their own leadership and generate their own motivation.

The volunteer nature of the team has many advantages. Everyone who has joined the team actively wants to be involved. It is an opportunity to develop practical engineering, business, and leadership skills that cannot be found in a classroom. Whereas enrolling in a semester long solar car class is a serious time commitment and probably only undertaken by engineering majors, the looser structure of Team Lux has enabled participation at different levels by students of any background. Almost a quarter of Team Lux's members have not been Group IV majors.[69] In fact, only about half of the project directors have been engineering majors, while the remaining half has been evenly split between non-engineering Group IV majors and non-Group IV majors. This diversity has enriched the team by offering different skills and perspectives than those commonly found among engineers.

An all-volunteer activity can also be a disadvantage. In a formal class, there are homework assignments, midterms, and final exams that motivate performance. A volunteer project, on the other hand, depends solely on the commitment of its members, which fluctuates with their interest in the project and other commitments such as classes, work, and athletics. A partial solution to this problem is achieved through turning portions of a car's design into for-credit independent research projects. This provides deadlines that need to be met, not just for the project, but also to obtain academic credit and elevates the priority of the project above that of a voluntary extra-curricular activity. With project status, additional resources can also be brought to bear, ranging from the expertise of a faculty advisor to funds available for independent research projects. These effects can be limited however, as it depends upon individual students finding and creating their own special project opportunities out of the solar car.

Such projects were integral to the design of the John Lee and shaped it in both positive and negative ways. With the designs of all of the car's major systems being developed through academic projects, the John Lee had a much great degree of technical rigor than previous cars. While thorough analysis had been performed on the body and frame of all of Team Lux's solar cars, academic requirements resulted in a better-documented, more formal approach to the analysis of the John Lee. Since the telemetry for the John Lee was designed as an Electrical Engineering department special project, lab space was again available to the team in the Morse Teaching Center.[70]

An unfortunate side effect of these academic projects, however, is that they typically involve only one or two students. This has most likely contributed to the decreasing size of Team Lux. As knowledge and responsibility are concentrated in a few people undertaking academic projects, it becomes harder for others to assist them. A knowledge gap is created where a few team members have extensive knowledge of the car's design and others are relegated to a minor supporting roll. It often seems easier to just 'take care of something yourself,' rather than to explain all of the issues involved and delegate that task to another team member. This can then alienate team members who feel that that there is nothing for them to do. A smaller team is certainly a difficulty when deadlines approach and there simply are not any more team members to help finish a task. It can also be a self-replicating problem. With a small team, the workload for each member, whether receiving academic credit or not, is relatively high. This large commitment can lead to burnout and hinders recruiting students who can make only a minor time commitment to the project.

Retention

Despite an increase in the number of academic projects based upon the solar car project, Team Lux remains primarily a volunteer activity. As such, both the recruiting of new members and the retention of existing members are a high priority. Long-term retention is difficult, as there seems to be a natural two-year cycle to participation in a solar car project. This two-year time span follows from the two- year race cycle, and indeed, after both Sunrayce 97 and Sunrayce 99, the majority of team members significantly cut back their involvement or left the team entirely. However, even when the car was not completed within two years, or for members who joined the team in the middle of a race cycle, the average length of involvement remains consistent at 1.99 years. Over the past ten years, more than 100 students have been members of Team Lux,[71] but nearly half of them (47.6%) were involved for 1 year or less, with another quarter (22.3%) being involved for 1 to 2 years. The remaining members were split fairly evenly, with 13.6% involved for 3 to 4 years, and 16.5% involved for 4 or more years.

On average, each year three or four new members are recruited who will remain with the project for three or more years, but as these statistics show, the broad majority of new members will be involved for less than two years. Although Team Lux membership as a whole has declined, it is the number of these 'short term' members that has decreased most drastically. A small group of dedicated individuals has remained to work on the most recent cars, but they no longer are assisted by a larger number of other students. During the two-year period when Team Lux built Lux Perpetua, 65% of the people who worked on the project remained involved for less than two years. In the next two-year period (Lux Millennia), this percentage dropped to 55% and continued to drop even farther, to 43%, during the two years of the John Lee.[72]

Having fewer short-term members increases the workload on each member and sharpens the separation between those members and the project leaders. One reason for the decline in short term members is the difficulty some team leaders have in involving less-experienced students in the design and decision making process. It can be challenging to step back from the immediate need of completing a task and look at the larger picture of expanding the team and training new members. Additionally, skilled engineers are not necessarily skilled educators. The problem of training is exacerbated by the lack of resources available to learn about solar car design and construction or about how Team Lux functions.

In lieu of training, Team Lux has primarily relied on members either already possessing the necessary skills or engaging in research and training on their own initiative. To a certain extent, there have been some aspects of apprenticeships with new members learning 'on-the-job,' but never in any formal manner. Expanding upon this by assigning certain members to train specific newer members would certainly be a start, but is not a complete solution. Perhaps a better solution would be specific training independent of work on the actual car.

In recruiting, Team Lux has often professed that all are welcome and no prior skills are needed, which may be the case, but the complexity of a solar car can still be intimidating to some new members. By setting aside time to teach new members some of the basic principles of solar car design and construction, a more welcoming environment for new members would be created. A new member introductory session will likely be better attended than just another work session, and the opportunity can be taken to get potential team members excited about the solar car project.

Documentation

Thorough documentation has been part of the solar racing experience since its inception, with the post-race technical reports from the WSC and Sunrayce being some of the best sources of solar car related information available. Education was one of the primary reasons GM founded Sunrayce.[73] Likewise, proper documentation and reporting needs to be a critical part of Yale's solar car project both to create a resource for future team members and to maintain credibility as a scientific endeavor.

In order to better prepare its new members, Team Lux must take advantage of the knowledge achieved through past cars. The continuous turnover in students and the lack of a faculty advisor involved in the day-to-day operations of the team have resulted in Team Lux having a very poor track record of retaining institutional memory. While even the small number of members who remain involved for all four of their years at Yale certainly help to transfer knowledge about previous projects to current team members, very little has been done to document the work of Team Lux and allow future teams to benefit from that experience.

Team Lux's informal verbal continuity contrasts with programs at other schools, particularly those where the solar car is run as an academic program. Many solar car teams produce thorough reports detailing the construction of the car along with the decisions made and lessons learned during the course of the project. By having this written record, subsequent teams can readily benefit from the experience of the previous projects. Such a report is a time consuming activity, but is an important part of the solar car project as an educational experience.

At times, Team Lux seems to have devolved into a bunch of students bolting together a car instead of a more rigorous program of design and experimentation. As documentation can often appear secondary to the immediate need of completing a car, specific efforts to encourage proper reporting are necessary. One possibility is to require Team Lux to present at the end of each semester, as is done with engineering independent research projects. This would also increase publicity. This requirement already exists for the portions of the car that are being performed as special projects, but could be expanded to cover the whole project, creating a 'state-of-the-project' report. As the usual academic incentive to complete such a report does not exist, perhaps it could be tied to funding. In the past, the various engineering departments have generously supported Team Lux, although usually on an ad-hoc basis, with Team Lux periodically soliciting for donations. A more formal arrangement, with Team Lux receiving steady funding in exchange for a written report and presentation on the project's progress, would help to define Team Lux's status with regard to the university and provide stability and continuity for the team.

Analysis

While the existing student-led organization of Team Lux does have drawbacks, it is important not to lose sight of the benefits inherent to it. Team Lux participation has proved valuable after Yale because of the opportunities for leadership, practical experience, and creative design that go far beyond any class. It provides a place to develop team-building and management skills that are invaluable in the workplace. While most course work teaches theory and offers structured laboratory experiences, building a solar car teaches how to apply that theory to a real-world project and deal with the problems that inevitably occur. This problem solving ability and the flexible thinking that goes with it engender the creativity and the leadership qualities that a Yale education should entail.

When Team Lux alumni were surveyed about their experience,[74] a recurring theme was the major role Team Lux played in their initial applications to jobs and graduate schools. Most often cited was having undertaken a real world engineering challenge. As one member put it, the "hands-on experience lent credibility to a degree largely viewed externally as theoretical." Even team members not going into engineering described Team Lux as "invaluable" and frequently discussed the program with prospective employers. Skills learned through Team Lux were directly applicable to post collegiate work. Team Lux gave one member "Éa tangible step up with team design projects, new technologies application, and project-coordination in my first architecture job," and for another member, Team Lux experience allowed him to enter his first job at the same level as candidates with master's degrees in Mechanical Engineering.

Leah Barton (PC '97), the Lux Aeterna body group leader, summed up Team Lux as "a leadership development and team-building program as much - or more than - a technical skill-building one." While the engineering difficulties involved in building an entry for a solar car race are a valuable experience, it is other elements that make it such a broad and valuable learning experience. A major part of the nature of Team Lux is its student run nature. Operating with "relatively little safety net," as one team member described, empowered students with responsibility for a large and complex project. While some team members might regret all of the time spent fundraising, campaigning for support, or searching for workspace and support vehicles, the challenge of these obstacles is an integral part of why Team Lux membership is so valuable. One former project director described Team Lux as giving "students experience in starting a small business."

Any attempt to improve Team Lux should not alter its student-run nature. In one survey response, a member worried that "without the autonomy this provided, it is unlikely that students would have devoted their hearts and souls to the solar car as many did."

7. Conclusion

As solar racing approaches its 20^th anniversary, its merits are being questioned; it is has become clear that solar powered consumer automobiles are quite unlikely and that alternative-energy research dollars might be better spent elsewhere.[75] There have been some direct technological advances spurred by solar racing, such as Bridgestone's Ecopia tires being used on production hybrid automobiles (BFNT 2003) and electric rickshaws powered by NGM motors (Schneider 2004), but perhaps the most important aspect of competitions like the ASC is educational.

The introduction to the Yale College Programs of Study states that the "main goal [of a Yale College education] is to instill in students the development of skills that they can bring to bear in whatever work they eventually choose." (Baker 2005) The Report on Yale College Education lists eight of those skills, including curiosity, initiative, teamwork, and participation in the global community (CYCE 2003). Team Lux membership contributes directly to all of these. The scope and scale of the solar car program allows it to surpass any classroom experience in developing the skills called for in the Report. Combining elements of many fields of engineering, as well as finance, management, and advertising, Team Lux requires students to "work with others in such a way as to construct the larger vision no one could produce on his own." (CYCE 2003) Designing and constructing a complete vehicle every two years requires of every Team Lux member the "sustained and disciplined analysis" called for in the Report. In their survey responses, Team Lux members almost universally described it as the most influential part of their time at Yale.

The learning and leadership opportunities offered by Team Lux have proved extremely valuable in the post-collegiate world. Unfortunately, it is only a small number of students who are participating in an extremely expensive program. A reevaluation of Team Lux is in order; possible areas of improvement include university oversight, the size of the team, and the cost of each car. These improvements must be carefully implemented, however, so as not to strip Team Lux of the character that makes it such a beneficial educational program.

The recent failure to qualify for races could likely have been prevented through improved organization or a more tightly enforced schedule. These and other problems might suggest more active faculty leadership as a solution. However, removing the student leadership aspect of the team would inexorably alter the program; it is the sink or swim nature of the program that forces students to become leaders. Solutions must be found to overcome Team Lux's organizational difficulties and that help guide the program while allowing students to hold responsibility for the success of the car. The university could accomplish this through, motivating deadlines and documentation by tying funding to demonstrated progress. This would retain the student led nature of the team while offering some measure of control over the program.

Although oversight is a problem, many of Team Lux's current difficulties stem even more from the extremely small size of the team. The benefits of the program should sell themselves in recruiting additional members, but clearly more must be done to promote and expand recruitment. Increased participation not only exposes more students to the solar car program, but also helps to retain existing members by decreasing each member's workload. With a sufficiently large group, Team Lux could function properly as an intensive extra-curricular activity, while still allowing members time for their academic workload as well as other interests.

The largest strike against Team Lux is the monetary cost of the program. This could be significantly reduced without major impact to the program. Although Team Lux's most recent cars have been expensive open class vehicles, none of the educational aspects of the program would be lost by entering the stock class. This would cut the cost of the solar array by as much as $50,000. Team Lux already has established the necessary infrastructure for solar car construction, and given Yale's vast network of well-placed alumni, fundraising for a stock class car should not be arduous.

Solar racing may seem out of place at Yale, with its relatively small engineering program and East Coast location in a sport dominated by very large public universities and Mid-West races, but Team Lux fits perfectly into Yale's vision. The solar car program has had only moderate racing success, but winning a race is secondary to the learning that takes place by participating in the engineering competition. As Team Lux offers matchless practical experience to complement traditional classes in meeting Yale's educational goals, collegiate solar racing should remain an integral part of Yale Engineering.