A dedicated group of students uses welding tools, wires and wheels work in a place where the sky is the limit. The Coppell Solar Car team is unlike any high school organization and is planning success in their future by driving full speed ahead.

Under the guidance of Mike Yakubovsky, the 43-member Solar Car team is one of the best in the nation. This group of high school students aspires to compete with the top engineering colleges and corporations in the world, and their hard work and dedication is putting them on track to do so. The solar car team has a past of success and high-performance. Each year, the team enters the Solar Car challenge, a race previously held at Texas Motor Speedway.

This year, however, the Solar Car challenge has a bigger test in store. Instead of racing in an enclosed track, the race will be cross-country from Dallas to Pasadena, Calif. This style of race is unlike anything the Solar Car team has done before. The total mileage of this journey will be anywhere from 800 to 1,000 miles, and the team has some serious gearing up to do in order to prepare.

“If this race pulls through, [the Solar Car team] is going to face some serious challenges; for starters, we will be racing on the open the open road,” junior business manager Spencer Coberly said. “We would have to engineer a new car and make sure we meet the regulations for a higher level of competition.”

Seeing an enrollment increase of 30 people, the formerly 10-member has developed greatly from their small numbers last year. Even though the team has won numerous awards and placed sixth in last year’s high school race at Texas Motor Speedway, the team plans to grow bigger and get better than ever before.

“With more people on the teams comes good things and challenges, we can definitely get more done, but sometimes having newer members can lead to problems,” senior captain Kaelan Cowan said.

Cowan, a third year member on the solar car team, has watched the project grow and is eager for it to take off.

The Engineering team has been working extremely hard on this solar car each week in hopes of winning contests they have entered. Photo by Ivy Hess.

“I don’t consider myself an expert, but I want to help the members grow and improve their skills so that we can perform to the best of our ability,” Cowan said.

Much of the enrollment increase can be accredited to the Coppell Academy program. One of the branches of the Academy, known as STEM, caters specifically to the learning styles and preferences of engineering students. By integrating engineering information and skills into the core classes and electives that STEM students take, the academies are providing an unparalleled educational experience for new freshmen.

By starting the engineering curriculum early, Yakubovsky hopes to gear up for the World Solar competition, to be held in Australia.

“This kind of race is the opportunity of a lifetime, the students would be competing with some of the universities and corporations in the world,” Yakuvbovsky said. “The only way we could consider something like this would be with a highly-experienced team and that’s exactly what we hope the academies will create.”

World Solar is only once each year, and the race consists of driving from the North tip of the continent to the South tip, a distance totaling 3,000 kilometers. From Darwin to Adelaide, the cars must be completely self-sufficient and are only allowed a certain number of running hours per day.

With such challenging plans on the road ahead, the Solar Car team must make sure they are mechanically ready for these upcoming races. One of the first steps is to make sure they have a vehicle that is up to par.

“The car we have right now gets the job done, but we are looking to repair and make improvements at such great levels that it is actually less expensive and demanding to make a new car, altogether,” Yakubovsky said. “Not only is making an entirely new vehicle a large project, raising the money will be just as difficult.”

Because different Solar Car competitions require different vehicle specifications, the new solar car will be built using different solar cell types and other examples of recent technology. Cars of these specifications usually total about $100,000 in tools and equipment.

While it may seem like the first step in the Solar Car team’s journey is building a new car, the real first step is to raise the money to create a new car, which is far from a simple task.

That is where Coberly comes in. A junior and second year member on the Solar Car team, Coberly manages the business branch of the team, which plays an important role in the team’s inner workings.

“One of the first things the business branch does is contact corporate sponsors. Without them, the thought of us raising hundreds of thousands isn’t even realistic,” Coberly said. “We go to their offices and prepare presentations and newsletters and tell them the reasons why they should support us. We are learning real life skills outside of the classroom, and you can’t do that with every activity.”

Sponsors have played a vital role in the Solar Car’s success, with big names like Nissan offering money to the team. Not only does the financial assistance have lasting importance, the publicity and awareness helps get the news out to the public.

“One of the newsletters we sent to a partner at Nissan sent the letter out to all the company’s employees,” Coberly said. “Thousands of more people were able to find out about us, and that is helping us get on our way”.

Coberly encourages new members to keep working hard, as he himself started with little prior knowledge.

“When I joined the team, I didn’t really know much about mechanical engineering, but I was constantly trying to figure out how things around the house worked,” Coberly said. “Now, I am much more confident in my engineering skills and I have a competitive edge compared to other kids who want to be engineers and haven’t had these opportunities.”

With the knowledge, support and tools to guide them, this year’s solar car team is eager to change the world of high school engineering, one solar panel at a time.

Mr. Yakubovsky teaches Carter West and Lexi Ash some of the mechanics behind the solar cart that participated in the Solar Car Challenge last summer. The Coppell Solar Car team placed 6th in the competition. Photo by Trevor Stiff.

By Lance McCaskey
Staff Writer

The hard work and determination of STEM Academy lead teacher and Solar Team coach Mike Yakubovsky made this summer one for the record books for the engineering department.

Yakubovsky led the Solar Car team to Texas Motor Speedway for the Solar Car Challenge. Every year the Winston Solar Car Team gives out awards, and the Randall Murphy Award is considered one of the most prestigious. It is given to the teacher who they feel inspires not only their team, but also the entire Solar Car community to do the best they can. The committee felt Yakubovsky encompassed the entire award and has earned his success through his work.

“It was presented to me for exhibiting the true spirit of solar car racing. It’s quite the honor,” Yakubovsky said.

The CHS team placed sixth, and accumulated 325.5 miles over the four days of racing. This event marked as one of the most successful in Solar Car history. There are 65 teams in the nation, with 12 in the same division as Coppell. The challenge took place from July 18^th to July 21^st.

This year, plans are being made to take the teams current momentum into a cross-country race from Dallas to Los Angeles. For this race, they will need to start from square one and come up with a completely new design, and rebuild the car.

“This year, we will need to raise $90,000. We have a lot of corporate sponsors, and have many fundraisers,” Yakubovsky said. “All the money goes to finishing the new design for this years car.”

While Yakubovsky leads, the students are the heart and soul of the solar car team.

“We work really hard. Every Monday and Thursday after school we meet, and right now it’s just about finishing the design,” junior Jake Nichols said. “We also do a little work with the video, but we can’t do much until we get more money and finish up the design.”

The Solar Car team has been working toward this year’s cross country race since the Solar Car challenge and plan to do the engineering department and CHS proud.

MATE team finishes 9^th in the world

Another major part in the engineering department is the Marine Advanced Technology Education, or MATE, underwater robotics team. MATE recently went to the International Robotics Competition at NASA. Out of the hundreds of qualifiers, MATE took home 9th place.

“Last year, the competition theme was ‘fixing the B.P. oil spill’,” MATE junior Mark LeGros. “We had 15 minutes to remove the riser pipe, revert the oil flow, cap the oil, take a water sample, and pick up as many ‘sea creatures’ as possible. You also had to touch the edge of the pool before time ran out, or you would get disqualified.”

The MATE team competed in the Ranger Division, which included high school students from countries like Russia, China, and Scotland. In order to qualify, they first had to go through the regional competition against some of the best teams in the southern United States.

“We went to NASA to compete for region, and took on some of the best in the United States. It was a good experience, not only because we got first place, but we got experience in the pool that internationals would be in,” said LeGros, “We got a chance to see what glitches we had left, and what we needed to fix before we took on the world.”

This tough international competition showed the world and the scientific community that CHS has one the best engineering departments, on not just a state or nation level, but an international level. This year they plan to ride their momentum and go to nationals in Florid to bring home first place.

Building cars is typically left to the professionals, but the members of Coppell High School’s engineering team have spent hours upon hours after school to complete their very own solar car for a national competition.

“[Solar car is] basically a group of students all around the country that come together, and every team builds their car from scratch,” senior assistant mechanical lead Sagar Patel said. “You do your design work and your own kind of machine shop and make a car that runs successfully off of just solar energy and race it.”

To compete, each team must build a car that runs purely on solar powered batteries. The competition this year will be held at the Texas Motor Speedway. The competition on July 16-18 consists of three divisions. In Coppell’s division, the winner is determined by the number of miles each car travels over the course of three days. Last year’s winner got about 400 miles in.

“This year [the team is] cutting about 300 pounds of weight out of the car and we have a lighter car, a more efficient car, so in the race this year we are hoping to average about 15 to 20 miles per hour,” team coordinator Mike Yakubovsky said.

Coppell has had technical difficulties during competition in previous years, but they have learned from past experiences and this year they hope all of the remodeling and adjustments pays off.

“The first year we did it, we got a car in the race and we got 45 miles in it before we broke the gear,” Yakubosky said. “Then last year we had a new car that was much better except that during the preliminary rounds we broke a wheel, actually broke the metal on it, and had to rebuild a part. Because of a lack of machine shop we were unable to get it done in time and missed the race.”

Despite these challenges, there is a lot of knowledge to be gained about not just engineering, but life skills in general from the construction of a car.

“It’s been a really cool experience over the past two years,” senior mechanical lead Nick Chapman said. “It’s been an amazing journey, it’s been amazing college prep, and I think its going to be a great experience for the future. As a whole, I’ve really learned not only how to build but a lot of it has been project management.”

Project management comes from having to supervise all of the resources on top of all the building elements involved.

“They get to see why everything they’re learning in school is important because they have to go and talk to companies, they have to do marketing materials, media work, and they have to do a lot of planning. They also learn teamwork skills and get an idea of what engineers do out in the real world.” Yakubovsky said.

Coppell High School is holding its annual Open House event for all parents and students to visit the halls of CHS after hours and revisit students’ works from this year. Doors will open at 6:30, but families can come and go as they please until close at 8:30.

Teachers will showcase students’ works in classrooms and hallways, and parents will have the opportunity to hear raving reviews about their students. It’s a night to meet and get to better know teachers and what students have accomplished since August.

All teachers are required to attend Open House, and all administrators will be in attendance as well, so don’t miss out on this opportunity! English classes which will showcase writings and creative pieces should definitely not be skipped! And be sure to introduce your parents to this year’s favorite teacher.

As well as reviewing the work of CHS students, stop by the art hall (E-Hall) to enjoy a year’s worth of portfolio artwork by art students; also try checking out Engineering and CHS’s other creative electives and extra-curriculars.

Read about and see footage of last year’s successful Open House.

With today’s world being so technology oriented, it seems reasonable to assume that engineers make up a growing number of the population. However, in reality, the numbers of engineers are actually dwindling.
Every year, Coppell High School hosts an Engineering Expo to get students excited about the possibilities in an engineering field.
This year’s expo takes place on November 7.
It will feature guest speakers, as will as engineering projects taking place at CHS. These projects include a solar car, an underwater ROV (which as a remote operated vehicle), among other robot and rocket projects.
Last year’s expo had about 2000 attendees, and Coppell’s School of Engineering hopes that many more will be attending this year.

Starting with the Class of 2015, CHS will be introducing Career Academies in order to encourage freshmen who already have an interest in a certain career.

Teacher Michael Yakubovsky's engineering academy served as the pilot program for the academy system to be made available to incoming freshmen. Here, engineering students work on their robot at the BEST Robotics competition in October at UNT. (Photo courtesy Michael Yakubovsky)

The three academies are the Science, Technology Engineering and Math (STEM) Academy headed by science teacher Mike Yakubovsky, the Public Services Academy headed by science teacher Brenda Brinkman and the Emerging Media and Communications Academy (EMAC) headed by KCBY-TV director Irma Kennedy.

This new model is part of the Strategic Planning process that began in October 2006 as part of an effort to create smaller learning communities within CHS.

“We realized that you can’t just motivate kids,” CISD Superintendent Dr. Jeff Turner said at a Jan. 3 meeting with Coppell parents. “You have to find something that motivates kids.”

This “something” became the academies, geared towards the diverse interests of the incoming student body. The district has tried to expose students to these academies through a series of evening meetings at the middle schools as well as day presentations given by current CHS students, but some parents are still wary of taking the leap.

“I’m kind of concerned about whether a 14 year old can really make that decision,” eighth grade parent Sandra Braden said. “I don’t understand how it’s that easy for them to try something and then decide ‘This isn’t for me.’ In a way, I kind of wish they had made it so they could be exposed to all of those things and not been so pigeon-holed. I’m not sure we’ll go the academy route for that reason.”

Until the school knows how many students sign up for the academies, they cannot determine exactly how integrated academy courses will be with general studies and AP/GT classes (although the International Baccalaureate program will be incompatible with the academies, since IB students need to take very specific classes). The idea, however, is for each academy to be an autonomous learning community.

“We’re going to have the core teachers working with us to create a curriculum that is focused on those specific areas,” Brinkman said. “So in English, you could be writing a paper that has a medical topic so it brings some connection to it.”

One direction that parents can look to see a successful academy is this school year’s Engineering Academy, headed by Yakubovsky, which served as the pilot program for the STEM Academy. Next year’s STEM Academy is similarly designed to prepare students to be successful through learning about engineering and science, as well as the technology that goes with it.

The EMAC Academy focus on careers in print as well as broadcast journalism, web design, photography, graphic design and marketing. Students who enter this academy are on track to apply to be on the staffs of The Sidekick student newspaper, KCBY-TV and the Round-Up yearbook.

“Everything will be seen through the lens of communications,” Kennedy said. “Communications has changed completely because all of this emerging media. Now, you have to be able to get your hands wet in all fields – your future really depends on it.”

The last academy, the Public Services Academy, is geared towards students who are interested in getting a foundation in education or medicine.

“These students are usually the typical leaders on our campus,” Brinkman said. “They typically have the same characteristics as our healthcare workers and our teachers. They’re very ethical, and creative and innovative and hardworking. The cool thing that we’ve seen in common with them also is that they’re kind of global-minded and they want to be those people out there taking care of world issues.”

In addition to these academies, incoming freshmen can also choose to remain in general studies. Students who join an academy but feel that it is not the right fit for them must remain in the academy for a year before dropping out.

Open enrollment for the academies begins with freshmen registration.

This Sunday, Jan. 24, from 4 p.m. to 9 p.m., Main Event Lewisville will be hosting a fundraiser benefiting CHS’s School of Engineering.

However, to get into the event, you must present an invitation at the door (sort of like a Golden Ticket, for all you Wonka fans out there.) The invitation is good for four people and allows you to buy a package of unlimited bowling, billiard, laser tag, glow golf, rock climbing, gravity ropes course, and a $5 FUNcard for only $20 per person. For each package purchased, $5 will be donated to the engineering program here at Coppell High.

Main Event Lewisville is located at 2070 S. Stemmons Frwy. For more information and to receive your own pass to the event, see Mike Yakubovsky in D103 or talk to an engineering student.

And who doesn’t want to help some engineers fund their next contained explosion by bowling?

This Saturday, December 9th, kicks off the start of FIRST Robotics competition. Nationwide,  high school teams have the opportunity to begin preparing for the competition, which will take place six weeks later.

At the Kickoff, the CHS FIRST team can meet up with other teams around the area in order to compare notes, pick up the Kit of Parts, which contains the necessary components in order to build the robot, as well as getting to know other people in other schools and districts competing.

Over the course of the six month course, the FIRST group members will be asked to design a robot to fulfill certain required tasks at the competition without the aid of the team members. Along with this, the students are in charge of raising funds for providing for their preparation. Through FIRST, students have the opportunity to experience “real life” engineering skills as well as possibly winning scholarships up to $11 million.

To learn more about the FIRST time at the high school, talk to sponsor Grant Garner. To learn more about the FIRST program, click here.

Hovercraft bowling, rocket launch simulations and meeting with prestigious colleges and companies make for a fun and educational Sunday.

The Coppell School of Engineering hosted the annual Engineering Expo Sunday, Nov. 15. The Engineering Expo is a free event that is put on for high school and middle school students interested in exploring engineering and learning more about not only the classes offered at the high school, but also about the colleges and universities that offer competitive engineering programs and the companies that offer high paying and exciting careers in the engineering field.

The event took place from 1 to 3:30 p.m. in the Coppell High School commons and had an estimated 3000 guests in attendance.

“The Expo is obviously pretty big this year,” senior design member Ricky Bureau said. “We have over 100 colleges and universities that are here for students to explore potential opportunities and engineering programs. Also, all of the high school’s engineering programs are here: solar car, fast track, underwater robot, sub orbital aero science (SAS), senior design and excite one through five.”

The expo featured numerous booths lining the main hall, small and large commons. In addition, there were two speakers that highlighted the expo: an ExxonMobil senior executive and Mark Penny, the project executive for Manhattan Construction Company. Penny was deeply involved in the construction of the new Dallas Cowboys stadium in Arlington. The individuals manning the booth not only were there to offer insight about their company, university or organization, but also to answer any questions about engineering careers and opportunities.

The universities that were in attendance ranged from schools such as the University of Texas and its branch schools, the United States Naval Academy, Missouri Technical Institute, Columbia, to Texas Tech and Richland College.

“Cornell asked me to attend the expo and I was glad to do it,” Cornell alum John Pettee said. “Any school willing to put on an expo has my respect. This expo is a great experience for students interested in engineering. Nationally, there is a shortage of engineers, and on a long term scale, graduating with an advanced degree in engineering is definitely a good career path.”

Some of the big name companies in attendance were NASA, IBM, Frito Lay and General Motors. Also there were smaller or more local companies such as The Sham Group, NCH Corporation and Consulting Construction Laboratory.

“I went to school at CHS, so I wanted to come to the expo,” NASA flight controller Kay Standridge said. “I do not believe that it is necessary for students, but it would be adventitious and provide a good basis. There are many career fields for engineers at NASA. There are possabilities such as flight controller, astronaut, trainer, designer, builder, tester, analyzing manager or a variety of other options.”

A few engineering organizations also had booths at the expo. The organizations at the expo were: AlChE, Dallas Society of Woman Engineers, Tau Beta Pi Honorary Engineering Society and Texas Society of Professional Engineers.

“The expo this year was surely a lot better than it was last year,” junior EXCITE student Meera Patel said. “I’m really excited for the rest of this year and starting up the expo for the next year.”