Video: ‘Baja Racing’ focusing on inclusion and continued success
How a student competition team is building an inclusive team culture.
Michigan Engineering News
The University of Michigan Baja SAE team is a student-led competition team that designs and manufactures a new off-road race vehicle every year, and they are consistently one of the top teams in the United States. In recent years, student leaders placed a focus on the culture of their team, including an emphasis on improving cohesion and inclusion.
The team won the 2022 Mike Schmidt Memorial Iron Team Award, which is awarded to the team with the highest cumulative point score after all three North American Baja SAE events. Their 2022 season concluded with a first-overall win in Green Valley, Arizona in September.
Transcript
TEXT: In light of their recent international successes, the SAE Baja Team discusses steps they’ve taken to build a healthy team culture.
Simran Bagri: When I was checking out the different clubs, I came to the Baja booth, and right off the bat the person who introduced me to the team and started talking about it was a girl which made me feel so much more connected to the team and like represented like I could see other girls on the team being out and helping recruit or just working on the car in general.
Linnea Lindblom: And so it’s been amazing to be able to have like this core group of women that I can always count on and be around at the shop.
Justin Osborn: It’s helped increase the diversity of ideas and the wide range of designs that we can make as a team.
TEXT: In addition to increasing gender diversity on the team, Baja Racing has also implemented more financial aid opportunities.
Simran Bagri: There are private recruiting events for different companies for paid internships over the summer and then there are also scholarships offered by SAE.
Linnea Lindblom: We try to offer as much financial assistance as we can whether it’s like going to comp or getting a job in the Wilson Center, so they can constantly be around the team and be a part of the team.
Nolan Bainbridge: I think, we get people from all different majors, male/female, we have a lot of people with a lot of different views on things and I think that that benefits us a lot just because we get people who have strength in one areas that maybe aren’t as strong in the others, and I think whether it’s someone who knows nothing about off-road racing or someone who grew up taking apart off-road racing vehicles with their dad like it’s and knows know a ton about it like there’s always something for someone to do on the team and I think we make that really clear from the start.
Linnea Lindblom: It definitely just like having like the different viewpoints like whether it be like for design like have everyone’s like ideas are different on on what will work and what won’t. And so just having like being such a diverse group like it’s been great to see like all the different inputs that everyone has, and the the way like management works on the team, and just having like everyone being different is great.
Justin Osborn: The culture is 100 how we succeed. When the culture is really gelling and things are working well, it’s enabling everyone to say, “Yeah I want to like spend the extra time to make this right. I want to do it right.” If there’s ever a culture failure, then that’s where you run into times where you know people don’t want to put in the time, aren’t able to put in the effort, and just feel burned out.
Simran Bagri: Sometimes, honestly I come here just because I need help in class and I’m not understanding.
Linnea Lindblom: Even though like we’re all teammates like we’re friends first and being able to like rely on each other and trust each other to get their part done so that you can do your part has been key, and if we weren’t like that close there’s like no way we’d have been able to to build our car.