Competition Teams & Clubs

Paddles up! The American Society of Civil Engineers Concrete Canoe Competition is an elite project to design and construct a river-worthy canoe from concrete. Strong and agile, this canoe will be tested for maneuverability and speed as it is rowed by team members in slalom and sprint races.

Through the course of this competition, team members will develop and test a lightweight concrete mixture and design a hydrodynamic canoe hull to compete on race day. Individuals are exposed to multiple elements of concrete design including mixture proportioning, lightweight reinforcement methods, and formwork construction. Additionally, team members will conduct strength tests on concrete specimens and expand their knowledge of material mechanics.

As a staple of civil engineering programs across the nation, the ASCE Concrete Canoe Competition provides hands-on experience in the world of construction management and builds awareness of the versatility of concrete. Furthermore, the team strives to implement the University’s Creationeering model with excellence to engineer innovative designs, foster professional and efficient team dynamics, and rely upon the Creator for inspiration!

Baja SAE challenges engineering students to design and build an off-road vehicle that will withstand rough terrain and in some competitions water. As in real work situations, these future engineers work together as a team to discover and resolve technical challenges in design, testing, and manufacturing, as well as administrative and financial issues.

The most rugged of all the competitions, Baja SAE also gives students the first-hand challenge of pursuing their passion while managing real-life demands and priorities. Each team’s goal is to design and build a prototype of an all-weather, rugged, single-seat, off-road recreational vehicle intended for sale to the nonprofessional off-road enthusiast.

At Liberty’s chapter of Baja SAE, the mission is to not only produce the best vehicle possible but also take it to yearly competitions and perform to a higher standard each time. The team is built to give students hands-on experience, that allows them to successfully collaborate on a team, gain management skills, focus on a final goal, and provide work that gives glory to God.

Faculty Advisor
Dr. Atwater
matwater1@liberty.edu

Student Leader
Daniel Truxel
dbtruxel@liberty.edu

Liberty Motorsports is a competition team competing in the Formula SAE (Society of Automotive Engineers) Electric Competition in Fontana California. Formula SAE is a collegiate design challenge in which university students are tasked with designing and manufacturing a Formula One-style race car that they will compete with universities from around the world in events testing speed, durability, endurance, cost, and creativity.

Formula SAE Electric cars are capable of 0-60 mph in under 3.5 seconds thanks to the instant torque from the electric motors.

Liberty Motorsports consists of over fifty students from multiple disciplines including mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, computer engineering, business marketing, project management, and strategic communications. Our team has established strategic partnerships with Hendrick Motorsports, Lynchburg Machining, Systems Engineering and Manufacturing, and Blue Origin to help make this program possible. Liberty Motorsports strives to uphold a culture of excellence and inspire innovation in order to develop the next generation of high-performing engineers who honor and glorify God.

Liberty Rocketry is not just another competition team – we are a legacy. Through hard work, determination, and relentless innovation, we are pushing the bounds of student-led rocketry far beyond their traditional norms. Liberty University’s motto is “Training Champions for Christ”, and Liberty Rocketry is taking this motto to heart. Our team of passionate, creative, and hard-working engineers is dedicated to pushing the limits of student rocketry design all while giving God the glory. In only four years since our formation, our team has grown from a handful of disorganized engineers to one of the largest and most successful engineering competition teams at Liberty University.

Every year, we design, engineer, and manufacture a high-powered rocket system to compete in the Spaceport America Cup – the largest intercollegiate rocketry competition in the world. In 2023, at our very first competition, we placed 39th out of the 156 total teams. Then in 2024, at our second competition, we placed 9th overall in the world, 5th in our division, and 4th in the country, beating the biggest names in engineering like Stanford, Georgia Tech, Princeton, Purdue, Duke, Embry-Riddle, Rice, and many, many more! We are quite literally one of the top ten most elite rocketry teams in the world, and we’re just getting started.

Liberty Rocketry consists of four technical teams – aerodynamics, avionics, propulsion, and recovery. Every member of the team plays a crucial role in the engineering of our rockets, from design to build to launch. We also provide practical hands-on experience as part of a successful competition team as well as training in new skills that will help you prepare for a future internship and career.

Read more about how Liberty Rocketry soared to new heights: Liberty Rocketry team earns top-10 finish at Spaceport America Cup

Human Exploration Rover Challenge

Faculty Advisor
Luliang “Billy” Zhang
lzhang11@liberty.edu

Student Leader
Lauren Groom
lmcfalls1@liberty.edu

The American Institute of Steel Construction (AISC) Steel Bridge competition is a national engineering competition that aims to give future civil engineers invaluable hands-on experience with a real-world Engineering Project. Over 200 schools participate in the regional competitions, and the best-performing teams are invited to the national finals.

Students extend their classroom knowledge working through the engineering design process to conceptualize, design, validate, fabricate, and test a 20-foot-long Steel Bridge capable of supporting a 2,500 pound load with minimal deflection.

The competition challenges students to grow their interpersonal and professional skills, encourages innovation, and fosters impactful relationships between students and industry professionals.     

In 2024, the Liberty Steel Bridge team qualified for nationals for the first time. They placed in the top 15% of the nation and achieved a second-place title in the lightness category.

Click here to read more about the team’s success in 2024: Liberty steel bridge team strengthens design for its first nationals in Louisiana

Faculty Advisor
Bryon Ringley
bfringley@liberty.edu

Student Leader
Joel Harkness
jharkness1@liberty.edu

Want to apply engineering principles in a fun way? The Liberty University Theme Park Engineering Club and Competition team is just the place! We are a group of engineers who love to explore the many sides of engineering within the theme park industry. Our core values are to provide a place to freely explore the creative side of engineering​, build foundational skills for sound engineering principles and practices​, and ultimately be a force for God and His works as we put Him first in all we do.  

As a competition team, we compete in the annual Ride Engineering Competition. We are tasked with designing, planning, and manufacturing a scale-model theme park attraction. Through this process, we dive into both the technical and creative sides of theme park engineering, including force analyses, geometric coaster design, ASTM F24 Safety Standard Compliance, Project Management, and so much more. 

Outside of competition, we aim to test the limits of the engineering design process by boasting a wide array of student-led projects, from simulated ride design concepts to scale model attractions. 

Liberty University Theme Park Engineering is also partnered with the Themed Entertainment Association as an official NextGen Club, gaining opportunities to listen to live seminars, join workshops and special events, and gain connections with experienced engineers within the engineering field. 

Vanguard is the place to be for anyone remotely interested in robotics or space exploration. Vanguard is a highly multi-disciplined team that designs, builds, codes, and tests a robot that is intended for autonomous operation on the moon.

Vanguard competes in NASA’s Lunabotics challenge, where our robot must complete a task that changes each year. Vanguard consists of mechanical, electrical, computer, software, and industrial engineering students that each have major roles in designing and developing the robot from scratch, while praising God, who gives us the ability to do so.

In addition to the satisfaction of building a robot that can map its environment, move freely, and perform tasks, the many different majors and experiences at Vanguard make it stand out from other competition teams. If you want to gain real world experience in working on a multi-disciplinary team, Vanguard is a great place for you, and if you want to build lasting friendships in a setting that gives all the glory to God, then contact our team leads today to find out how to join!

Faculty Advisor
Dr. Kyung Bae
kkbae@liberty.edu

Lead Engineer
Caleb Kortens
cjkortens@liberty.edu

Project Manager
Luke Ragan
LARagan1@liberty.edu

VEX Robotics is a nationally recognized robotics competition in which students present innovative solutions to complex problems.

Our Robotics Team uses VEX V5 materials and competes with other universities to prove themselves. Our team helps students develop problem-solving skills, teamwork, and creative thinking. Building these robots requires members to be flexible in their approach to design, as solutions often do not work the first time.

Overall, VEX provides students with an opportunity to have fun building, innovating, and competing in a challenging environment that aids them in developing and honing their engineering skills.

Faculty Advisor
Dr. Bae 
kkbae@liberty.edu

Student Leader
Caleb Summy
 cdsummy@liberty.edu

“The word of God is alive and powerful. Sharper than any two-edged sword.” Each time we read God’s Word, there is growth and new understanding. Scripture memorization in Abide 15:4 provides a setting to not only read, but to dive deeply and know one passage or book, understanding the context of each verse.

Meeting for an hour once a week, Abide 15:4 is a Bible memory club focused on giving students the opportunity to grow together in their faith through immersion in the Word. Abide gives students the structure to help them reach their memorization goals. We provide each student with an accountability partner and track each student’s goals to optimize their results. We want to meditate on the word, so that it shapes our thoughts, guards our heart, and influences every decision we make.

Students will be provided a setting and a community where God’s word is the focal point of our lives. Each meeting is comprised of three sections: socialization/games, recitation of verses, and a devotional. Previous semesters (Fall 2021) we memorized Matthew 2 & 3 by Christmas with birth of Christ, and (Spring 2022) we memorized the ending of Matthew 27 & Matthew 28 by Easter with the Easter story .

Each semester, we organize a Bible recitation event during club meetings in order to encourage and celebrate those who have committed the time and scripture to memory. We look forward to seeing you there!

Faculty Advisor
Feng Wang
fwang@liberty.edu

Student Leader
Kaelyn Haynie
kehaynie@liberty.edu

The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) student chapter exists to connect and foster relationships between Civil engineering students, faculty, and industry leaders through community service, educational programs, and social functions. Student Members receive the benefits of membership in a national Society and the support of a close local engineering community.

Each year, the student chapter travels to a regional symposium to compete in multiple engineering competitions, learn about industry advancements, and network with fellow students and professionals from around the region.

 The goal of the ASCE student chapter is for every Civil engineering student to have the connections and support they need to reach their highest academic and career potential.

Faculty
Dr. Feng Wang
fwang@liberty.edu

Student Leader

Kenin Tang
ktang4@liberty.edu

The Engineering Missions and Research Club (EMRC) aims at providing students opportunities to combine their engineering skills with relevant research and their passion to serve, in order to advance solutions for the less privileged. It is a platform for students to steward their God-given passions, interests, and skill sets for the global advancement of God’s kingdom.

The club strives to produce humanitarian and sustainable solutions in critical areas such as food, water, energy, communication, or shelter, while utilizing local resources. Some of the club’s projects have involved researching, prototyping, and manufacturing medical prosthetic components, a low-cost brick press, a solar power grid for a church in Venezuela, and a water detection system to help drill wells in Uganda.

The High-Performance Computing Club serves to encourage students in the fields of engineering and computing to develop skills relevant to High-Performance Computers (HPC) such as Linux, data management, parallel programming, and simulation software.

The short-term goal of this club is to teach the members how to build a computing cluster, set up the operating system, and run simulations.

The HPC Club will begin by first teaching students how to use HPC clusters optimally. These projects will be simple, such as: calculating digits of pi or calculating prime numbers. The purpose of these first projects is to educate more students on how to use high-performance computing. Parallel to these educational tutorials, we can have more experienced students run more complicated projects on the cluster. Eventually, we want to do actual groundbreaking research, such as scientifically proving the events in genesis or training Artificial Intelligence, however before we can run, we must walk.

IMPACT is a club of passionate students who go out into the community to love the underserved children in Lynchburg by teaching them career skills. We teach classes and host events to provide opportunities for students that they would otherwise not have. Through our work, we share the message of Jesus and show the love of God, helping them grow both in their skills and in their faith.

Faculty Advisor
TBA

Student Leader
Noah Godderz
nkgodderz@liberty.edu

Liberty Space is a Students for the Exploration and Development of Space (SEDS) Chapter. SEDS is an international student organization whose purpose is to promote space exploration and development through educational and engineering projects.

SEDS is fostering the development of future leaders and contributors in the expanding space industry.

Our mission as the Liberty Women in STEM Club is to build a community that fosters relationships characterized by mutual encouragement and holistic growth among women in STEM fields as we seek to honor Christ through our career pursuits.

Most of our meetings feature women who have walked this path before us and can offer advice on how to live a godly life as women in STEM fields. We also provide the opportunity to make connections with other female students in STEM majors. Our goal is to provide a space where we can complement the naturally competitive nature of STEM majors with a community that emphasizes gospel-centered friendships.

As this community continues to flourish in our club and at Liberty, our hope is that the gospel will transform the way that we relate to one another so that our daily way of life will bear witness to the watching world of the goodness of God both now and in our future careers.

Faculty Advisor
Dr. Kimberly Mitchell 
kamitchell@liberty.edu

Student Leader
Esther Kamara
ekamara@liberty.edu

For engineering students to have an outlet to learn how to build and control robots, to have fun, to meet other engineers, to gain exposure to different technologies, and to allow them to apply what they have learned in the classroom to real-world experiences.

The Weapons Advancement and Research Club is dedicated to inspiring the next generation of defense professionals by fostering a deeper understanding of the tools that safeguard freedom. Our mission is to equip members with the knowledge and skills needed to excel in the field of advanced defense technologies. We offer a unique opportunity to work on real-world weapons development projects. Additionally, members benefit from networking with like-minded students, industry professionals, and a defense company, while also engaging in fun, community-building activities. The club provides a dynamic environment for those passionate about technological innovation and national security.

Faculty Advisor
Professor Zamperini
mbzamperini@liberty.edu

Student Leader
Noah Hofflinger
jnhofflinger@liberty.edu