Founded in 2025, Colby Formula Electric is an early step toward bringing engineering opportunities to Mayflower Hill. The club has the ambitious goals of not only building a race car from scratch, but of racing that car to a podium finish at the Formula SAE competition in the next five years.
The club was founded around the same time the College received the largest donation in the school’s history — $150 million toward a new science complex. The subsequent direction of funding toward developing engineering programs has helped the club build strong foundations.
Still, starting such an ambitious project from the ground up hasn’t come without its challenges. Zachary Gellert `28, co-founder and president of the team, said that not having an established engineering school means it has taken longer for the College’s team to develop the kind of engineering knowledge they require.
“One of the things that we see ourselves doing is legitimizing the engineering school before it even exists,” he said. “A lot of the learning we’re doing right now is learning that students and faculty will have to do for this new science program. We’re the students leading that charge, and so we’re collecting a vast amount of information and curriculum in a way that’s pretty inefficient and pretty slow.”
The team also doesn’t have access to the same kind of workspaces as larger schools. “A lot of engineering schools just have maker spaces, and MuleWorks is a cool space, but it’s not the type of space we need,” Gellert said.
However, the team also has a lot going for them. William Cerepak `27, head of finance for the team, said, “I think [being a liberal arts school] gives us an advantage. We have students who come from tons of different majors. Think computer science, data science, physics, arts, and economics.”
“With this,” he said, “we’re able to have students who are interested in contributing to all different parts of the team, both with hands-on stuff working on the vehicle, but also on the business side. That’s an advantage that other teams do not have. Our students aren’t just excited to go build the car, but are invested in putting in the legwork to actually set up the proper infrastructure for a winning team.”
Cerepak said this legwork includes things like meeting with faculty, administrators, and alumni “three to five times a week,” and building “a special environment where students feel like they are part of a really well-functioning team surrounded by people who really care about them.”
While other teams might solely be focused on the engineering side of things, the three club leaders — Gellert, Cerepak, and Patrick Kuprewicz `28, co-founder and head of operations for the team — repeatedly emphasized the importance of ensuring the long-term viability of the club. “One school, for example, had to go back to their student association and ask for 20,000 more dollars the other year because they just didn’t plan their car correctly. William wants to have the perfect audit every year as a team, which is not something that all the other teams are doing,” Gellert said.
When asked how Formula Electric plans on achieving their ambitious five-year goal, Cerepak said, “Colby students are what gets us [to our goal]. Just driven, ambitious students who are able to really think critically about little decisions. It’s the little details that matter every day, and we have a really strong culture here and a strong group of students that we believe in, which is really special.”
~ Cleo Rehkopf `28
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