Our chapter was founded in 2024 by a board that wanted to build a space organization open to students from every major; committed to bringing together peers with a shared love of space. SEDS at UCI gives members an opportunity to network with peers across different majors who share a common interest in space including: aerospace, mechanical, electrical and computer engineering, physics, business, and other backgrounds. Members are constantly working with people who have experiences in things such as CAD, robotics, internships, etc.. This creates opportunities to learn from each other and network; members with backgrounds outside engineering shape decisions in ways an all-engineering group would not.
Our chapter, through its projects and events, gives members experience with tools and skills they can carry into other engineering teams, internships, and jobs. Members have worked with SolidWorks, 3D printing, fabrication, robotics, hardware, coding, and technical documentation across projects like our autonomous rover design competition and now our drag sail project.
It is our goal at SEDS at UCI to make mentorship accessible to members across year and experience levels. Board members work with interns, interns work with sub team leads, leads work with specialists, and specialists guide general members through their builds. The structure means no member is left to figure things out alone, and that nearly all members are contributing to mentorship. The result is that a first year student can do real hands-on engineering work in their first quarter, which is a difficult opportunity to find early on in your degree, when many design teams expect experience most students have not had yet.