Mars-ready engineers!

Friday, June 6, 2025

Dedicated students, distinguished colleagues and dear friends,

Happy Friday! Happy National Higher Education Day!

Desert land near Hanksville, Utah, is known as Mars on Earth, and for good reason. Its climate, rugged terrain and surface composition make it “a good candidate for an imitation of the red planet.” In fact, this cold ecological region is home to the Mars Desert Research Station, “the largest and longest-running Mars surface research facility.” Not surprisingly, engineering student design teams at universities from around the world gather there to compete with their Mars Rover vehicles at the University Rover Challenge (URC) events. For two decades, URC has consistently drawn the most talented and promising students from many countries into these rigorous, exciting robotics and Mars exploration competitions with stringent requirements.

I recall with fond memories my own participation in Mini-Baja design team at LSU and, to this day, sense the excitement of participation, the joy of competition and the gratifying sense of accomplishment of putting a working car together, regardless of the outcome. Well, you can imagine our sense of pride here at S&T, when this past week, our Mars Rover Design Team won the top spot in the international 2025 University Rover Challenge competition held at the Mars Desert Research Station in Hanksville, Utah. That’s right! The Miners’ rover had to autonomously navigate through sandy and rocky terrain, around vertical drops and steep slopes, and outmaneuver 38 finalist teams from around the world, including teams from Australia, Bangladesh, Canada, Colombia, India, Japan, Mexico, Poland and Türkiye, as well as many teams from around the United States.

Excitingly, the very same weekend, our Steel Bridge Design Team won fifth place in the 2025 North American Student Steel Bridge Competition. Teams design a scale model of a bridge that spans 20 feet and can hold 2,500 pounds. Contenders are weighed and load tested and are judged on aesthetics, cost and time to complete. The Miner team advanced to the finals among 240 teams from the U.S., Canada and Mexico, after earning its seventh consecutive win at the American Society of Civil Engineers Mid-America Student Symposium.

The impressive variety of our many multidisciplinary design teams include Baja SAE team, concrete canoe, rocket design and multirotor, among others. The design teams consist of students from many majors, who serve in roles including design, build and leadership.

To our Mars Rover and Steel Bridge teams, students, faculty and staff, I say well done! You have made us proud with your thoughtful, diligent and hard work. You have highlighted that teamwork is the secret to success. Oh! I have no doubt that much work, mind work, gets done individually and in isolation, but isolated work must not become isolating! And teams help ensure that necessary individual work will integrate into the collective teamwork. Yes, teams engage in much constructive chaos and creative conflict, but also collective genius. And now, in the end, as members of the winning team, each of you are a part of something bigger than yourself.

To all of you winners, congratulations from all of us! I hope you are more than happy, more than content. I hope you are energized with a sense of gratification that comes after all that you have endured on the journey to achieving your goals. Please know that today, on this National Higher Education Day, your joy is shared with others. As you contemplate your achievements, we celebrate your success with you.

Warmly,

-Mo.

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Mohammad Dehghani, PhD
Chancellor
mo@mst.edu | 573-341-4116

206 Parker Hall, 300 West 13th Street, Rolla, MO 65409-0910
chancellor.mst.edu