Motivating Students with Bio-Fuel Student Engineering Competition Projects

College students often express concern regarding the impact of fossil fuels on the environment. Studying bio-fuels allows students to learn about both the fundamental principles of their discipline and broader issues such as understanding the impact of technology in a global, economic, environmental, and societal context. Further, students are motivated by competition. University engineering challenges can be used to intrinsically motivate these students. This paper describes the benefits and challenges for the students and University in participating in the SAE Clean Snowmobile Collegiate Design Series competition.