A Pillar of Guidance

Sorem has been a professor in the engineering school since 1994, and stepped in as the faculty advisor of the program in 1995-1996, a position that was entirely new to him.

He solely inherited the role after the departure of the program’s creator, Dr. Don Gerag, and co-advisor Robin Dillard, just two years after the JMS program began on campus.

“I’d never been to competition; I had no idea what it was like,” Sorem says.

That year, the team’s car fell short of passing technical inspection at the 1996 FSAE competition, the first event Sorem attended with the group.

It was a turning point.

“If we’re going to do it, either we’re going to do it and do it well, or we’re not going to do it,” Sorem says.

It was advice the team took to heart, passing technical inspection the next year, tracking the JMS car for the first time.

“I made the commitment, and really the students made the commitment after that point, and we just have grown on that and built on that,” Sorem says.

The team would make advancements over the next several years, becoming the first in several categories, including the first to introduce a monocoque chassis, a one-piece body-and-frame design no other team had adopted at the time.

That momentum would set the stage for a pivotal shift in the mid-2000s.

“We really made a breakthrough starting in the ’04, ’05 season,” Sorem says. “We had a couple of underclassmen who were good drivers, and that’s when we started becoming a good team.”

Typically, the focus is so heavily placed on building the race car that finding a good driver can fall to the background; yet, securing a skilled person behind the wheel becomes a major asset when competition arrives.

As faculty advisor, Sorem wears countless hats, shifting from cheerleader and encourager to technical advisor and analysis expert, all while guiding the team through a semester that requires immense dedication.

“This is a hard project, and as you talk to the students, there’s a time commitment tied with everything they have to do, and sacrifices they have to make,” Sorem says. “Each year, Formula SAE has a slogan, and one year its slogan was ‘FSAE: What a way to wreck a relationship.’”

Sorem joked that many students’ significant others aren’t exactly thrilled to see them disappear into the shop for hours on end, but the students show up anyway because they genuinely love the work.

“One of the coolest things I remember was the ‘07 team, because it was the first year the students planned and set up a big unveiling,” Sorem explained. “I walked in in the morning and saw students’ heads pop up in the lab, with smiles on their faces. They’d worked all night, but they were having fun.”

To an outsider, the motorsports program may seem defined by the race car it builds, but the program is about far more than the car.
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The interior of the JMS team’s race car is compact and narrow, while the steering wheel provides drivers with supreme levels of control and realism.
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The program’s roots stretch back more than three decades and are interwoven with the work of thousands of students, each adding their own chapter to a long history of innovation, collaboration and hands-on engineering.

“It’s not a year-to-year project,” Sorem notes. “It’s a program. You’ve got a lot of support, and you’ve got a lot of people watching over you.”

Some of JMS’s biggest contributors are alumni who were deeply involved in the team long before they graduated.

Their work often follows them well beyond their time at KU, opening doors professionally and helping them build careers rooted in the skills they developed in the shop.

One example, Sorem reflected on, is a freshman student named Colin Snyder, who arrived at KU in 2006 and helped the team develop its unique carbon rims — technology no other team has been able to reproduce.

“Colin spent a lot of time developing how to lay them out, and he got his own company started doing carbon rims,” Sorem explained. “He developed it to the point that they are original equipment available on upper-end performance, with companies such as Stellantis, Chrysler and Dodge.”

Watching alumni grow and succeed in the real world has been a pleasure for Sorem, and it has given him a front-row seat to the team’s evolution over the years.

“It used to be pretty much a bare-bones car,” Sorem says. “Everything has gotten more and more complicated along with all of the sensors and everything else on the car, and we’ve made huge leaps and dramatically improved.”
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Yet those leaps forward haven’t come without obstacles, most notably, having to navigate the disruptions of COVID.

The pandemic hindered students’ ability to work together, with social distancing making collaboration and communication more difficult. It also left people feeling isolated and separated.

“We lost a lot with COVID, and I think students lost a lot of understanding and ability to work on teams,” Sorem mused. “We struggled, I have anyway, rebuilding the team and getting students working together on it.”

Even though COVID disrupted the learning of students everywhere, it didn’t stop Sorem and his team from persevering.
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The 2024 JMS team poses for a photo inside David Booth Memorial Stadium at the end of their season.
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“I’d say we’re pretty much back to where we started before COVID. We’re a small program, so seeing students that probably never talked to each other before, that are now interacting on a daily basis on it, that’s cool.”

Another challenge for the JMS team comes from the sheer size and scale of many of the schools they compete against.

“Most people, when KU shows up, think a major university, a major player, a large program, but we’ve got 500 ME students, maybe 550 ME students,” Sorem says. “Texas A&M and some of the other schools have 10 times that.”

Although JMS may have far fewer students to draw from, it can still go toe-to-toe with some of the biggest programs out there.

“We have a much smaller pool that we’re pulling students from, but we’re competing against the big boys in and of itself, and that’s rewarding,” acccording to Sorem.

While the team has navigated challenges during its time in the program, such as COVID, and faced obstacles after graduation, like learning to adapt in environments where members start at the bottom, Sorem said there is one thing that remains most important to him during every student’s time with the program.

“The personal interaction, to me, that’s the most important thing they learn and walk out with. How to work on a project, and come up with a common solution that everybody’s in agreement with moving forward.”

Learning to work as a team is something students carry long past graduation, and this June, when the engine hums and the tires bite into the track, it won’t just mark another race — it will carry forward a legacy built on the belief that effort and curiosity can take you anywhere.

“If you understand what it takes, and you’re dedicated and willing to learn, you can do just about anything,” Sorem says.

Allow me to amend that statement.
You can do anything...including kicking the a**es of people who don't think you can.