A car enthusiast since he was a teenager, Matt Lawrence ’81 and his wife, Lisa ’81, have established the Matt ’81 and Lisa Lawrence ’81 Formula SAE Team Fund to support the building of a new race car for the Formula SAE competition.
“I’ve autocrossed various sports cars and formula cars from 1983 to 2011,” said Matt. “I have also built or rebuilt three replicas of classic sports cars.”
Gifted through the Texas A&M Foundation, their generous gift will provide students in the J. Mike Walker ’66 Department of Mechanical Engineering at Texas A&M University the continued opportunity to gain hands-on project experience while working with a team of peers to create a competition-ready race car.
The Formula SAE competition, hosted by the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE), brings together more than 500 university teams from around the world to design, build and develop formula-style race cars. Part of the mechanical engineering Senior Capstone Design course at Texas A&M, the program consists of approximately 20 senior students each year.
“As a retired mechanical engineer and manager with ExxonMobil, I wanted to support a program in the mechanical engineering department that inspires students to use their minds and hands to engineer, create and defend a finished design using imagination, technology, teamwork and communication,” said Matt.
Upon graduation in 1981, Matt started full-time as a project engineer at the Beaumont, Texas, ExxonMobil refinery. There, he held multiple individual contributor and managerial positions in engineering, production and maintenance. After the ExxonMobil merger in 1999, he advanced through maintenance management assignments in the Beaumont, Challmette and Baytown refineries.
In 2017, he retired as the Baytown complex mechanical manager.
“I strongly believe my education at Texas A&M provided me a strong understanding of mechanical engineering fundamentals and how to apply this understanding to the best of my abilities,” said Matt. “I hope my donation, along with the existing OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) funding, will continue to enable the Formula SAE program to produce a world-class finished product.”