In the heart of Manitou Springs, the UCCS Society of Women Engineers achieved liftoff with the support of friends and fans at the Emma Crawford Coffin Races.
The UCCS Society of Women Engineers (SWE) participated in this year’s Emma Crawford Coffin Races in Manitou Springs for the first time on Oct. 25. SWE raced with 50 other coffins down a 585-foot stretch of Manitou Ave.
The Emma Crawford Coffin Races are an annual event hosted in Manitou Springs meant to honor Emma Crawford, a woman whose coffin dislodged itself from Red Mountain and slid all the way down 38 years after her death. Her only remains were the casket handles, name plate and a few bones.
Each team races in a heat of two coffins. The three fastest times receive first, second and third place prizes. Other prizes include “Best Entourage,” “Best Coffin” and “Best Emma,” the name used to refer to the racer in the coffin. UCCS SWE took home the prize of “Best Entourage.”
According to Alexa Boerger, a graduate student at UCCS and a member of the SWE planning and design team that worked on the coffin, “There was so much support for women in engineering in the crowd as well, which was really inspiring.” Boerger told The Scribe that the support from crowd members helped SWE nail down “Best Entourage.”
SWE was paired against Crystal Car-tel, a “Breaking Bad” themed coffin, and ultimately won their heat. “It was exciting to see women in engineering beat ‘drugs!’” Boerger said. With a time of 34.5 seconds, UCCS SWE came in 22nd place. The winner of the event finished in 25.6 seconds.
Construction on the coffin began in February, according to Lindsey Hopewell, a senior mechanical engineering major and events coordinator for SWE. Hopewell took on the role of project leader for the Coffin Races, helping to organize the team of five racers and adjust the design of the coffin through the testing phase.
After lots of brainstorming, SWE’s 16-member design team eventually landed on the design that would launch them into orbit — or rather, to the finish line: a steel-framed rocket ship complete with flaming thrusters. “We ultimately chose this theme because we have a lot of aerospace engineers. Our aerospace program is really big and popular at UCCS, so we kind of leaned into that,” Hopewell said.
The coffin was constructed entirely in the UCCS Machine Shop with guidance from shop staff and manager Kris Godwin. “They taught us all the skills that we needed to know. We all came in, zero welding experience, had no idea how to hold a torch or anything, and then we came in and we made this thing,” Hopewell said.
The team began testing the coffin on campus in September, and after additional tweaks to a wobbly front wheel and the installation of a custom spring-damper system, SWE blasted off to Manitou Springs. “Getting the final decorations ready and preparing as a team made race day even more exciting. We were definitely nervous at the start, but we couldn’t stop smiling once we got going,” Boerger said.
The project will make a great addition to members’ resumes, according to Hopewell. “It was super cool, a huge learning experience for all of us, which will be cool and help us out in our careers, because as engineers we have to be able to have experience,” she said.
The SWE is an international organization with professional and collegiate chapters. The purpose of SWE is to promote inclusivity in engineering, help with career readiness and connect female engineers.
For more information on UCCS’ chapter of SWE, click here.
Ellen Gernert, Alexa Boerger, Toby Middlemist, Samantha Gormley and Jennifer Bishop participate in the coffin race representing the UCCS Collage of Engineering. Photo by Anysia Hovel.