LOWELL — Sports engineering, the latest new minor for UMass Lowell undergraduates, is a home run among engineering students who also have a passion for athletics.
The first integrated undergraduate program in sports engineering in the United States, according to the International Sports Engineering Association, UMass Lowell’s program is housed in the university’s Francis College of Engineering.
Gabriel Merrow, a first-year student from Bolton, and a sprinter for UMass Lowell’s Division 1 men’s track and field team, said he was excited to learn he could pursue the minor and achieve a professional career combining his major in civil engineering with his love of sports.
“Putting the two together would be great, especially working with professional athletes in any sport,” Merrow said.
Developed by UMass Lowell’s Dean James Sherwood, a professor of mechanical engineering and editor-in-chief of the Journal of Sports Engineering and Technology, the program is tied to UMass Lowell’s Baseball Research Center – the primary equipment testing lab for Major League Baseball.
“Because we have the baseball lab, we routinely receive inquiries from high school students and their parents asking if they can study sports engineering here,” Sherwood said. “The new program should draw people from all over the U.S. and is also a good draw for Division 1 athletes.”
Partnering with Sherwood to develop the program is Patrick Drane, the baseball center’s assistant director and an executive committee member for the International Sports Engineering Association.
The new minor, currently offered to engineering students, will be expanded in the future to accommodate students studying other disciplines, such as computer and exercise sciences.
First-year Honors College student Joey Soly, a mechanical engineering major from Billerica, said he chose UMass Lowell over another college after learning about the new minor.
“My dream was to become a professional athlete, but when I realized that wasn’t happening, my next dream was to go into engineering,” he said.
After an introductory class, the minor offers six areas of focus that are based on a student’s major, primary career interest or both. For example, students majoring in chemical or plastics engineering could choose to learn about how plastics are used to produce sports materials and equipment. The other areas of focus are biomechanics, sports electronics, sports product design, sports engineering mechanics and sports infrastructure, which includes the study of sports arenas and other facilities.
Students in the minor also take elective courses on sports-related topics outside of engineering.
“A student who really wants to get a job in sports engineering needs to be familiar with the social side – the business of sports, sports psychology, physiology and health, and politics, race and gender in sports,” said Drane, who also co-leads UMass Lowell’s Sports Collaborative for Open Research and Education, which brings together faculty, staff, students, industry partners and others to explore sports’ impact on society and improve athletic performance.
As seniors, all students in the minor are asked to either complete a sports-related capstone project or take part in a hands-on industry, business or legal experience. Interested students can also do research with faculty who study materials, biosensors, human performance, smart fabrics and more.
While the minor is new, many of the UMass Lowell students who have interned or worked as research assistants in the Baseball Research Center since it was founded in 1999 have gone on to work for sporting goods companies.
Upon graduation, UMass Lowell alumna Becky O’Hara, who worked as a graduate research assistant in the baseball center while completing her master’s degree in mechanical engineering, was hired as a bat engineer by Rawlings Sporting Goods. She is now director of research and development at the company, which sends baseball and softball bats, balls, helmets and other protective equipment to the baseball lab for testing.
O’Hara said Rawlings and other companies in the sports equipment industry will be eager to hire engineering graduates who also have some understanding of business, data analytics and athletics.
