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Carl Lawhon, Kansas City, MO
TCA Scholarship ($2,000)
Scudder Law Firm, P.C.

My father's trucking industry career has affected our family life by serving as a source of dinnertime conversation and by shaping my academic and extracurricular interests (probably in ways I cannot even identify yet). For me, that has meant an interest in all things motorized. First, a little background. I have always, from my very conception (probably not that early, although legend has it that I was seen building a model of an internal combustion engine as a fetus in my ultrasound), loved building things. In kindergarten, my favorite time of the day was free time. Oxymoronically, free time for me was structure time: I furiously built with Legos whenever I could. Even as a younger child, I engineered: I designed and constructed elaborate mechanical systems and vehicles, from air-powered "spud guns" and catapults to Lego Mindstorms robots. In high school, my projects evolved into electric vehicles and robots for science competitions. My senior year capstone project was the disassembly and restoration of an old, neglected, and very grimy automobile engine. I wanted more than theory about how engine parts fit together and work and also wanted to prove that I could handle that project myself. It was good practice for the interests I will pursue when I get to Stanford University this September. I have already met with mechanical engineering professors at Stanford about working in their internal combustion engine laboratory and automotive innovation laboratory (where they helped develop electric vehicle technology for Tesla and Nissan and are developing autonomous vehicles for Volkswagen). The Volkswagen work closely tracks my own research in autonomous robots guided by GPS and sonar sensors. Now that I think about it, maybe I got him interested in the trucking industry rather than the other way around!