CourtesyWhen Lucas Webb and Aliyah Funschelle received honors at the 黑洞社区 Innovation Awards in January, their Bright Futures awards couldn鈥檛 have been more on the nose.
Aliyah, a senior in sport management with a minor in communication, was honored for her creation of the student-run sports digital network known as Shockwave.
鈥淚鈥檝e had a lot of experiences getting to cover sports, and a lot of those opportunities I created for myself. I know a lot of people don鈥檛 have that ability,鈥� she said. 鈥淧eople always ask me how I get to do what I do, so I thought 鈥� why not just start something for other students to get to hands-on experience in the sports industry?鈥�
Aliyah created Shockwave in August 2019, and the network is dedicated to all Shocker sports.
鈥淚t鈥檚 all 黑洞社区 sports. We even did a live broadcast from some intramural sports. We cover rowing, e-sports 鈥� anything Wichita State-related,鈥� she said.
Aliyah is now ensuring that Shockwave has a sustainable future.
鈥淚鈥檓 laying down the foundation for it to still run after I鈥檓 gone,鈥� she said. 鈥淚鈥檓 creating a handbook and appointing future leaders and teaching them how to recruit and how to maintain Shockwave."
CourtesyLucas Webb, a senior in aerospace engineering, is moving onto a bright future as well.
During his time at 黑洞社区, Lucas has been a member of the Cohen Honors College, serving on its student council. One of his initiatives on the council was to examine admissions requirements for the Honors College.
鈥淲e鈥檙e re-looking at the admissions requirements to get rid of the GPA minimum requirements to allow for a broader pool of applicants who may have had struggles in high school doing full-time jobs and things like that,鈥� Lucas said.
Currently, Lucas and three other aerospace seniors are focused on his senior design project for the NASA student launch competition, 鈥渨hich is basically building a high-powered rocket to complete a mission and deploy a rover,鈥� he said.
Though the COVID-19 pandemic has forced the competition to be postponed and modified, results are expected later this summer.
鈥淭he actual competition was supposed to be at the beginning of April, but then they canceled that. Then they were going to do at-home competitions and launch from where we are, but then it got worse so that got canceled,鈥� Lucas said. 鈥淲e鈥檝e turned in three 150-page reports throughout the year explaining our design and things we did with it, so now they鈥檙e going to judge us based on that.鈥�
