A high school team documents their design process as they build an electric car at LeTourneau University. 

As a group of judges meandered between tables, middle and high school students from across East Texas eyed a timer as they began designing a miniature electric car that would carry a load of wooden blocks across a finish line.

More than 300 students, broken into four-person teams, had gathered Thursday inside LeTourneau University’s Belcher Center as part of a competition held by the Texas Alliance for Minorities in Engineering.

The car the student teams were tasked with building — which was meant to simulate an electric fire truck — was scored on its speed, distance, carrying capacity and ability to chart a straight course without curving off track.

It was the first time the TAME engineering challenge was held at LeTourneau, said Cyndi Nyvall, the TAME Region 7 Education Service Center curriculum specialist.

“We really wanted to partner with LeTourneau so the kids could have some exposure to a college campus,” she said. “For many of the students we serve, college isn’t really on their plate. They’re not thinking about that.”

Though TAME was founded in 1976, East Texas didn’t get its own chapter until 2016, Nyvall said.

Now the East Texas chapter is the largest of the group’s 14 chapters, she said. Thirteen schools and districts in East Texas have a TAME club, including Pine Tree middle and high schools, Hallsville High School and others.

The popularity of the program was evidenced by the two packed rooms full of aspiring engineers Thursday at LeTourneau in Longview.

“We are about to move into our build phase!” Nyvall told the student engineers through a PA system.

Team Ten divided tasks between themselves while they examined two sets of different-sized wheels.

“Watch this,” said Carter Hall, a Pine Tree Middle School student. He pushed an axel attached to two wheels and a motor across the table, demonstrating how it resisted force.

Carter turned to Lufkin Middle School Student and teammate Jadarius Hurts to talk through the effect of wheel size on speed and acceleration.

“The smaller the wheel, the faster it accelerates at first,” Carter said. “Bigger wheels start off slow but go faster at the end.”

Nyvall’s husband, Clay Nyvall, is an assistant principal at Hallsville High School and was helping manage Thursday’s competition. The Hallsville ISD administrator said he was in awe of the resourcefulness — and clever use of loopholes — the TAME students displayed.

“The kids are not supposed to use gum under the table or a staple from their packet, but they will if you’re not extremely precise with the rules,” he said. “They get so inventive.”

One of the judges, Jayda Jackson, is a chemical engineer at Eastman Chemical Co. in Longview. She was preparing to speak with students about being a Black woman in the engineering field.

“I wish I had opportunities like this growing up in Ohio, and that’s something I’m going to be speaking about today,” Jackson said.

Cyndi Nyvall recounted the first East Texas TAME competition in 2016 while she looked forward to the award ceremony later Thursday. Back then, the chapter’s competition was much smaller, and Nyvall was still working as a district administrator at Pine Tree ISD, where the event was initially hosted.

She said she could hardly believe how far the East Texas chapter has come since then.

“When LeTourneau said we could have the award ceremony inside the Belcher Center, I just got goosebumps,” Nyvall said. “I can’t imagine what these kids are gonna think as they’re walking across the Belcher Center stage to receive an award. How epic is that?”