Engineering faculty member Xin Wang (middle) helps two students from the first class of the School of Engineering with their robotic car. (Photos by Derik Holtmann)

For as long as he can remember, Sohum Tokekar has been obsessed with motor sports.

That love has taken him from a boyhood room filled with toy cars to the Gateway Kartplex inside the World Wide Technology Raceway complex in Madison, Illinois, where he races go-karts that can reach 55 miles per hour on the back straight and corner at up to 2 lateral G-forces. And now, that passion has led him to the brand-new School of Engineering at the University of Missouri– St. Louis as he pursues a career in the motor sports industry.

“What better way to get involved with racing than to learn to design the race cars and understand why one is faster than the other?” Tokekar says. “It’s not necessarily that I have to be a part of a racing team by being a driver. I love driving and racing. I think it’s still one of the greatest thrills. But if I can be the reason the team wins because of my engineering background, that would be really cool as well.”

Tokekar is one of more than 60 engineering students to enroll in the first class of the School of Engineering this fall. UMSL has a longstanding commitment to workforce development in the St. Louis region and beyond and the new school not only helps the university meet the demand for trained engineers in Missouri but also gives students access to the only public engineering school in eastern Missouri.

George Nnanna (right) is the founding director of UMSL’s School of Engineering. (Photo by Jay Fram)

“Providing high-quality, affordable education that leads to socioeconomic mobility is very dear to my heart,” says George Nnanna, founding director of the program. “That’s what a university should be – and that’s what the School of Engineering will be. By doing so, we’ll help meet workforce needs and address critical challenges not only across the St. Louis region, but throughout Missouri’s economy.”

Nnanna, who holds seven U.S. patents, has experience building an engineering program from the ground up. He was founding dean of the College of Engineering at the University of Texas Permian Basin from 2018 to 2023 and more recently was the director of its Texas Water and Energy Institute. Nnanna’s first two faculty hires – Hamid Sanei from Penn State University and Xin Wang from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville – share his approach to building UMSL’s program.

Together, they strategically designed a curriculum to embed experiential learning vertically throughout the four-year plan of study. UMSL Engineering will prioritize providing hands-on experience to help students develop the real-life skills necessary to thrive both during internships and when they enter the workforce.

“To that extent, we are going to have a number of engineering competitions, such as Formula SAE and building concrete canoes, steel bridges and electric vehicles,” Nnanna says. “All of these provide opportunities for students to design and build and compete, and it also provides opportunity for soft skills such as leadership and the capacity to work in teams.”

Students in engineering programs across the country participate in Formula SAE programs – students create small racing cars, all the way from an initial design to fabrication and competition – and that concept fits right in with UMSL Engineering’s hands-on approach to learning. Nnanna was sure to help establish UMSL’s FSAE program in the first semester.

Sohum Tokekar has a lifelong passion for racing, and he’s planning to use his degree from UMSL’s School of Engineering to pursue a career in the motorsports industry. (Photo by Derik Holtmann)

“One of the goals that’s materialized in my mind over the years is this: I want to be the reason that someone believes in my race car over another race car,” Tokekar says. “I want something that I’ve innovated, something that I’ve made, to be the reason one car wins over the other one. That would be very rewarding to me.”

Tokekar started racing at Gateway Kartplex the summer after his freshman year at Marquette High School, which meant his parents – Santosh and Sonali – had to drive him from their home in Ballwin to his races. “I was not good back then,” he says with a laugh. “They had to drive me out there, an hour-plus of driving every time, just to see me lose. But they never stopped pushing for me, and that support really helped.”

Tokekar, who races in the iDrive Rental Kart Series, is a much better driver now. He sees parallels between his racing career – starting from a dream, blossoming into something much bigger – and being in on the ground floor with the School of Engineering at UMSL. He looked at other universities, but as he started to ask around, the feedback he kept hearing about UMSL’s tight-knit community and the way faculty members are committed to helping students launch successful careers convinced him that staying in St. Louis was his best option.

“One of my biggest fears about choosing a college wasn’t the culture or making friends,” Tokekar says. “It was, “Will I get a job after this?’ That’s one of the big reasons I chose UMSL, because everyone I know that went to UMSL has gotten internships or job placement. It’s not just one or two people. It’s so many experiences hearing people talking about how cool that college is. This seems like a very good idea.”

UMSL Engineering will bridge the gap between academia and industry needs, engaging with global leaders with strong local connections, including companies such as Boeing, Ameren and Emerson. Not only will UMSL students such as Tokekar have the opportunity for internships with these companies and others in the region, but Nnanna, Wang and Sanei have focused their efforts on collaborating with local industry leaders to develop projects based on real- world, practical problems that students can tackle, which provides a mutual benefit for the companies.

Providing hands-on learning experiences, such as assembling this robotic car, will be a big focus for the School of Engineering. (Photo by Derik Holtmann)

“The reaction has been very positive,” Nnanna says, “and I think that reaction will drive us forward as we form industrial partnerships, as well as assemble an engineering advisory board.”

The launch of the School of Engineering was made possible by an initial $15 million capital investment as part of Missouri’s Fiscal Year 2025 budget as well as an $8 million grant from the James S. McDonnell Foundation, one of the largest one-time philanthropic gifts in UMSL history. The grant funds immediate and endowed scholarships that will support students over the school’s first five years and for decades into the future, providing an entryway into an industry that offers above-average median salaries. These investments laid the groundwork laid the groundwork for the school’s launch, with future support needed to expand programs, attract top faculty and equip students for high-demand careers.

An engineering opportunity

Freshman engineering student Hannah Richardson hit the ground running when she arrived on the UMSL campus for the fall semester – literally, as a freshman on the women’s cross country team. Her first race as a Triton was Sept. 5, and that was just the start of achieving her lofty involvement goals at UMSL.

In addition to being part of the Pierre Laclede Honors College, she sees so many opportunities in front of her: playing the cello in the UMSL Symphony Orchestra, joining a fledgling rock-climbing club, participating in the Student Government Association and being part of the group of engineering students who start the Formula SAE group, to name a few.

“I definitely have my eye on getting a lot more involved,” Richardson says, then adds with a grin, “if I have the time.”

It’s fitting that Richardson is set on taking advantage of all the opportunities UMSL has to offer. She was, after all, among the five students selected for the highly competitive 2025 Opportunity Scholars program through the Honors College. The full-ride scholarship covers tuition and fees, as well as wraparound support including on- campus housing, books, faculty support and mentoring. The scholarship also affords her the gift of time, relieving her of the burden of having to work long hours to pay for college.

“Both of my parents have associate degrees,” she says, “but to be the first one in my immediate family who’s been fortunate enough to be able to pursue a full four-year education is definitely cool. I really have to thank my parents a lot for supporting me and giving me the opportunity to be able to pursue my degree.”

Being part of the first UMSL Engineering class was too good an opportunity to pass up. She’s had relatives and family friends who have worked as engineers at places such as Boeing and Ameren. Her physics teacher at Pattonville High School, Paige Jester, worked as a mechanical engineer, and her description of the career made it feel like a perfect fit for Richardson. Plus, Richardson has always loved taking things apart and trying to put them back together.

UMSL engineering students prepare to race the robotic cars they assembled during the fall semester. (Photo by Jay Fram)

“I loved Legos; I think every little engineer starts with Legos,” she says. “One time my grandma had an old laptop – she’d just gotten a new one – and I must have spent upwards of 16 hours taking it apart as much as I could. I didn’t get it back together, but I really tried.”

For Richardson, the goal isn’t just learning how people used to do things but to build on those principles in the name of engineering innovation.

“I really want to focus on sustainability engineering; that’s something that’s really important to me in the current climate,” she says. “I don’t know exactly what my path will look like, but I want to be able to work on making renewable energy more efficient, more widely available and less expensive, trying to be doing the right thing for our environment.”

Building a bridge

Marlo Shivers also earned a full-tuition scholarship to study in the School of Engineering, receiving the prestigious Donald Suggs Scholarship. He was excited to start classes at UMSL this fall and continue to expand his horizons – both in and out of the classroom – building on the momentum he created his final few years at Ritenour High School.

Shivers hadn’t originally envisioned a career in engineering, but a pre-algebra class with Ritenour teacher Patrice Mitchell was a turning point. Not only did Mitchell help him finally understand math – he had struggled with the subject coming into the class – but with her encouragement and teaching, Shivers realized he was actually pretty good at it.

Mitchell also introduced him to UMSL’s Bridge Program – which has helped guide high school students through the process of making informed college choices since its inception in 1986 – and really got him thinking about his future. “She saw how I was doing in class, and she thought that it would be something that I’d be interested in doing, something that I could benefit from,” Shivers says. “I thought it would be good to see what it was about.”

Shivers took an engineering class at Ritenour his junior year to fulfill a specific credit requirement, and because he enjoyed that, he took a higher-level engineering class as a senior. His engineering teacher, Heather Fadler, was also the sponsor for the Robotics Club, and she encouraged him to join. That idea fit nicely with one of the areas of emphasis in the Bridge Program, which is the importance of being involved with activities outside the classroom.
Shivers loved being involved and even competing with the Robotics Club, and that’s one of the reasons he started taking the idea of pursuing engineering seriously.

“I like the creativity aspect of it,” he says. “And I like the fact that there are a lot of problems, but there are different ways of solving, with different solutions that you can come up with.”

He’ll continue to develop those skills with UMSL’s Robotics Club, which started in the fall semester. Shivers is planning to major in civil engineering at UMSL, but he’s also interested in biomedical engineering, while keeping an open mind. Before he got to college, though, he had one more math class with Mitchell his senior year, and the transformation was undeniable.

“I got a chance to see his growth in those three years,” Mitchell says. “He really embraced UMSL through the Bridge Program. He is a phenomenal, awesome young man. There are certain students that, as teachers, we get bragging rights on. And Marlo, he is one of my pride and joys. I tell people, ‘I had this student who said they didn’t like math, and they ended up getting a full scholarship because of math!’”

This story was originally published in the fall 2025 issue of UMSL Magazine. If you have a story idea for UMSL Magazine, email magazine@umsl.edu.