Wharton Undergraduate Aerospace Club
Committees
Four committees, and members join one. Two are client-facing advisory practices. The other two run the club's research and its events.
Open to every Penn undergraduate.
At a glance
Members serve on one committee for the year.
Committee 01
Consulting advisory
Strategy and operations work for aerospace and defense companies.
One scoped deliverable a semester.
Teams take a question from a client company and deliver an answer by the end of the semester. Engagements are scoped narrowly so the work can be finished in that time.
Members are expected to defend the recommendation to the client and to the rest of the committee.
In this committee
- Scope a question with a client
- Build the analysis
- Present it and defend it
Committee 02
Financial advisory
Valuation, market sizing, and capital markets work.
Primes, suppliers, and launch.
In aerospace and defense the customer is often a government and contracts run for decades, so the work has to account for procurement cycles and political risk alongside the usual commercial drivers.
Members build a view on one company or one segment, produce a valuation, and present it to the committee for review.
Committee 03
Research, sustainability, and innovation
Collegiate competitions and original work.
Competition entries and original research.
This committee enters collegiate competitions and does original work on clean aviation and the infrastructure aircraft depend on. Projects are proposed by members and run longer than a single client engagement.
In 2022 a six-student team took NASA's Most Intriguing Concept award in Gateways to Blue Skies for a modular, carbon-negative airport, and presented to the Las Vegas Airport Strategic Planning Committee.
Committee 04
Conference
Programming, speakers, and events.
Campus events and the annual conference.
This committee supports the annual Wharton Aerospace Conference and runs the club's own events on campus, including fireside chats with people running companies in the sector.
Members select and invite the speakers, and run the events themselves.
Applying
Committees admit by application, in the fall and the spring.
Open to every Penn undergraduate.
Details
No engineering background required.