There’s a new club on campus and part of its goal is to unite Colorado Mesa University with Western Colorado Community College (WCCC). Beyond unification, Grand Valley Gearheads (GVG) seeks to gather car lovers to the automotive club.
GVG became an official club on Dec. 14, created by Noah Stahlecker, Eric Wabel, Jackson Liles and Madison Donnafield. “The primary reason was the lack of an automotive club on campus,” Stahlecker said. “Seeing this started the idea of creating GVG.”
“The second reason was to connect CMU and WCCC,” Stahlecker said. “Seeing that the automotive program was housed on WCCC’s campus and there being a misconception of WCCC not being a part of CMU, we wanted a club that could branch out between the two campuses.”
According to Stahlecker, the club also wants to help educate students on campus about basic automotive maintenance, such as changing tires and changing oil.
“Lastly, one of our biggest reasons for starting this club is to bring publicity to CMU and WCCC in a new light,” Stahlecker said. “This is the only club like this in the four corner states. There are none like it and with this we want to help connect students to professionals in the automotive industry.”
GVG hopes to bring this publicity and connection through restoring a classic car. “We want to encompass CMU and WCCC into this vehicle and have it show ready,” Stahlecker said. “With this car we want to represent both schools at major car events. There is nothing like this and it would give us the edge when it comes to making CMU and WCCC known.”
GVG is also working on their goal to have a 300 plus car show held on campus. According to Stahlecker, as far as they could find, there has never been a show of such size held by a school in Colorado.
“This would be a major event and would be an amazing opportunity to bring awareness to CMU’s engineering program, business program, graphic design program and WCCC’s automotive program,” Stahlecker said. “We want Motor Trend magazine and Motor Authority magazine to come out to take photos and to cover the event.”
GVG also has smaller events and trips planned. Club meetings will mostly consist of planning these events, working on the show car and bringing guest speakers to educate the club on different aspects of the automotive industry.
“We currently sit at five members and we need more,” Stahlecker said. “We have leadership spots available as well.”
Anyone interested in the club or a leadership position can attend the first club meeting on Jan. 31 in Dominguez 214 or contact Noah Stahlecker.
