Professor, racer team up to boost STEM
Shirl Donaldson is a self-described “car girl,” but it took getting COVID-19 in 2021 for this assistant professor at the University of Michigan-Flint to discover her true calling.
At home sick, she was binge-watching TV when her partner, a retired mechanic, turned on Donkmaster on Vice. The show features Sage Thomas, aka Donkmaster, drag racing challengers in his self-built classic cars known as “donks.”
“I was like ‘What is this?’ ” Donaldson said. “You watch the first episode, the second and next thing I know …the wheels started turning in my head. The mechanics talk about the cars and how to improve performance, but they didn’t use the terms we’d use in a classroom like aerodynamics or retrofit and typical terms. But it was clear they understood the concepts.”
Thomas has drag raced his donks all over the country winning more than $1 million over some 20 years. His show is full of smack talk, bets and running the souped-up classic cars with huge wheels at 175 mph to cover a quarter mile in eight seconds. The kids love it, especially minority kids because it is accessible and affordable at about $25 at the gate and free parking, Donaldson said.
Donaldson, who teaches industrial technology at U-M’s College of Innovation and Technology, saw an opportunity to team up with Thomas and use his celebrity, along with the rising popularity of donk racing to get minority kids interested in studying science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) for careers in automotive.
“I want to get kids to draw the connection between, if you like this, then you like math and science. I want them to be proficient in STEM so that they have as many options as possible,” Donaldson said.
“What makes that car go faster? That’s science. Why does someone else’s tires fly off and Donkmaster’s stay on? That’s science. So maybe these kids will say, ‘Let’s take a physics class.’ We need more engineers, we need more scientists – this opens the door to all of that.”
Donk is slang for 1971-76 Chevrolet Impala or Chevrolet Caprice cars with aftermarket wheels that are 22 inches or bigger. Just how the cars got dubbed “donks” is unclear. Some say it hails from the Impala logo, which looks like a donkey. Others say when the rear end is raised up and bouncing, it looks like a donkey kicking. Thomas has said it is because you act like a donkey once you’re in the car cruising around.
Regardless, racing donks has largely been an underground phenomenon centered in the South. But with the Donkmaster show and other venues outside the South hosting it, it is becoming more well known. Thomas also told the Free Press that donks have expanded beyond the traditional Impala and Caprice cars.
The National Donk Racing Association circuit now folds in other classic cars with big wheels into donk racing.
Donaldson grew up in a car culture. Her father was a millwright, which is a skilled tradesperson who works on machines, at Chrysler for 38 years. Her late husband ran a tool and die shop where she worked. When she got into academia, she did her doctorate on minorities being underrepresented in technology.
“So when I saw Donkmaster and what he was doing and being around engineering and cars my whole life, I thought there’s a lot of applied STEM here that is not being recognized,” Donaldson said.
For example, the concept of taking weight out of the car, but keeping the performance. The donk team had knowledge of material science, too, based on the tires they used, she said. But they spoke about it in a way kids could understand.
“When I looked at the crowd, it was a heavy minority population,” Donaldson said. “I wondered if they recognized they were watching applied engineering in action? They were seeing STEM education.”
So in March 2022 almost a year after first seeing Donkmaster’s show, Donaldson told the U-M Flint campus director of research that she wanted to go to donk races and interview the mechanics and the fans.
“(The mechanics) are doing some real creative stuff to make these cars go that fast and perform. How did they learn this?” Donaldson said. “I really wanted to understand from the kids there, what were their interests and what could they glean out of this that they could use in their future careers?”
So Donaldson created a 20-question survey with the intention of asking such questions to donk racers and attendees. In May 2022 she reached out to Thomas on Instagram, telling him, “what you’re doing is more important than you think. It can impact so much more in STEM education and future generations. Your story needs to be told.”
He responded and arranged for her to come to her first race in June 2022 at Piedmont Dragway in Julian, North Carolina.
She has gone to five races last year and three this year, completing about 300 surveys from people ages 10 to 65. She surveyed some adults, too, to see what their favorite school subjects were and whether it correlated to their careers.
Donaldson plans to gather enough data in the next 12 to 24 months to find a sponsor for workshops at venues where Donkmaster races because “he’s the drawing card.” The workshops will be free to the kids there to teach them about STEM education and careers in automotive.
Thomas and Donaldson talk regularly to brainstorm ideas to keep kids intrigued in STEM.
“When I was coming up, I didn’t know anything about STEM or anybody wanting to help an inner city kid,” Thomas said. “I would rather put something in my hands and feel it and learn it that way. So I like the way she does it.”