Western Colorado University’s cutting-edge Outdoor Industry Engineering (OIE) research and emphasis area is a unique, state-of-the-art program focused on gear testing and standardization for the outdoor industry. A first-of-its-kind program, the OIE research area equips students with the skills they need to design and enhance outdoor recreation gear testing, in turn, advancing the industry.
The goal of this program is to better understand gear and gear performance related to the outdoor industry by normalizing and standardizing equipment for testing gear.
The program does this by:
- Designing, prototyping, and building static and dynamic testing equipment for class projects and senior capstone projects, as well as through summer internships and research experiences for students.
- Building out a lab, including equipment, for testing.
- Collecting, interpreting, and publishing data so consumers can make more informed purchase decisions when it comes to gear.
For testing of outdoor gear, the program takes a circular approach, creating static and dynamic testing systems in the lab, in parallel to outdoor field testing. It then relates this data back to qualitative expert product reviews from Blister to gain better understanding of gear performance. The combination of the in-lab and in-field testing systems, along with data analytics, and expert qualitative reviews will allow program participants to better understand the reasoning behind product performance to make better informed decisions about the products they are using and purchasing.