When Words Fail, She Just Builds

| February 4, 2025 

Elisa McCormick, president of USC’s Recumbent Vehicle Design Team (RVDT), explains her philosophy of creation and fun in engineering through surprising innovation.

Image of Elisa McCormick dressed in a costume with a decorated silver top, thick black belt, and dark gray pants. A golden sash hangs from the belt. Elisa holds a pair of wings above her shoulders. Each wing is made out of long, acrylic and metal tubes with silver, reflective materials cut to look like feathers. On her head, Elisa wears a bronze hat placed sideways on her head. She is standing inside a warehouse with moderate lighting.

Photo Credit: Elisa McCormick

Some may daydream about a great phoenix, seated on a perch with its great wings and tail feathers expanded, as though ready for flight. Elisa McCormick would rather make the phoenix. Some may imagine the rising tension as a prowling snake catches its unsuspecting prey. McCormick would rather just create the snarling snake and the trapped mouse

In short, McCormick is a creator

Creation comes naturally to McCormick, a senior majoring in mechanical engineering at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering. It allows her to physically manifest her thoughts and share them with the rest of the world.

“I have really bad dyslexia,” she said, “and have struggled with that for a long time – ever since elementary school. Words don’t do a good job of conveying anything, really. And so I’ve kind of switched to physical things because I feel like I can convey and understand a lot more from looking, feeling and making.”

“Dyslexia is portrayed poorly in the media,” she explained. “The reason why P’s, D’s, and B’s all look the same is because it’s a two-dimensional shape that you can flip around in your head in whatever direction you want really easily. If you’re dyslexic, you can just be like, ‘Well, what if I looked at it upside down without actually moving my eyes?’ When you have that skill set and somebody describes something that they want to make, you can put it together in your head and flip it around.” 

It is through this process of envisioning, deconstructing and physically assembling a creation that McCormick derives her greatest pleasure in crafting. “Being able to just think about something and then know how to pull it apart so that you can make it and put it together — that’s probably the reason why I like making things. I can think of something in my head, and when I don’t have good words to explain it, it is faster to just physically make it and give it to somebody. Then I can say, ‘This is what I’m talking about.'”

A digitally rendered image of outer space, with the sky in the background a mix of white, dark blues, dark purples, dark pinks, and white. There are distant and small stars scattered throughout the sky. In the bottom left corner, Saturn is prominently and partially pictured with its beige and brown stripped surface and surrounded with beige and brown rings. Behind Saturn, to the right-most border of the image, Earth (slightly smaller than Saturn) is partially pictured with dark blue and white detailing across its surface. Sunlight reflects off of the top left surface of the planet. Pictured behind Saturn and Earth, skewing to the top right of the image, is Venus (about half the size of Earth). Venus is darkly colored with saturated, green coloring, slightly detailed with both dark and light brown. There is a halo of lightly reflecting off of the planet's surface. Diagonally to the right of Venus a Mercury, with saturated, cool colors. The planet is depicted as being in the distance and is the smallest out of all of the planets.

Outer Space Graphic Art by McCormick. Art and Photo Credit: Elisa McCormick

A talented arc welder, McCormick is able to fashion wings, phoenixes, armor, turtles and hedgehogs out of metal. A woodworker, leather worker, glass-blower and baker, she can transform wood, leather and glass into anything from wooden heels to new wallets. 

“My favorite hobby is being a ‘Boy Scout’ of hobbies because I like learning how to learn,” she said. “There’s something really satisfying about looking at fifteen different things that you can make out of fifteen different materials.”

Now, as president of the USC Recumbent Vehicle Design Team (RVDT), she finds satisfaction in building a pedal-powered racing vehicle that her teammates have affectionately named “MVP.”  

Abstract arc welded sculpture of a metal fish. The sculpture is a dark, bronzed gun metal color. The fish is in the shape of three overlapping squares composed of smaller squares. On each side of the fish's body (near the left most bottom side, closest to the head) is a fin in the shape of three dimensional trapezoid. The tail on the very back of the fish is made of a sideways V-shape. Each line is composed of diagonally tapered cubes, each staggering out less than the one on top.

‘Fish’ Arc Welding by McCormick. Photo Credit: Elisa McCormick

MVP, also satirically known as “Minimum Viable Product,” is the RVDT’s prize-winning and cutting edge human-powered vehicle. Designed and assembled entirely by the team, MVP took the popular perspective of a bike and built it into something entirely different and new. Building on the base model of a bike through electric assistance and adjusting the rider’s position, RVDT is challenging concepts of mobility and comfort for riders. 

In recent months, USC students may have seen MVP gliding through McCarthy Quad and traversing the perimeter of the USC Village. Rounding corners with smooth turns and veering effortlessly across the pavement, MVP is a dynamic feat of mobility and coordination. 

In fact, MVP is more versatile than some may think. Though MVP can be ridden to and from the grocery store, it can also take riders on innumerable unique adventures. McCormick already has an idea of how she would utilize the bike to further explore the natural world around her. “I’ve seen someone with a recumbent bike pulled by his huskies. I think it would be really fun to put my huskies on the front and to go on wide trails. And then just meander along the beach,” explained McCormick, explaining how MVP could provide an enriching experience and joint activities not only for herself but also her dogs. “They can get their exercise, while I’m in the back. That sounds like a lot of fun.”

“You could go through a drive through and put your parcel in the back to drive it somewhere,” said McCormick, explaining how MVP allows riders to travel with ease and compact storage units that traditional bikes may lack. “It’s just so much more comfortable than a regular bike. People already go twenty miles with ease on just a regular bicycle, but with the recumbent bike you’re laid back and you can just cruise.”

Front view of an open leather wallet stood on a white surface. The wallet is a medium brassy brown, with faintly etched images of curving tree branches, leaves, and foliage on the right side. On the left side, there are etched images of a large butterfly flying towards the foliage on the fauna on the left side of the wallet. The left, right, and bottom edges of the wallet are sewed with a thick, dark thread. There is a thick, engraved line etched across the top of the wallet.

Etched Leather Wallet by McCormick. Photo Credit: Elisa McCormick

Much like McCormick’s industrial art and innumerable baked goods — her caffeine-infused brownies are reportedly as potent as a cup of coffee — MVP might teach us something unexpected. While MVP demonstrates fundamental mechanical engineering principles and critical theories of strategy and design, it also displays a key component of McCormick’s philosophy in creation and engineering: fun. 

It is her passion for building and crafting that drove McCormick to pursue a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering at the USC Viterbi School. 

Having transferred to USC during the beginning of her sophomore year, McCormick found herself grappling with the sudden change while searching for a sense of belonging in a brand new community. “The transfer process is a bit difficult,” McCormick explained. “It was difficult to mesh in with what everybody was already doing.”

Maneuvering classes and a cohort who were much more familiar with the campus and community, McCormick sought to find her own space. And she found it through doing what she loved best: creating. McCormick had attended USC’s Involvement Fair when she came to learn of a niche group of fellow intrepid and avid creators. They were known as the Recumbent Vehicle Design Team, or RVDT. 

“RVDT’s previous president was showing all of the cool things they did and how each member has been able to really own a part of the project,“ McCormick said, recalling how RVDT’s process of innovation and creation paralleled her own. “I personally have done a lot of bigger projects by myself. I like overhauling and doing larger picture work.”

And RVDT’s MVP was the exact kind of larger picture work that McCormick enjoyed most. 

Image of USC's Recumbent Vehicle Design Team's (RVDT) eleven members standing behind their award-winning recumbent bike 'MVP'. Ten of the RVDT team members are wearing red t-shirts with a white RVDT logo in the top right corner. Elisa McCormick, pictured fourth from the left, is wearing a gray sweatshirt with red 'USC' lettering bordered in yellow at the center of the sweatshirt. MVP is composed of a welded white, bare metal frame with wires taped to the frame with red tape. Two black wheels are positioned at the front with black handlebars, a white steering shaft, and white rack. The seat, positioned in the middle of the bike, is black, in front of a red back rest. Numerous dark wires are threaded through the structure of the bottom of the recumbent bike. The third tired in the back is black and larger than the two wheels int he front of the bike. Th team and the bike are standing on a gravel oath in front of a grass lawn behind them. A tent with the words 'USC TROJANS' is partially pictured at the top of the image.

USC RVDT Team posing with their award winning ‘MVP’.

That work has largely paid off. Last April, MVP cruised through the 2024 e-Human Powered Vehicle Challenge, hosted at Boise State and held by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), to win second place overall. MVP additionally scored first in a Design Event and second in the Endurance Test. Even along a 2.5 mile long trail strewn with unexpected and challenging obstacles, MVP maintained its agility and speed, earning the RVDT acclaim and awards for the past two years they have competed

The team faced numerous obstacles and unforeseen circumstances while preparing for the competition. However, having navigated numerous projects with stringent deadlines, RVDT members enthusiastically addressed each challenge head-on. 

McCormick sees each challenge, even in the face of a competition, as an opportunity. “We will have some major struggles right before competition and you just have to batten down the hatches and go for it. I feel like I’ve learned a lot from being on the team and having to make these critical design decisions up front. That’s just the kind of stuff I love.”

Though the process is fun, it can posit solutions to critical, large scale problems. Explaining the role MVP can play in mitigating huge numbers of cars on congested highways, McCormick said: “I saw a picture where they took an L.A. highway with about six lanes. And most of those cars only have one person in them. They took out all the cars and just showed what it would look like with one person standing there. And it’s not that many people, and it makes you just really wonder. Maybe cars are just too big.” 

As such, MVP may posit a valuable solution not only to the environment and conservation of space, but also to riders by creating greater flexibility by expanding their option of vehicles. “Generally speaking, I think most people don’t enjoy driving. I think the switch to something like recumbent bikes or e-scooters is actually beneficial.”

With the world’s materials at her disposal, McCormick continues to forge forth, crafting not only her own journey, but also answers that the world may not have initially thought of. 

Published on February 4th, 2025

Last updated on February 4th, 2025

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