Feb 10 2011
St. Mary’s Academy has formed ‘SMArtbots’, an all-girls robotics team featuring 12 girls from grades between 9 and 12.
The team will participate in For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST) regional robotics contest, scheduled to be held at Long Beach Arena between March 24 and 26, 2011.
Joe Condrat, a Math Instructor at St. Mary’s and a Mechanical Engineer, has stated that FIRST is the best platform to exhibit all the branches of engineering field. He added that FIRST offers an opportunity for building creativity in students.
The members of SMArtbots are part of Engineering Program of the school. The program includes a set of lessons, contests and extracurricular activities focused on supporting students to take up jobs in science, technology, engineering or mathematics (STEM). The students are also exposed to several engineering fields during developing a robot from a robot kit. The robot will then compete with other teams’ robots in exclusive games developed by Dr. Woodie Flowers, Dean Kamen and a committee of experts and engineers at FIRST.
The students are guided by advisers from Raytheon. The William Hannon Foundation and Raytheon offered the required initial sponsorship. The team has started building their robot.
Source: http://www.stmarysacademy.org