Dean Kamen is the inventor of the Segway self-balancing scooter and the iBOT stair-climbing wheelchair. He also founded the First Robotics Competition (FRC, https://www.firstinspires.org/). “FIRST is more than robots,” Kamen explains. “The robots are a vehicle for students to learn important life skills. Kids often come in not knowing what to expect – of the program nor of themselves. They leave, even after the first season, with a vision, with confidence, and with a sense that they can create their own futures.”
As First Robotics describes, they have created The Ultimate Sport for the MindTM: “Under strict rules and limited time and resources, teams of high school students are challenged to build industrial-size robots to play a difficult field game in alliance with other teams, while also fundraising to meet their goals, designing a team ‘brand,’ and advancing respect and appreciation for STEM within the local community.” The nonprofit FRC has 77,000 participating teams averaging eight students from 110 countries and has $80 million in available scholarships.
Fuquay-Varina High School (FVHS) is trying to bring the First Robotics Competition to the school through its new Robotics Club. But getting a successful robotics club off the ground is no simple task. There are six essential ingredients. Failure of any single one means failure of all.
They are:
initiating professionals
adequate facilities
long-term committed professional support
enthusiastic members
a community booster club
business sponsors
Success of all six means an opportunity for youth to achieve career-changing results while they work on projects, learn collaboration, discover their creativity, and practice diligence. This story tells about the progress of the Robotics Club at Fuquay-Varina High School (FVHS). It may be more important to you than you first think.
Former FVHS Principal Jonathan Enns (now Area Superintendent for Southwest Wake) was responsible for planning the new high school situated in Willow Springs (see our Suburban Living Story at https://fuquay-varina.suburbanlivingmag.com/on-the-move-with-fuquay-varina-high-school-by-david-dirlam/). As he planned the new building, he was already so enthusiastic about the potential for the club that he made sure the new building was equipped with a state-of-the-art room for teaching robotics and computer science (see photo).
Current FVHS Principal and proud Fuquay-Varina native, Mr. Terrance McCotter readily stepped in to continue the administrative report. His schedule is full of all the tasks needed to lead staff to create a new approach to education during a pandemic as well as in a new building. Even so, he took an hour out to lend his support to the Robotics Club project through an interview for this story. As he said, “I value student involvement and engagement in extra-curricular activities such as the Robotics Club. I also have a background in mathematics, and I am ecstatic that this club expands opportunities for our students to explore their interests in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics). I also am excited that this could create more opportunities for our school and students to connect with our community and surrounding businesses. A lot of parents work at Cisco, which pays for employees to come help. The school has a great relationship with Caterpillar, which has much of its production driven by robotics. The school sent two computer science interns to them a few years ago. Caterpillar paid for their college and one now works for them.” These two principals have fulfilled Ingredients 1 and 2.
Mr. Norman Dion, of the Career and Technical Education Department, was the 2018 FVHS Teacher of the Year. He has a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Purdue University, one of the nation’s top engineering schools. Mr. Dion provides knowledge, inspiration, resources, and above all, commitment. Now in the new facilities at Willow Springs, which the FVHS renovation plans to match in its new Broad Street location, he can help students turn plans into realities. The Robotics Club is more than education in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). For the FVHS group, Mr. Dion inserts an “A” for Art into STEM and makes sure it puts real STEAM into their efforts.
Mr. Dion sees a lot of opportunity for the new club. As he put it, “The kids are brilliant, but every school has conflict, and every student needs someplace to connect. These activities give a positive reason to be at the school, to connect to it, and engage in learning.” His ongoing commitment fulfills Ingredient 3.
As a lifelong educator, it is always a deep pleasure for me to witness a group of students enthusiastic about not only learning something they didn’t know before but also collaborating to create something new. A few weeks ago, Mr. Dion introduced me to just such an experience. I saw ten male and female high school students enter an online session of Google Meets and contribute their point of view to an hour-long discussion of the club. Currently, the club members are Charlie Bird, Benjamin Grubbs, Ethan Kessler (President), Jason Labrecque, Campbell Massengill, Therron Mawyer, Gary McCart, Matthew Morris, R. J. Myers, Benjamin Mueller, and Rachel Stokes. I saw some of these students exercising group leadership, others stepping up to answer questions about computer coding or computer-aided design tools like Onshape, still others talking about their marketing plans, and still another who created the club’s website and videos (see the club’s recruitment video at https://sites.google.com/students.wcpss.net/fvhs-robotics/home and its website at https://animoto.com/play/DKr8yMLsbMmtQTIW1Iajpg). Several of them had already taken a computer science class. The best part was when they referred to another group member’s expertise, showing the essential requirement for collaboration—knowing what another person knows that you don’t. Club President Ethan Kessler even sent me a structured list of 17 websites that he put together to make sure I had enough information to write this story. Their enthusiasm fulfills Ingredient 4.
It takes several thousand dollars to obtain materials just to make a robot that can enter a competition. Two of the students who are especially interested in marketing convinced me that they would scour Fuquay-Varina businesses to find sponsors. “Once we have the booster club,” one of the students explained, “we would contact companies and display advertising for them on our projects.” My experience with how members of our Chamber of Commerce Education Council support our schools convinces me that they will be successful and when they are, that will fulfill Ingredient 6.
Club President did not hesitate to proclaim the bottleneck. The high school has booster clubs for athletics, the band, and the chorus. To receive and distribute funds for robotics, it needs a Robotics Booster Club with members who are not employed by the county. Typically, parents of students in a school club are the members, but the students asked and did not get any volunteers. Some of the parents are teachers and can’t join; another is already involved in a booster club. Mr. Dion explained, “If one person stands up and says, ‘I’ll take the lead’, everybody else will join.” Ingredient 5 is missing.
It is a mistake to think that leading a booster club could be too overwhelming. Mr. Dion will take care of the organizational matters and a lot of the hands-on activities. Fuquay-Varina Attorney Linda F. Johnson has agreed to manage the creation of nonprofit status for the group. The by-laws have already been written. Once formed, the booster club focuses on receiving funds from sponsors, distributing them as needed for group projects, and keeping accurate records.
If the Robotics Club can find booster club members, the projects they work on can be fascinating. Two years ago, a fifth-grade team from the Ballentine Elementary School First Lego League made it to the First Lego League international competition, won second place, and earned a trip to Legoland in Carlsbad, CA. The winning team met in a parent’s house, where their father had emptied the living room and built a large platform to create, program, and test their robots.
In contrast, the high school club will have its own facilities right in their school with enough storage room and workspace made of 2×2 gym mats large enough to create the industrial-size robots. Mr. Dion needs to set it up and take it down, but this comes with the job, especially for a teacher like him who is not ready to rest on his laurels. Now the group meets only for 30 minutes every Wednesday, but when the projects get going meetings will be two hours, and during crunch times, two hours a day will not be rare.
The club motto came from one of Mr. Dion’s comments: “That looks great guys, but you need to take it apart and do it better.” Let’s hope that Fuquay-Varina can match a paraphrase of Mr. Dion’s challenge. “That is a great start people, but you need to step up and do it better.” If you have read this story through and can help, how about calling the high school, and offering to be a member of the booster club? Once you have a core group of members, finding the officers will be easy and you will enable a new local sport complete with college scholarships and life opportunities.
