After trying unsuccessfully to start a robotics team at Maranatha Christian Academy, parent and part-time physics teacher Kae Anne Dipietro went to a WEtech conference last fall and discovered the provincial and federal governments were giving hefty grants to first-year teams. It costs $6,500 to enter one of the FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) robotics competitions and the government grant was for $5,300.
The push by WEtech resulted in three high schools starting robotic teams. For the past 12 years, Sandwich secondary in LaSalle has been the only high school with a team.
At Maranatha’s first robotics team meeting the club attracted 30 of the high school’s 86 students. Students were drawn to the extra-curricular activity because it wasn’t just for mechanically-skilled students. The robot projects are run like a business and need a robot, marketing, public relations and business plans, and sponsors, Dipietro said.
Maranatha has all kinds of extra-curricular activities and sports but a robotics team is “sports for the mind,” Dipietro said.
Joshua Neposlan, 16, made Maranatha’s team website, designed T-shirts and was in charge of getting sponsors.
“We were really nervous on the phone,” he said of cold calling companies out of the Yellow Pages to sponsor the team. “We got rejected so much we got used to it.”
Assumption College high school’s technology teacher Mark Gillis co-ordinated with the University of Windsor and St. Clair College in getting mentors and help for his students.
“It’s my job to promote technology to the students,” he said about starting the robotics team.
Drew Tarnowski, 16, said he tapped into the school’s thousands of alumni to raise money. He even got a donation from a graduate in Australia.
“It didn’t feel intimidating,” he said about contacting former students. “We went to the same school just in different years.”
The area’s four robotics teams are rookies Assumption, Maranatha, and St. Anne’s high school and veteran Sandwich, which won the Smokey Mountain regional championship in Tennessee last year. The schools are competing at the end of March at a FIRST competition in Toronto. All the teams designed robots that can throw a Frisbee at targets and climb a pyramid.
WEtech has taken the lead encouraging more high schools to start robotic teams. Many area technical firms recognize the importance of having robotics teams to inspire tomorrow’s innovators, said Irek Kusmierczyk, program developer for WEtech.
“These students will be our next engineers, innovators, entrepreneurs,” he said to a crowd Friday at Assumption College. EnWin gave a $4,000 grant to WEtech to use to support area robotic teams.