GRT is Grateful for Engineering Mentors and Corporate Sponsorship
The fifty two students in the Engineering Technology class at Gunn refer to themselves as The Gunn Robotics Team, or GRT. GRT has a nice ring to it, and the word “team” comes much closer to describing the feel of the group than the word “class.”
“In this class we get to work together in groups to solve real problems,” says Matthew Stevens, a senior, “it really is a team that hangs together.” Whether you call it the Gunn Robotics Team or Engineering Technology, our group is legendary among educational circles, and it’s one of the most exciting project-based programs around.
The robotics team is the capstone course for all of the engineering sequences at Gunn, and it has become a home on campus for students who like to make things. On a typical afternoon – long after many students have gone home – we will have dozens of students doing computer aided drafting or computer animation in our computer space, assembling electronics or gear systems in our lab space, and machining or welding in the shop. These students have one thing in common: they like to try things out to see what works. “In GRT, the main way to learn is not through talking as much as learning through doing and interacting,” says Elle Allen, also a senior.
The students in GRT work on a host of projects during the year. Recently they converted a Ford pickup truck to an all-electric vehicle, they built a robotic haunted house for Fairmeadow Elementary School’s autumn fund raiser, and have done all kinds of engineering challenges and community service work. The centerpiece of the program, though, is the robot that they build each year for the FIRST Robotics Competition.
FIRST, which stands for For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Engineering, comes up with a new game each year, and the students have only 45 days to design and build a robot that will play that game. This year the robots play a type of soccer game on a field the size of a basketball court that has 12-inch high speed bumps on it. The competitions are wildly exciting and thousands of spectators attend.
While some FIRST robotics teams are headed up by teams of professional engineers and machinists, our group is eminently student-centered. “The Gunn Robotics Team is different from every other class at this school because students are largely responsible for deciding what we do,” says Neil Bhateja, this year’s student leader, “We have professional mentors who share their experience with us, but at the end of the day we make our own decisions and live with the results.”
Our learn-by-doing philosophy makes it tough for the students to compete with some of the more corporate-centered teams, in which robots may be designed and built entirely by professional engineers, but the experience for students can be seminal. “Being on the Gunn Robotics Team truly changed my life and shaped the direction of my career” said Caroline Connelly, who is now working for SpaceX Corp. “It made me realize that I was as good as any boy at engineering.”
This year the students competed in San Diego and San Jose with their 95-lb robot, and they won the large majority of their matches, coming in third overall in San Jose. Their next stop is the National FIRST Robotics Championships in Atlanta Georgia over Spring break. Many of the students have dyed their hair red to show team spirit, and our team will truly stand out in the crowd in the Georgia Dome.
The Gunn Robotics Team is open to sophomores through seniors who enroll in Engineering Technology, and there are no prerequisites for enrollment. There is a waiting list for the course, and students apply each winter to join.The team is not funded through the school or the district, but instead relies on grants and corporate sponsorships for funding. This year we are grateful to Palo Alto Foundation for Education, the Linde Group, Sofinnova Ventures, and Qualcomm for their major support. We are always on the lookout for engineering and manufacturing mentors as well as for new corporate partnerships.
Please contact Bill Dunbar at bdunbar@pausd.org for information or to volunteer.
No comments :
Post a Comment