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Robotics Team Puts Into Action a Gift from Women’s Fund
High school science has come a long way from boric acid, Bunsen burners and beakers.
The Dos Pueblos Engineering Academy senior robotics team strutted their stuff for members of the Women’s Fund of Santa Barbara last week, and the women walked away from the presentation, well, wowed.
In February, the Women’s Fund granted $150,000 to the Dos Pueblos Engineering Academy’s $3 million capital campaign to support expanding the popular program — which has a waiting list “out the door,” according to Sandy Seale, president of the Dos Pueblos Engineering Academy Foundation — to be available to more students and constructing a new building to house it.
“It fits very well into the mission of our organization, that through the power of collective philanthropy we are changing lives together and changing the way our society views these subjects and professions,” Women’s Fund member Fleurette Janigan said. “I thought it was important that Amir Abo-Shaeer (the program director) mentioned that the FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) robotic competition is about changing our culture to start valuing math, science and computer professions, just like sports is valued. They are also making them just as high energy and fun.”
The robot demonstration — presented primarily by students Natasha Banderia, Daniel Berg, Chase Buchanan, Anthony Cazabat, Angela Dai, Isabelle D’Arcy, Max Garber, Saher Hamdani, Bryan Heller, Andrew Hsu, Daniel Huthsing, John Kim, Caroline Kim, Fedor Kostritsa, Jacob Kovacs-Goodman, David Liu, Lisa Nakashima, Alyssa Ogi, Matthew Parker, Colin Ristig, Gabe Rives-Corbett, Luke Seale, Stuart Sherwin, Anthony Turk, Nick Vaughan, Alejandro Veloz, Yidi Wang, Kristi Ware, Kevin Wojcik, Akifumi Yamamoto and John Yi — not only was energetic, fun and impressive, but also an excellent showcase for the students’ public-speaking skills.
“Every year the seniors in the engineering academy participate in a robotics competition called FIRST, and every single year the game is different. It’s not a regular game like football, basketball or baseball; it’s a completely new game,” Rives-Corbett said while showing slides of a giant sports arena filled with 20,000 cheering fans watching this year’s game, “Lunacy.” The game involved students directing their respective robots to pick up 9-inch balls and getting points as the robots tossed the balls into trailers hitched to their opponents’ robots.
The students weren’t given any information about the game until 5 a.m. on Jan. 3, Rives-Corbett said.
“After six weeks, if you’re done or not, they come and take your robot,” said Ware, pausing for laughs like a veteran presenter. “Fortunately, we were good to go.”
“We really had no idea what was going to happen because this game has never really been played before. Our demonstration was all animation because there’s no real footage of the game,” Ogi said. “We watched the animation, and then we had six weeks to build a fully functional robot.”
The competition was held at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta in April, and the Dos Pueblos team made it to the finals.
“I was amazed at what they were able to accomplish in six weeks. I had no idea how complex the robot was or exactly how the competition worked,” Women’s Fund member Julie Sorenson said. “I was also impressed at how they model the entire process like a business and foster entrepreneurship.”
Not only do the students design and build their robot, they are also responsible for the lion’s share of the accounting, public relations, human resources, apparel, computer programming, graphics, sponsor recognition and writing efforts that go into the competition.
“I was inspired by the students who were passionate and poised and rightfully proud to share the creative results of their hard work,” Women’s Fund member Sarah de Tagyos said. “It was wonderful seeing our donation in action.”
Program Director Abo-Shaeer spoke about how the program has evolved during its four years. “This team is one-third girls, and from here on in it’s half and half, so these are the remnants of the trailblazers who can help make it so that all young girls now feel completely comfortable and excited to be in this program,” he said.
“I was so impressed with the composure the students spoke with and how much real-world business experience they received from working as a group to create a product, from beginning to end,” Janigan said.
Sorenson added: “I am thrilled that the women voted to support this program so they can expand it to make it accessible to more students in the future.”
— Noozhawk contributor Leslie Dinaberg can be reached at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
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» on 05.28.09 @ 04:48 AM
What a great program and Im happy to see DP doing so well. The sad thing is this is the way of Public Education. The have’s and the have not’s. DP is fortunate to have such a great parent/public group raising private funds to run a public school program. I highly doubt SB or SM would have the same resources/parent support to run such a program. With all the budget cuts happening, the public schools that have the resources/parent support will continue to get stronger and attract those types of students consistently (open enrollment). Those that don’t will begin a downward trend.
» on 05.28.09 @ 07:21 AM
In response to Goleta Resident: For a program such as this to succeed, it takes an innovative, energetic, committed teacher and a supportive administration to begin the process. This can take place at any high school. It just happens that DP had such a teacher and administration. Something similar has been happening for years at Santa Barbara High. The Dons Net Cafe, a virtual enterprise program built and developed by a strong, committed and charismatic teacher, has garnered many national and international awards over the past several years. So, as you can see, it doesn’t start with $$, it starts with just one person’s commitment to create a program that has relevancy, appeal, and the energy of a strong teacher behind it. The County Education Office ROP program as well as the SB School District is to be commended for fostering and providing the opportunity and environment for programs like these to succeed.
» on 05.28.09 @ 08:53 AM
in response back to BB2 -
You are absolutely correct. What I was pointing out is that all of these types of programs will require private financing. Do you think the district can afford to keep such programs alive, esp when they are making another 2 million or so in cuts?
You are correct, but it still takes private financing to keep these programs alive in our public schools. That is the way it is and the way it is going to have to be.
Im already expecting the class size to go up in the secondary district, probably up to 39 or 39 because of these budget cuts. Programs such as this amazing Engineering Academy will have to allow more students in without getting more teachers, unless private financing is there.
» on 05.28.09 @ 04:03 PM
Perhaps the issue is not public vs. private financing. Perhaps the real issue is, how can we get more of these unusually gifted and charismatic teachers in ALL of our schools, and get rid of the under-performing teachers? How about a REAL merit pay program? Or, if you insist on coming back to private financing, how about convincing some of the many committed and generous donors in our community to support ALL of our schools? We all know that SBHS and SMHS have strong centers of excellence, and they all recruit from the entire school district (open enrollment)!
» on 05.28.09 @ 05:33 PM
DPEA is open to ALL middle school students in Goleta and Santa Barbara—it will be physically located on the DP campus because: 1) Amir Abo-Shaeer, the visionary of DPEA, happens to be a teacher at Dos Pueblos; 2) there is acreage available to build the Academy at Dos Pueblos; 3) a group of Dos Pueblos parents were willing to give their time and money to see the Academy succeed and be made available for all Santa Barbara students.
The beauty of the program (once the building is completed) is that there will be almost 400 students in the Academy (vs. the 128 who can be accommodated currently), AND—one half of the Academy will be women.
When the new Academy building is completed, there will be two concurrent tracks offered simultaneously (one for those students bound for 4-year universities, plus a parallel track for those planning to attend a community college or join the work force directly upon graduation). What DPEA needs now are more donors to come up with the balance of the State of CA matching grant. Investing in our community’s youth – what could be more rewarding than that!
» on 05.29.09 @ 09:28 AM
The argument about DP’s relative prestige in comparison to the other schools is a real chicken-and-egg argument. It was a mere 20 years ago that DP was almost closed because of low enrollment (fewer than 1000 students). Back then DP was definitely the “have-not” school. What happened that caused it to change? Some visionary leadership, some committed teachers, some great students, and some extraordinary parents. However, these things could be replicated at any of the local schools. But, to replicate them takes hard work; sitting around complaining about perceived disadvantages won’t change do anything to solve the problem. DP is now the largest school in the district and there are more transfer students applying there than they have room to house them. San Marcos, which was the “rich” school in the 1970s is now the smallest school, having lost 600 students in the last five years; they could mount a DP-like renaissance too, but it takes hard work (and probably scuttling the block schedule). Are they up to the challenge or will they carp and call for superficial solutions like changing the attendance boundary?
» on 05.30.09 @ 06:13 AM
I agree it takes a visionary leader. Look at Santa Barbara. We have had 4 principals in 7 years or so? But despite this, the school is doing very well. Just look at the rise in test scores. Eventhough DP’s overall test scores are better, if you look at the two main subgroups, Santa Barbara’s “white” students score better than DP and Santa Barbara’s “latino” students score better than DP.
So why the overall score higher for DP? Because of the ethnic makeup of the school.
Mesa Accountant is correct. Schools like SB need a visionary leader.
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