Robotics Club
The Robotics Club helps students discover the excitement and rewards of science and technology, inspiring them to pursue education and careers in STEM-related fields and become leaders and innovators.
Students in grades 7-12 work as members of a competitive team to design and develop a working robot to accomplish a given set of tasks through unstructured problem solving.
The Robotics Club is an extension of the science program at St. Sebastian’s. While time in the classroom is dedicated to rigorous study of principles and experimental practices, the Robotics Club provides opportunities for students to concurrently develop engineering, computer-aided design, and computer programming knowledge and skills.
Our team participates in FIRST Tech Challenge competitions. Each year, the game is new, unique, very challenging, and has no “best” solution. Trying to figure out an effective, elegant solution to accomplish the tasks brings out the best in these students. The passion, creativity, and tenacity demonstrated by the team members in their quest to turn their ideas into reality is astounding and inspiring.
Many of the skills developed reinforce skills already highly valued and practiced across the schoolwide curriculum such as critical thinking, time management, work ethic, taking initiative, taking responsibility, handling adversity, and accepting consequences. In addition, the club develops skills not generally taught formally in an academic program, such as being a leader, being a follower, working with diverse personalities, being accountable to others, delegating tasks, and reaching compromise.
Although technically a winter season activity, for many students the club is a two or even a three season endeavor. The club has a faculty moderator but is run predominantly by the students themselves within a leadership structure that includes a Project Manager, Lead Builder, and Lead Programmer. The club has two dedicated rooms, the build room and the programming room, which are managed by the team members and occupied most every day of the year!
The reason I enjoy robotics so much is that we are an independent team of students. We work almost entirely without instruction (except for deadlines) and are able to make almost all the decisions ourselves. I think this is a very unique experience and I'm very glad I've been able to experience it. The club has also sparked my curiosity in engineering and especially in CAD. Ray Jr.
I am on the robotics team because I like to see something my friends and I have made succeed. I enjoy programming but I also really like building, so the robotics team is a great club where I can do both. I have learned a lot about sharing ideas and combining them to complete a given task, as well as problem solving to make those ideas actually work.
Thomas