{"id":459828,"date":"2010-03-22T19:14:04","date_gmt":"2010-03-22T23:14:04","guid":{"rendered":"tag:www.eng.wayne.edu:\/\/4569fbbebc555c6480c6fc5327e4a2f7"},"modified":"2010-03-22T19:14:04","modified_gmt":"2010-03-22T23:14:04","slug":"first-robotics-at-wayne-state-university","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/459828","title":{"rendered":"FIRST Robotics at Wayne State University"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n

\n Team #280 pushes their robot by playing field at WSU Matthaei Athletic Complex Friday during FIRST Robotics’ 2010 Detroit District Competition. (photo by Amanda Rodriguez)<\/em><\/p>\n

by Derrick Bean
\n COE Public Affairs<\/p>\n

The crowd at Wayne State University’s Matthaei Athletic Complex channeled March Madness to the fullest Friday and Saturday, March 19 and 20. Proud parents, peers and supporters let out huge cheers and chants, complete with the occasional wave or fist-pump matched by an up-tempo beat. There were nearly 40 high school teams in attendance.<\/p>\n

There were team signs and designs peppered amongst the many people often standing in the stands. You could see a sea of team colors everywhere you looked, and some die-hard participants even dyed their hair to match. There were warriors and Spartans, angels and animals, and people and things, as mascots did their best to match their team’s monikers.<\/p>\n

West Side Academy, an alternative education high school in Detroit, achieved great success as a beginner in 2009, but they came back for more. They are Team 3115, the Robo-Panthers. There are 15 students and two mentors this year. Juan Davis, a WSU mechanical engineering freshman, serves as the Robo-Coach (or mentor). He helped with the design and development process, and he also helps the drive team during competition.<\/p>\n

Davis, 22, was captain of the Robo-Panthers in 2009. He returned to share his knowledge. “I knew we were going to have a new group of students, and I wanted to show them what I know,” he says.<\/p>\n

Davis first got involved in FIRST while attending Frederick Douglas High School his freshman year. “My old basketball coach said I should try it,” he says. “I thought it was geeky. But I tried it, and ended up liking it. You get to make new friends and meet people.”<\/p>\n

Davis liked FIRST so much that it motivated him to go into engineering. After three years of competing at Frederick Douglas, Davis decided to follow his younger brother to West Side Academy, but the school didn’t have a robotics program.<\/p>\n

Daydawn Butler, a biology and chemistry teacher at West Side Academy, is the lead mentor for the Robo-Panthers. When Davis wanted a robotics program at the school, he went to Butler. At the time, she was also teaching science classes at Detroit Area Pre-College Engineering Program (DAPCEP), attending graduate school, and otherwise too busy to think about getting involved.  <\/p>\n

“Juan said, ‘Would you please start a team?’” Butler recalls. “He said he was on a team for three years, and that it was his last year, and that he had to have a team. He had so much passion. As a teacher, how do you turn that down?”<\/p>\n

It would have been easier for Butler to just say, “No.” But she didn’t. “West Side is a small school,” she says. “We don’t have any money. No mentors. We started from ground zero.”<\/p>\n

The Robo-Panthers managed to rise to greatness last year, their first year. After achieving success in the state championships, the team made it all the way to the 2009 FIRST Championships in Atlanta where they finished 27 out of 80-plus teams.<\/p>\n

The Robo-Panthers are a good example of a Engineering March Madness Cinderella team with little experience, but a lot of heart. “I always tell my students, ‘Nobody’s better than you. They may have more money and resources, but they’re not better than you,’” Butler says.<\/p>\n

Although the time she spends on the team is even more than she first expected, she would not give up the experience for the world. “It was worth it,” she says. “I don’t get much sleep. I get up at 5:00 a.m., and go to sleep at midnight.”<\/p>\n

Butler says some people look down on an alternative school, but that just drives the team members more. “Students come to an alternative school to graduate on time,” she says. “I do believe in them. All kids can achieve if given an opportunity.”<\/p>\n

Deidra Evans, 17, is a junior at West Side. The second-year member is one of four girls on the team. It’s rare to find a large number of girls on a FIRST team. “Some females are not really interested in stuff like this,” she says.<\/p>\n

Butler says she wanted to get more females involved this year, so she took a few “prospects” to Atlanta last year to let them see what FIRST is all about. “They wanted to join after that,” she says. “We want to get them excited about learning. We encourage STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) careers.”<\/p>\n

Evans says her experience in FIRST and her job working for a youth mentor program influenced her to want to study mechanical engineering in college.<\/p>\n

Butler says that FIRST may be the future in teaching. “Programs such as this need to be funded on all levels, national, state and local,” she says. “This not only helps to close the achievement gap, but it also helps students to stay in school, thus increasing the graduation rate. It’s extremely important to make learning fun. Everything is interactive today: cell phones, video games and computers. You have to balance bookwork with fun.”<\/p>\n

In the FIRST Breakaway competition, this year’s competitive theme, three teams form alliances and compete against another alliance for a game of “soccer.” Evans says it’s not hard to work together with other teams because they’ve been doing it all along. She says the Robo-Panthers allowed others to take some of their ideas after they were one of the first teams to finish building their robot at the Michigan Engineering Zone, a University of Michigan-Dearborn downtown facility where Detroit schools build their robots with local mentors.<\/p>\n

The Robo-Panthers finished 14 out of 38 in Breakaway events at the WSU district competition.<\/p>\n

Davis says FIRST is all about having fun and “gracious professionalism,” a phrase coined by Woodie Flowers, FIRST’s national advisor. The phrase means you can have fierce competition but still have fun. A perfect example occurred at last year’s regional’s. The opposing team needed a part to fix their robot. Davis gave them the part, and the Robo-Panthers lost that match.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Team #280 pushes their robot by playing field at WSU Matthaei Athletic Complex Friday during FIRST Robotics’ 2010 Detroit District Competition. (photo by Amanda Rodriguez) by Derrick Bean COE Public Affairs The crowd at Wayne State University’s Matthaei Athletic Complex channeled March Madness to the fullest Friday and Saturday, March 19 and 20. Proud parents, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3325,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-459828","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459828","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3325"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=459828"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459828\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=459828"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=459828"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=459828"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}