Chairman's SHORT Answers
Team Number: 4201
Team Name: The Vitruvian Bots
Team Sponsors:
Wiseburn School District
Embrace Apparel
Northrop Grumman
Thee Boeing Company
Raytheon
COM DEV USA
Institute for Creative Technologies, USC
Elite Technologies
Gardena Specialized Finishing
MiCIAN
WyzAnt
Impact on Team Members: Our first year graduates are in college, most majoring in STEM fields. This year's seniors have already received some college acceptances. We are especially proud of Moses Barba, who has a full scholarship to Pepperdine. He and others, including Amy Hu our team captain, were not interested in engineering before FIRST: "I either wanted to be a veterinarian, go into the movie industry, or do military work. Once I joined FIRST for fun, I was hooked. I had no idea what I was getting myself into."
Impact on Community: Da Vinci's school district is comprised of lower income households, largely Latino, interspersed with aerospace engineering firms. FIRST robotics has been instrumental in bridging those two communities: the team is very multi-ethnic and most come from working class families. Many team members reached out to the community as volunteer teachers at the school's math and science summer day-camp for the surrounding neighborhoods. We hope we helped ignite the future STEM leaders within them.
Innovative Methods to Spread FIRST: Our work with the summer camp, founding of school engineering chapters, community service, and mentoring of young future engineers at the Innovation Academy have all been effective in spreading the FIRST message. Our members established NSBE (National Society of Black Engineers) and SWE (Society of Women Engineers) on campus, and arranged speakers from Google, JPL, and SpaceX. Our students went to the NSBE Region 6 Conference and SWE hosted the film Girl Rising on world-wide female education.
Role Model Characteristics: All our members exhibit immense dedication as they invariably find ways to balance homework, extra-curriculars, and jobs. We are especially proud of the third of our team who are female because the engineering field has such a small female presence. Team Captain Amy Hu and Iridian Chino, our electronics lead, never disappoint to bring their full focus and dedication to our team meetings. Without them, our team's stability would undoubtedly fail to be at its current standing.
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