Kiss Institute
I began doing volunteer work with the Kiss Institute for Practical Robotics in 2012. At the time, I was a student participating in their Botball program, an educational robotics league that focuses on engaging middle and high school aged students in team-oriented robotics competitions. Through the program, I learned to build and code robots to compete with teams all over the world. During my time as a competitor, my team was the most successful all-female team in the world, earning numerous local and global titles, as well as special awards for mechanical design and coding. Even a competitor, I volunteered in any role I could, judging at competitions I was not competing at or helping to set up for training weekends. After I aged out, I began to volunteer as a mentor to middle school and high school teams who currently compete, and as a judge at any local or global conference I can. I have been active with this program for 8 years now. As a mentor, I love the feeling of watching my teams learn through both success and failure. Not only do the kids learn invaluable coding skills that will only get more important as they eventually enter the workforce, but they
Judging at the 2016 Global Conference on Educational Robotics
also develop teamwork, strategy, and communication skill as they are forced to work with fellow students to be successful. Botball is a program that is designed to allow students from all walks of life succeed. It encourages good sportsmanship, teamwork and collaboration with other teams. This nature of the program draws kids from all different backgrounds who may not have other outlets where they can feel comfortable and be successful. As a mentor, you get to see kids who don't always fit in or have many friends blossom and flourish in a team environment.
"Thousands of children and young adults participate in the Botball program. It has been active since 1998 and features a robotics curriculum which focuses on designing, building and programming a pair of autonomous robots. Teams use a standardized kit of materials, document the process and then compete in a tournament in which the challenges change annually. All materials in the kits are exactly the same for every team around the world, so there are no unfair advantages. Botball teams are mostly based in the United States with over 300 teams and local tournaments in more than a dozen regions. It also holds an annual Global Conference on Educational Robotics (GCER), that attracts teams all over the world including Mexico, Austria, China, Uganda, Poland, Qatar, Kuwait, and Egypt." - Botball Wikipedia
Giving a speech as the Youth Advisory Counsel President
