— \So, you think you’re smarter than the Faith Christian Academy Robotics Team?

Then maybe you can help them solve two of their biggest problems.

The 25 teenagers on this year’s team have to finance and build a working robot from scratch in about the next six weeks — in time for the Tennessee Valley BEST Competition — but they don’t have a place to do it.

If you own an empty, 14000-square-foot building that has seemed a little lonely lately, the class sure could use your help.

“We could pay for electricity and Internet service and, possibly, some rent,” said robotics team teacher/mentor Kathryn DeWitt.

The team needs to raise about $6,000 to make it all happen, including $2,000 if they have to pay rent for a building; $2,000 to buy a laptop computer, monitors and projector; $1,000 to construct a marketing booth that will be judged at the contest; $800 to buy a motor for their robot so they can practice with it in the off-season; and $200 to $400 to build a practice field before the competition.

The team is already hosting fundraising events to try to reach their goal but donations of any magnitude from corporate sponsors would help. The team is currently selling pizzas, doughnuts and “robot” bugs, and planning car washes to help earn money. You can buy a pizza or offer to sponsor by calling the school at (256) 233-3778.



Not just for fun

Building a robot isn’t just an exercise to keep idle hands busy. Students are given some basic parts like metal, PVC pipe and golf balls, told to finance, design and build a robot that can perform a particular task, then make it perform in competition.  They also have to maintain a design notebook and develop tabletop displays and a booth for marketing purposes along the way.

This year’s BEST competition will be Sept. 4 through Oct. 16 at Calhoun Community College. BEST, which stands for Boosting Engineering, Science and Technology, began as a program in Texas in 1993, came to Alabama in 2001, and to Faith Christian in 2008. The students put in about 12 hours a week on the team, including four hours on Saturdays, leading up to the competition, DeWitt said.

“Our team is set up like a company,” said the team’s chief executive officer, Joshua Gooch, 17. “We design, build and market the robot and we have to raise money to do that.”

In many respects, a robotics team is like being part of a small company, DeWitt said.

“The team receives a description of this year’s problem and has six weeks to design, build and complete the robot at Calhoun,” she said. “It has to prepare a comprehensive design notebook and a tabletop display as well as build the robot. Throughout this process, the students learn how to identify requirements for the system, develop concepts and designs, implement their ideas with real materials, and test and verify their product.”

Under the guise of simply building a robot, team members come away from the six-week competition with much more.

“When we first formed the marketing team, I did not know what I was getting into, though I knew it would be an adventure,” said Katherine Harrison, 17, director of marketing for the team. “There was a lot more being built than a robot.”

She and other team members developed leadership skills, learned to work together and allowed themselves to learn from one another.

“It is a symbiotic relationship,” she said of team membership.

Now in her second year as a team member after skipping a year, Harrison is happy to be in a leadership position, she said, because she has put the quality to test before.

“I feel good about encouraging others to perform and do tasks,” she said.

Team member Daniel Green, 16, a third-year team member who built much of the robot last year, enjoys learning from others.

“I have learned from other people’s designs,” he said.

He and other team members have also learned the Thomas Edison way — by making mistakes and fixing them.

The students seem to enjoy the BEST competition most because the teams are on a level playing field. Last year, they were directed to build a robot that could complete a specific task and they received two kits containing basic materials with which to complete it.

“BEST is good at making sure creativity wins or loses— we all get the same stuff,” said team member Kyle Shockey, director of computers.

In some other competitions, students explained, the depth of a team’s pocket could allow it to outperform poorer peers.



Tiny but mighty

For being relative newcomers to the contest, the team has done well at BEST, considering the school’s size — 225 students this year, including 66 in grades 9-12.

Last year’s team placed fourth overall in BEST Award among 19 teams, first in T-shirt design, third in school spirit, fourth in marketing booth and fifth in robot competition, DeWitt said. Some of the teams, like the one from Decatur and Austin high schools in Decatur, had 120 members, she noted.

This year’s team, which includes 20 students in grades 9-12 and parent mentors Joe and Joyce Osborn, Jean and David Brown and David Shockey, would like to do even better.