Help FRC Allumni Teach Students About Robotics

[andrew418]

I'm a FIRST alumnus, from team 418, and I go to school at UC Berkeley.

I'd like to ask the CD community for some help raising funds for a student robotics organization.

When I got to UC Berkeley, I joined a student group called Pioneers in Engineering (or PiE), which was founded by FIRST alumni to give students in underperforming high schools a FIRST like experience.

Pioneers in Engineering is a low-cost FIRST like robotics competition that focuses on helping underperforming schools. For just 100 dollars per team, we provide teams with a kit and mentors for the season. This means that PiE can cater to more needy high schools, like those in West Oakland and other underprivileged parts of the San Francisco Bay Area.

PiE also gives college students like me the opportunity to keep learning about engineering and robotics in college. Since I came to college, I've learned more about engineering from PiE than I have from my classes.

We need Chief Delphi's help to win a voting contest on Facebook. If we win, we will get $5,500 dollars of Zipcar credit, which we will use to help transport our mentors from UC Berkeley to high schools all across the Bay Area. This will greatly help the students in underprivileged schools learn about science and engineering, something that is otherwise missing from their education.

Can you please take two minutes to vote for Pioneers in Engineering at: https://apps.facebook.com/students-with-drive/ ?

Thank you all so much

Andrew Vanderburg
Pioneers in Engineering

[NXTGeek]

Very cool! I hope your message gets out- and encourages other FIRST alumni to do similar endeavors with their free time.

[RobertG]

I am a FIRST alumnus from teams 294 and 2150, and I am currently a Pioneers in Engineering (PiE) staff member. PiE is unique in that it actually provides college mentors for its teams. These college mentors need trasporation to get to their teams, so winning this competition means more mentors can help more teams.

Thus, if you vote for us science and technology will inspire more students.
Please vote here https://apps.facebook.com/students-with-drive/.

If you would like to learn more about Pioneers in Engineering check out our website.

Thank you,
Robbie Gleichman

[ajc]

Hi, I'm another FIRST alumnus from GRT, team 192, who is now a Pioneers in Engineering Staff member.

We are doing some pretty interesting projects-- for example, I'm writing a hardware level simulator that allows library and user level code to be seamlessly run between hardware and a simulator. This allows unit testing for development of our robotics framework, as well as team software development prior to the completion of the mechanical robot.


While we can provide such technical solutions to the teams, the problem of providing good mentorship and working with the students is much less trivial. Zipcar is a convincing solution to this problem.

So-- please help us provide a STEM education to students who lack the opportunity and means to compete in FIRST, and consider taking one minute to vote for our cause.

Thanks,
Andrew Chen