RAMTEC Ohio Students Promote Manufacturing Careers
Four Tri-Rivers RAMTEC Ohio students recently used their knowledge of robotics and programming learned at the Marion, Ohio RAMTEC center to start after school robotics clubs for elementary students at Hayes elementary in Marion and the Selover Library in Chesterville, Ohio.
Students Junior Faith Demico and Seniors Seth Reece, Canyon Gamble and Michael Queener have spent more than 100 hours each teaching students about the fundamentals of robotics and C language programming.
The RAMTEC students have earned industrial credentials in FANUC Robotics Handling Tool Operations & Programming at RAMTEC in Marion. The students have also completed Parker Hydraulics, Yaskawa Robotics and Allen-Bradley Automation training while attending the two year program. They participated in the RAMTEC Vex Robotics League and won various contests throughout Ohio the last few seasons. They used their skills to help teach the 38 students how to design, build, problem solve, and operate the Vex IQ robots. The robots were donated to the programs through the Tri-River’s RAMTEC Ohio program.
The students from Hayes elementary school recently participated in the RAMTEC Ohio Vex IQ and RAMTEC Holiday Classis contests and earned the Excellence Award. The award was based on interviews an industry panel of judges. Students were also judged on their engineering notebooks and how their robot competed in the 33 team event as well.
They participated in the Ohio Vex IQ Robotics state contest at North Union Elementary School (above).
Tuesday March 1st students from Selover Library teams demonstrated their robot skills at Highland High School’s Library. These students have used the library as a sort of “Maker Space” to create robots. This event was the first time that RAMTEC has used a library to demonstrate.
Suzi Lyle stated, “Over the seven week program we only had four hours of missed time, the students were really engaged in the robotics process”. That would account for a 98% attendance rate for the after school Vex IQ Robotics program for the 20 participants. Senior Michael Queener (above) plans on continuing his engineering development at either the University of Akron or MIT in the Fall. The program was helped by sponsorship and grants from SMEEF PRIME, Consolidated Electric Coop, Yaskawa Motoman Robotics, the Honda Foundation and the RAMTEC Ohio Vex League.
By Ritch Ramey, RAMTEC coordinator
