OUR PARTNERS

"12596 Copperhead, this 2023-2024 season, is excited to play a part in the advocacy for promoting STEM across under-represented communities on a Local, National, and International Level. Through sharing our knowledge, our experiences, our lessons we have learned through tackling the FTC Game for several years, we hope we can inspire and open doors for youth to take on the challenge to pursue their intellectual curiosities through the area of STEM. "

Student Association STEM Advocacy [SASA] - NATIONAL ADVOCACY CONFERENCE (22' - 23')

The National Advocacy Conference (NAC) is a political conference for high school robotics teams to attend and advocate for important issues concerning STEM programs (like FIRST robotics) on a federal level. This year’s conference focused on advocating for increased federal funding for extracurricular STEM programs like robotics, and we chose to attend because we wanted to use our resources & knowledge to advocate for other teams and ensure that they have access to the same amazing resources and have the opportunity for an amazing, well-funded robotics experience.

We were one of only TWO teams representing our Central Texas FIRST region at NAC! (2022-2023 season)

Global Impacts Intiative - STEM Festival

Recently, there’s been a growing population of Afghani refugees in Austin, and we wanted to connect with the refugee youth in order to introduce them to some fun STEM/robotics activities and make these topics approachable & engaging! We decided to form a partnership with the Global Impact Initiative tutoring program (tutors refugee youth in English and Math) to organize & run a STEM Festival at their local ESL Center by hosting a two-day STEM Festival for Afghani refugee youth in Austin in which we set up six stations with different STEM/robotics activities for the kids to participate in!

STEM Advocacy Conference Of Texas (SACOT)

The STEM Advocacy Conference of Texas (SACOT) enables Texas high schoolers to advocate for statewide STEM education policies. This year, we focused on encouraging representatives to support HB 1569, which sought to implement a grant program for training TX computer science teachers and improving the quality & diversity of computer science education.

Spent a day at the TX Capitol where we shared statistics & our own personal stories about the benefits of FIRST robotics in meetings with TX reps to advocate for their support in passing HB 1569!

GirlStart - Monthly Starry Night Booth

We partnered with Girlstart to host an informational robotics booth at their monthly Starry Nights events where we gave presentations on local FIRST opportunities for the girls to get involved in, demoed our robot, and created mini robot games for the girls to compete in with our robot. We introduced the girls to various hardware concepts (our robot mechanisms & industrial design process) & software concepts (demonstrated our AI Auto-Aim Algorithm)

Successfully recruited 10 more girls for FLL next season through these events!

RiverPlace Elementary School - Community STEM Presentation

We visited River Place Elementary and used our own custom curriculum to teach their 5th grade classes about the industrial design process. We also designed a group activity in which they applied the design process to try and solve a problem in a real-world community.