Building Robots Builds Scientists

FIRST's Robotics Competition helps inspire middle and high school students to pursue careers in math and science

by Spencer E. Ante

• View Slide Show

It's 6 p.m. on a chilly February night in New York City, and the Harlem Knights are racing to meet a deadline. The Knights are a group of about 30 kids participating in an after-school program at the Frederick Douglass Academy high school on 148th Street in Manhattan. Their task is to build a working robot as part of a program called For Inspiration & Recognition of Science & Technology, or FIRST.

Founded in 1989 by inventor Dean Kamen, FIRST is trying to tackle what many educators and businesspeople call one of the most pressing educational challenges facing America: inspiring middle and high school students too consumed by pop culture and their digital devices—or scared their jobs will be shifted overseas—to pursue careers in technology and science.

Bridging the Gap

"As a math teacher I know that the U.S. is ranked 23rd in the world in math," says Joel Bianchi, one of the FIRST mentors helping the Harlem Knights. "It's shocking. Students can get into math and science here. They're engaged. FIRST could revolutionize the direction of math and science."

Bianchi and his co-mentor, Thomas Horan, say the genius of FIRST is that it brings science and technology alive for a generation of youngsters who otherwise might not be interested in engineering and computer programming. "Students are turned off sometimes because they see science as rigorous or boring," says Horan, 32, an engineer at ConEd who has been a FIRST mentor for seven years. "The connection isn't developed between the textbook and the real world. I try to bridge that gap."

Preparing for the Competition…and Life

The Knights are a few weeks away from the New York regional round of the FIRST Robotics Competition, and they have a lot of work to do. This year's competition gives students six weeks to build a robot out of a common set of parts. During the March competition at New York's Jacob K. Javits Convention Center, 53 teams will face off in matches where they score points by using the robots to pick up and hang inflated tubes on a rack. "I have very high expectations," Horan says in the runup to regionals.

Inside the cramped lab at Frederick Douglass, clusters of students grapple with various parts of the robot. This is the first time many have put their hands on tools such as jigsaws and power drills, much less written computer software. One group is developing the code that will tell the robot how to move. "These are the controllers, they control the wheels," says Xavier Marrero, an eighth-grader who has learned through robotics how to program in languages EasyC and C++.

Another group fiddles with the motors and electronics. And two more are creating a Web site to feature the team's handiwork. "Before I didn't understand a Web page had all this coding," says Mamadou Barry, 16, an immigrant from Guinea who wants to be a computer engineer. Jennifer Christian, 18, says FIRST has reinforced her desire to be an electrical engineer. "It helps me a lot," she says. "Robotics shows you that what you learn in class can be applied to real life."

Fighting the Frightening Statistics

Real life—in the U.S.—is where Christian's talents are needed most. The nation is in danger of losing its technological leadership if it doesn't reverse dismal high school graduation rates and encourage careers in math and science, Microsoft (MSFT) Chairman Bill Gates said in congressional testimony Mar. 7. He backed the assertion with a startling array of statistics: Half of all African American and Hispanic ninth-graders will not earn a diploma in four years; the number of undergraduate engineering degrees awarded in the U.S. fell by about 17% between 1985 and 2004; and the percentage of college freshmen planning to major in computer science dropped by 70% between 2000 and 2005.

FIRST is one of the most effective ways to reverse the slide, say leaders from the education and business communities. Intel (INTC) also sponsors a competition aimed at identifying tomorrow's tech leaders (see BusinessWeek.com, 12/5/05, "Science Grads, Where Are You?"). Yet while 1,700 students enter the Intel Science Talent Search, more than 32,000 students participate in FIRST. And many of the FIRST programs operate in inner-city environments where science programs are often given short shrift.