OC STEM Project Acabado provides funds to OUHSD for FIRST Robotics. OC STEM Project Acabado is a Title III HSI-STEM grant. The mission is: Finish! Project Acabado STEM begins with the end in mind. Educators, learners, families, communities and systems thinkers aim to cultivate the conditions for future STEM professionals to get their start.
The below is an excerpt from the VC Star on Frontier High Schools success with FIRST Robotics, Click Here to Read More
A group of six students from Frontier High School in Camarillo and their team coach — the school’s art teacher — walked into the FIRST Robotics regional competition last week and nearly wanted to leave.
The students from the continuation high school in the Oxnard Union High School District didn’t walk in with a working robot. They had only parts and motivation.
When they left, the group of six found out they would be heading to the next level of the competition in Houston later this month.
“The kids looked around and were like, ‘Mrs. G, we don’t belong here. We need to get out of here,’” robotics team coach Christa Reyes-Gonzales said Monday. “But they dived right in.”
FIRST, For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology, is an international organization that motivates students to participate in hands-on science, technology, engineering and mathematics activities.
Forty two teams competed last week in the regional competition at Ventura College, where they battled it out on the gymnasium floor with their robots.
The team from Frontier had never been to the competition before — or successfully built a robot together. So to pull off something like this, Reyes-Gonzales said, is a tremendous feat.
“They were in disbelief through the course of the evening,” Reyes-Gonzales said. “Most of them have never traveled from outside the state.”
The “Final Frontier” team will join two Ventura County teams, including the “Scorps” from Camarillo High School and a community team called “HighTide” comprised of students from the Ventura high schools.