For 16 years, FIRST Tech Challenge has been bringing together students in grades 7 through 12 to a robotics competition where they compete to design and build and program a robot. Now, the College of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences, the UVM Extension and its 4-H network is extending the event into the pre-college community, benefitting from a $40,000 STEM equity grant landed in partnership with Burlington's Generator Makerspace.

Vermont has doubled the number of its teams from 15 to 30 in regional hubs throughout the state, and shows no signs of slowing down in this empowering and professional environment.

FIRST Tech Challenge teaches students how to work in a real live environment where there are no easy answers and that you do everything in teams, and you have a constraint, explains John Cohn, Ph.D., an IBM Fellow at the MIT-IBM Watson Lab who has been coordinating the program in Vermont.

“I've been at IBM for 40 years and know how open-ended real world engineering problems can be,” says Cohn. "I see FIRST Robotics as a program that teaches a student to work in a real live environment: one where there are no easy answers, one that you do everything in teams and one where you have real constraints, like not enough time or not having the perfect equipment. FIRST is a really fun and practical way to learn about the very challenging multi-disciplinary problems which the real world presents." To see the confidence of kids thinking something is impossible and then not only overcoming it but also mastering it “is pretty powerful,” says Cohn. “It’s absolutely the reaction you see on every kid.”

The funds from the $40,000 grant go toward FIRST Tech Challenge gear, which will now equip four Vermont FIRST Tech Challenge hubs with tools for not only this year’s event on March 13, but also future innovation and competition.

Overcoming Obstacles, Solving Problems

Complicating the current FIRST Tech Challenge has been the pandemic, which has meant that students aren’t able to come on campus to work on something that requires multiple hands. “You need somebody doing the robot, the wheels, and somebody doing the software,” says Cohn, who’s been impressed by the number of teams they were still able to form, and by how participants are overcoming pandemic obstacles.

“The whole FIRST mindset is about innovating under constraints and figuring out how to solve a big problem,” he says. “It's very interesting to see how FIRST and the students who are doing it are addressing COVID in that same vein: ‘Okay, how are we goign to build a team robot when we can't all be in the same room’ The coaches, the organizers, the organization itself are all innovating on the fly, like the rest of the world, to deal with COVID. I've been just blown away with how people have found out how to get around these constraints safely.”

Developing Professional – and Life – Skills

Kimberly Griffin is the 4-H educator for Rutland and Bennington counties and recently spoke about the FIRST Tech Challenge on “Across the Fence,” a UVM-produced, WCAX (CBS-affiliate) segment that airs Monday through Friday at 12:15 p.m. (EDT). “One aspect of FIRST robotics that I really admire is the foundational value of gracious professionalism,” she said. “Which is, essentially, a charge to learn as much as you can — develop a professional skill-set, and to do so graciously, from a place of humility, through the practice of helping others along the way. Something that dovetails into those values is what FIRST often calls ‘cooper-tition.’ You benefit from your opponents doing well.”

Teams earn recognition through such accolades as “The Inspire Award,” “The Think Awards,” “Innovate,” and “Connect,” adds Griffin. “Inherent to these awards are values of teamwork, problem solving, and communication. “The winner of the Inspire Award does get to move on to the World Championship. In fact, World Champions have come out of the Vermont Championship!”

Also involved in 4-H, UVM Professor Chris Callahan is part of the UVM Extension services, a FIRST Tech Challenge coach and the person in charge of one of the four FIRST Tech Challenge hubs, at the Bennington Area Makerspace.

“FIRST Tech Challenge is a great way to see, hear and feel science, technology, engineering, art, and mathematics come to life,” says Callahan, who works with two teams of participants aged 12 to 18. By creating team surveys and a shared resource page, he’s also been able to knit together far corners of this rural state. “It’s energizing to share their excitement for the ‘coopertition’ challenge,” says Callahan, “and to help them work through their design and strategies. It gives me energy and hope for the future.”