Plans are underway for a summer robotics camp
Plans are currently underway for area middle school and upper elementary school students to participate in a robotics summer camp. The camps are a collaboration in the making between Tri-County Educational Service Center, Wayne County Schools Career Center and Schantz MakerSpace.
“When working with educators, we often hear that there is a need for students to be exposed to programs that let them work with their hands, tinker, create and use technology,” said Beth Gaubatz, a consultant with the Tri-County Educational Service Center.
Gaubatz is the career connections coordinator with the tri-county agency. She said employers have expressed a need for employees with coding, robotics, engineering and technology skills.
“In order to get students interested in these areas, we wanted to develop a program that would help to start exposing them early on to these types of activities,” she said.
The Tri-County Educational Service Center career connections programs work with 18 different school districts. “We collaborate with school districts, parents, workforce and economic-development entities, local chambers of commerce, local service clubs, Ohio Means Jobs offices, mental-health providers, and area businesses,” Gaubatz said.
All of these partners work together to support the three pillars of career connections. In elementary schools it’s career awareness, middle school is all about career exploration and the focus in high school is on career planning.
Jacob Melrose teaches in the engineering program at Wooster High School and is the head robotics coach. He has taken his students and their robots to area middle and elementary schools and said the response was very enthusiastic.
“Last year at the end of the competition season, I took my high school students, and we did demonstrations at a couple of middle and elementary schools,” Melrose said. “All the kids were very intrigued and excited about what the high school kids were doing. They asked excellent questions.”
Christina Sayre is in 11th grade at Wooster High School and got involved in robotics this year.
“None of the classes you take [in the lower grades] prepare you for something like this,” Sayre said. “Robotics is a really fun program. I’m wildly passionate about it. If I had been able to do this in middle school, it would’ve been amazing.”
Registration for the camps will be available soon and will be distributed via local school districts. It also will be posted on the Tri-County Career Connection’s Facebook page.
Middle school students in grade six-eight will be offered a three-day camp experience. The upper elementary school camp is slated to run two days for grade three-five.
According to Lynn Moomaw, director of operations and adult education at the Wayne County Schools Career Center, the camp sessions will be offered in late July or early August.
The camp will be held in the career center’s RAMTEC center. RAMTEC stands for Robotics Advanced Manufacturing Technology Education Collaborative.
Moomaw said robotics and other technical skill sets students will be exposed to are important to the growing industries in the area. “Hands-on robotics and other problem-solving and team-learning activities will be taught,” Moomaw said.
The career center also supports the collaborative nature of the programs. “We believe strongly in building partnerships and supporting organizations like Tri-County and the Schantz MakerSpace as well as our local industry partners,” Moomaw said.
For more information email Gaubatz at tesc_bgaubatz@tccsa.net or Andrew Johnson at tesc_ajohnson@tccsa.net or call 330-345-6771.
“Hopefully,” Gaubatz said, “a camp like this can help students explore their strengths and learn about potential career pathways that they never would have been able to do before if they had not had these experiences.”