Rob Gorbet (Associate Professor, Knowledge
Integration, University of Waterloo): When
you come to a FIRST Robotics Competition you'll
notice the kind of learning that these students
get is incredible. This year's game is called
Aerial Assist. Three robots play on one team
against another team of three. The challenge
is to get large yoga exercise balls from one
end of the field to the other. It's a little
bit like hockey it's a little bit like basketball.
Teams will cheer on other teams they'll cheer
on their own team, there's a lot of spirit and a lot of excitement.
Malavya Shah (FRC Mentor & Mechanical Engineering
Student, UWaterloo): I've been involved with FIRST Robotics since 2007
and then I moved on to becoming a mentor when
I graduated to go to Waterloo. FIRST Robotics
has given me the opportunity to apply what
I learned in class and when you get to university,
you're well prepared for anything that they
throw at you.
John Hobbins (FRC Director, Canada): I've
been teaching in high school for 19 years
and during those 19 years, 12 of those years
were with an FRC team, where we've had well over a
thousand students go through this program,
and a very high percentage rate going right
here to Waterloo to engineering, because they
know this is one of the best engineering programs in the province or perhaps the globe.
Ankita Sharma (Grade 12 student, St. Mildred's-Lightbourn
School): I got into the mechatronics program
at Waterloo and that's really exciting. Definitely
being a part of this program I've been able
to learn that engineering is what I'm good
at and what I'm meant to do.
Rob Gorbet: Having FIRST at the University
of Waterloo is a great thing, I mean this
is the cream of the crop in terms of high school
students. They'll go out into the work force
and they will already have worked on a multidisciplinary
team on a large project with limited resources
and limited time, and FIRST gives them that
leg up. So these students are really the
kind of people that employers are going to
be looking for.
