“Even if we lost every match, our end goal with the robotics teams would be the same: we want to help kids get into careers where they can make a great life for themselves. STEM fields traditionally paid two to three times more of what other jobs do, and there was just an article published by the Associated Press where the salaries in STEM careers are projected to double over the next 10 years.
We want to help prepare kids for those careers, and our record with that so far has been impeccable: in the 11 years of this team, 100% of the graduates have gone on to major in a STEM-related field.
Preparing kids to have a great career—that's what winning is to us.
The new STEM Center will be a critical part of that. Right now, our two teams are split up between four classrooms and the library. We practice for competitions in the library, and every day we have to take out all the furniture and put it back. It would be crazy to ask a varsity football team to practice in a classroom, or the basketball team to practice in the parking lot.
Our robotics kids are no different: they deserve better and we’re giving them better. They deserve to come into a state of the art building, with their own practice facility and do STEM education in a way that can’t be done in any other school. It’s going to help these kids, this team, the district, and the region.
In last year’s competition, we played with teams from Australia. Carter is learning Japanese on his own, and he got to speak in Japanese with a kid from Japan for the first time. The Dutch teams are always entertaining because they walk around and sing songs.
One of the neatest matches we played in was with a team from Mexico and a team from Korea. Nobody spoke each other’s languages, so our kids had to work out a strategy using just a picture of the playing field and drawing out what each team would do.
And they did! They won that match. It was neat seeing these kids all high-fiving and hugging after because they pulled it off. They couldn’t speak other’s language, but they could speak in the language of robotics and made it work.
Essexville is a small part of a bigger world, and our students get to experience that as part of the robotics team. When we traveled to play in Escanaba, half of the team had never been traveled across the Mackinac Bridge. When we went to Texas, 75% of the team had never left the state.
That’s life-changing kind of stuff.”
—Ethan Shannon, STEM/Robotics teacher, E-Ville Empire Robotics team, Essexville-Hampton Public Schools
“I was interested in engineering and wanted to get some hands-on experience to see if it really was something I wanted to pursue, and I thought joining Garber’s robotics team was the best way to do that. We have drafting, wood shop, and metal shop classes, but robotics was a way to experience serious engineering.
The new STEM center will allow our capabilities as a robotics team to grow immensely. And it won’t just help our team, but every team in the area who doesn’t have an area to practice with.
A big problem we run into now is a lack of space. We have two teams situated in our lab, the high school team and the junior high team, and it gets tight with all those students and robots. We’re squeezing past people, sharing tools, and tripping breakers and it's just a big problem. But with the incoming STEM Center, it really just opens up a whole new set of opportunities: we can have better tools and materials.
Right now, we have to set-up in the library. That’s not ideal because it’s not competition size, and other students also need to use it as a library. But with the STEM Center, we’ll also gain a permanent, competition-size practice field.
It's just been amazing being a part of the process. Generally students aren’t involved in decision-making, but with the STEM Center, they talked to us about what we wanted. It’s been amazing to see your ideas actually put into the blueprints, and it's like nothing I've ever experienced.
When I joined the team, I wasn’t sure about engineering, but now, I’m 100% certain that engineering is what I want to do.
Being part of this team has changed my life.”
— Landon Scharich, E-Ville Empire Robotics team
“I help build the field elements, the robot, and I’m the human player that has to interact with the robot on the field during a competition. That means I have to give the robot whatever game piece it needs, or I might have to hit a button to get more points.
Because I joined the team, I’ve learned how to use a bunch of these tools. I've learned how to design something, and I've learned organizational skills.
Before this team, I had an inkling that I wanted to become an engineer, but my experience with the robotics team has cemented that.
— Grant Huiskens, E-Ville Empire Robotics Team
“In the robotics team, we talk a lot about meaningful experiences–it’s one of our six core values—and over the past couple of years, we've qualified for the World Championship. I’m learning Japanese, and each year, I've had the opportunity to speak with teams from Japan in their native language, and that has just been an incredibly meaningful experience for me. Being from a small town, speaking with someone from Japan in Japanese is not an opportunity I would have had doing any other extracurricular, and so that's just meant the world to me. It's absolutely incredible getting to interact with people whose life experiences have been completely different from my own.
When we go to competitions, you're in these massive rooms full of thousands of other ‘robotics nerds’, and everyone has been working on the same things over the past couple of months. You're able to appreciate one another's struggles and triumphs, and everyone understands exactly what getting first place means.
I want to thank our lead mentor, Mr. Shannon, and everyone on the team. Through this program, I've met some people who are very important to me, people who mean everything to me, and that wouldn't be the case without robotics.
So yeah, thank you to everyone.”
—Carter Davis, E-Ville Empire Robotics team
“My buddy asked me to join the robotics team, so I did. But I’m more into media, so when I’m in the lab, I’m usually taking photos or videos of what the team is doing. I think it’s cool running a social media account with a couple other students for something like this because its a way to show the community the amazing things the team does with building a robot and going to international competitions.
I love it.”
–Cooper Jacobs, E-Ville Empire Robotics team
