Coppell Independent School District (ISD) teamed up with McLaren Automotive to put on a 10-day summer camp aimed at inspiring middle school students through robots.
The district’s first-ever Robotics Camp was held June 5-15 at Richard J. Lee Elementary School and cost $400 per student.
Students set to begin sixth, seventh, and eighth grades this fall were invited to craft their robots using Legos and then program them by writing their own code.
“I was intimidated to begin with because I’ve never used robots,” 13-year-old Khushi Singla said about the experience, according to CBS News. “After a while, I got used to the coding and I was the one who was coding it all.”
Using robotics provided a hands-on and engaging way to teach students a STEM-based curriculum.
“We saw an opportunity to make a sponsorship that could have a future impact on our business because we want to get young folks engaged in engineering,” McLaren Vice President of Operations Randy Nowell explained, according to CBS News.
A British luxury automotive manufacturer, McLaren opened its North American headquarters in Coppell last November, as The Dallas Express previously reported.
Alongside McLaren’s sponsorship, CISD’s Education Foundation enlisted the help of volunteer instructors specialized in engineering.
One of the volunteers was Kamesh Subbarao, a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at the University of Texas at Arlington.
“Robotics is playing a big role in many different walks of life, so these kids are getting to see where all they can be applied,” said Subbarao, according to CBS News.
Providing programs like Robotics Camp where participants have to adapt in order to navigate their robots through different sets of challenges, the students had to learn how to adopt creative solutions to shifting problems.
While 11-year-old Chris Biju called this “the annoying part” before having “fun with the robots,” it is a lesson that could serve them well down the road.
“We know the future is going to be very different,” Nowell explained, according to CBS News. “We know that vehicles in 2035 are not going to be anything like they are today. We don’t know what direction it’s going to go, but we need a lot of smart young folks working in science, technology, engineering, and math — as well as design.”
