The Robotics teams have had a lot of success by winning awards, such as the “Think” award, which is the second most prestigious award internationally, but also by qualifying for several high-level tournaments. However, their involvement goes beyond prizes, in addition to building up their reputation through competitions, they also give back to the community by getting involved in community services.
All Marlborough Robotics teams participate in the FIRST Tech Challenge, an organization that strives to inspire and encourage participants to follow STEM-related careers. This program focuses on engaging in community service to help spread the knowledge and passion for engineering.
In light of this competition, two Robotics teams composed of juniors and seniors, have been working closely with organizations like No Limits, CoachArt, the Boys and Girls Club and the Mar Vista Family Center, to bring more awareness about engineering. The teams work with elementary and middle school students where they run online and in-person lessons on engineering, conduct construction-related labs and more.
The senior captains of Curiosity, Kailyn ’25 and Riley ’25 have been putting together bake sales to provide registration and materials for their lessons. They were able to raise $1,000 last year and have already raised $1,300 so far this year.
Kailyn and Riley also successfully started a FIRST Lego League team (FLL) at the Boys and Girls Club, which works with the same company as the FIRST Tech Challenge but is specialized for younger age groups. The students are currently learning how to build robots out of Legos to compete against one another.
“It’s really fun to come up with these activities for them,” Riley said. “It’s something that they’re really interested in but where they’re also learning about STEM.”
In addition, the captains of Marlbots, Victoria ’25 and Alessandra ’25 are in charge of writing and planning the lessons for each of the organizations they work with.
“It’s really inspiring to see how much all of the kids enjoy the lessons. They’re always so excited to learn something new and experience a new topic or subject,” Victoria said.
A large part of getting involved with these organizations is both teaching the students about STEM and collaborating with them to develop mentoring skills.
“It’s a mutually beneficial activity because the Marlborough students learn a lot from the process of planning an activity, creating a lesson plan and just being up in front of a group sharing their passion,” Robotics Coach Andrew Witman said.
Teaching and instructing others allows the teams to reflect on their love for engineering and share their passion with those around them. By being able to give back to the community, Robotics members are able to celebrate the STEM-related industry with younger generations.
