Tech Tigers from Austin Polytechnical Academy win Rookie Inspiration Award
CHICAGO – A team of nine freshmen students from Austin Polytechnical Academy, Chicago's only high school dedicated to careers in modern manufacturing, finished 9th out of 42 teams at the FIRST Robotics Midwest Regional Competition, held Feb. 28-March 1 at the UIC Pavilion.
The Tech Tigers, as the students deemed themselves, were the recipients of this year's Rookie Inspiration Award, which is bestowed on the most inspiring first-year team. Team mentor Antigone Sharris, coordinator of engineering technology at Triton College in River Grove, said the Tech Tigers also held the distinction as one of the only all-freshmen teams in the Midwest regional.
"The other teams had a mix of grades," Sharris said. "We were a very small team compared to other teams. It was against all odds, so I'm very excited that they won the award."
The FIRST Robotics Competition was created by inventor and entrepreneur Dean Kamen, founder of the Segway PT, a two-wheeled people-moving vessel used locally by law enforcement patrolling the downtown area. Kamen is president of Manchester, N.H.-based DEKA Research and Development Corp., which focuses on the development of revolutionary new technologies.
Twelve of the 42 teams competing in the Midwest regional competition were from Chicago. The top three finishers, plus the winners of the Chairman's Award, the Rookie All-star Award (which is different from the Rookie Inspiration Award) and the Engineering Inspiration Award all qualify to compete in the FIRST Championship to be held April 17-19 at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta.
Many of the other robot entries had more complex mechanisms than the Tech Tigers' robot, which was built for speed and agility and to perform laps around the track, Sharris said. "In the end, it may have been the team's agreement to keep the design and mission simple that made us place so high." The students built their robot from a box of raw materials they received the second week in January and worked late into the evenings after school to ready their invention for competition. The team was led by Kenneth Jones, the Dean of Students at Austin Polytech.
"I am very proud of our hard-working and intelligent students who participated on this team. I couldn't be happier with how they hung in there and never gave up," said Bill Gerstein, principal of Austin Polytech. "I look forward to next year when we will be able to improve on this year's performance."
In January, the Tech Tigers got a chance to show off their work in progress to dignitaries touring the school, including Kathleen Kennedy-Townsend, former lieutenant governor of Maryland and daughter of the late Sen. Robert Kennedy.
The Tech Tigers, which were sponsored by Motorola, ranked as high as fourth place at one point during the three-day competition, but finished ninth after a showdown on Saturday, Sharris said. The 9th place finish is regarded as a huge victory for these students, who have extra periods of math and reading and a longer school day than the majority of Chicago Public Schools students.
Austin Polytech is a project of the Chicago Manufacturing Renaissance Council (www.chicagomanufacturing.net), a coalition of labor, government, business, education and community leaders dedicated to making Chicago a global leader in high-skilled production. The school, created under Mayor Richard Daley's Renaissance 2010 new schools project, opened with a freshman class of 145 students last fall in the former Austin High School building at 231 N. Pine St.
In 2008, the FIRST Robotics Competition is expected to reach more than 37,000 high school students competing on more than 1,500 teams in 41 regional competitions.
For more information about Austin Polytech, visit www.austinpolytech.com or contact T. Shawn Taylor, director of communications, Chicago Manufacturing Renaissance Council, at 312-371-6260 or at tshawntaylor@yahoo.com.
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