12/09/2011
Engineer Neil Saunders is one of about a dozen mentors from Cook Medical, the presenting sponsor of the Forsyth County Invitational Robot Run, who are volunteering many hours of their time to help 17 middle schools and one elementary school get their teams ready for this Saturday’s competition. Neil, who has been volunteering at Clemmons Middle School, says it has been a very rewarding experience, although it can be tough to resist helping the students too much.
“We just guide them; they have to do it all on their own, including coming up with the missions that they want their robots to do, then programming them to make them execute the tasks. .. . Sometimes I have thoughts about how they could do something better, but instead of telling them, I ask questions. I’ll say, ‘What kind of math skills could you use to solve this problem?’ “
For Will Munster, an engineer with Avid Solutions who is also mentoring the Clemmons Middle team, the competition not only helps students, but his company as well. “We NEED engineers, and motivating middle school students to pursue these careers will help our recruiting a few years from now,” he said.
