Robotics Team Established At Rogers State University Via Anonymous Donation

Rogers State University has formed its very first robotics team thanks to an anonymous donation given to the university during Giving Week. The donation came in part due to the community outreach its STEM training team does.

Doctor Curt Sparling is the department head of technology and justice studies at RSU and oversees the robotics program. He said that he's extremely excited about this new program and the ability to go out and compete against other programs, but he's also excited about bringing the world of robotics to elementary and high school students.

"After we go out and spend the year competing, we’re going to take those exact same skill sets into the K-12 high schools, middle schools, and take that stem education and robotics to them," Dr. Sparling said.

There are three students, Nghi Nyguen, Khai Nyguen, and My Le, on the robotics team right now. All three of them have worked on a drone delivery system for the RSU campus which was one thing that sparked their interest in robotics competitions.

The team has only been working together for a short time, but they are all looking forward to their first competition in December.

"I’m really happy and grateful that the university showed that they are caring and interested in the robotics team. I’m also very thankful for the donation. It’s so generous, and it will mean a lot for us to prepare for all of our materials and components needed for the competition," Nghi Nyguen said.

My Le said she's already looking forward to trying to get to the world championships in robotics but knows that these smaller tournaments are an important step in getting there.

"I'm most looking forward to us getting experience because we want to go to the world championship, so we need to get more experience from the smaller tournaments first," Le said.

Right now, there is still a lot of work to do before this team can get to that point and it all starts with preparation.

"We are working on building the robots, preparing for the competitions, and I find interest in getting together with the team as well as trying my best," Khai Nyguen said.

RSU's first competition will be on Dec. 2 in Michigan, and the team hopes this experience and later tournaments will help them get to the world championships later on down the road.