12.03.09 For the first time ever, the five Catholic elementary schools serving students in Camden City will join together to field a ten-person team–the “CamdeNerdz”–in a national LEGO robotics regional qualifying tournament:
Saturday, December 5, 2009
10:30 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. (Competition 2:15-4:00 p.m.)
Chamberlain Student Center at Rowan University
201 Mullica Hill Road
Glassboro, NJ 08028
The competition presents real-world engineering challenges to students aged 9-14. This year students have been asked to research a transportation problem in their community and develop an innovative solution. Drawing on math, science, engineering, and technology skills, the students have designed, built and programmed LEGO robots to respond to the challenge.
During the competition, each team will present their project to a panel of judges, participate in technical interviews about the robot design, and explain how the project responds to the particular challenge. Their findings will be judged at the competition.
Winning teams will then advance to the state level competition at the University of Delaware on January 30, 2010.
The Camden Team has two 6-8th grade students from each of the five Catholic elementary schools serving the Camden city area: St. Anthony of Padua, St. Joseph Pro-Cathedral, Sacred Heart, Holy Name (all in Camden city) and St. Cecilia, Pennsauken.
The Camden team is being sponsored by Mount Saint Joseph Academy in Flourtown, PA which itself boasts an all girls robotics team. Their team, the Firebirds, which was formed ten years ago, is only the second all girls team formed in the national competition and is now the longest running all girls team in the nation.
The formation of a single robotics team with representatives from all five Camden-area schools is the natural outgrowth of a larger initiative now underway to strengthen Catholic education in the nation’s most dangerous and impoverished city. Last year the Diocese of Camden and the International Education Foundation (IEF) / CSDP formed the “Catholic School Partnership,” a major initiative that has brought together the expertise of top education, management, finance and advancement executives to strengthen the Catholic elementary schools that serve some of the most disadvantaged students in South Jersey. With the Partnership, the five schools, which together serve more than 1,000 students, have been brought under the direction of a five-person management team and a 12 person board of directors.
Sr. Karen Dietrich, executive director of the Partnership, said, “We are providing a strong education for students in this struggling city through a first-rate education in the classroom, but we also want to provide opportunities outside the classroom that will expand horizons for these talented students. It is our hope that their participation for the first time in the robotics competition will encourage the value of team-work, apply critical-thinking skills they’ve learned in the classroom to real-life problems, and inspire today’s Camden city students to be the innovators of tomorrow.”
For more information about the event, see http://elvis.rowan.edu/firstrobots/.
###
The IEF was founded by Robert T. Healey, an alumnus of Camden Catholic High School and St. Joseph’s University. IEF recruited the management team and worked to develop the Partnership model. IEF also supports the Partnership through major funding grants and consulting services. The International Education Foundation launched the Catholic School Development Program (CSDP) in 2004 to impact long- term sustainability of Catholic schools throughout the Diocese. For more information, see http://catholicschoolpartnership.org/
The LEGO robotics competition was founded by inventor Dean Kamen in 1989 to help young people discover the excitement and rewards of science and technology. The FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) foundation now supports competitions for students in elementary and high schools worldwide. For more information about US First, see http://www.usfirst.org/