Coding and collaboration: Using robotics to develop future talent

Blue a-lli-ance! Red a-lli-ance! Hundreds of high school students are gathered at the Armory Track in New York City – cheering, stomping, and clapping. This tournament has all the excitement of a sports event. But instead of athletes, robots are in the center of the floor, created and controlled by students – the true athletes of this tournament. Welcome to the FIRST Robotics New York regional competition.

As a longtime supporter, Bloomberg has been involved with the FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Robotics competition since 2004. FIRST designs accessible, innovative programs that develop not only science and technology skills, but also self-confidence, leadership, and life skills through robotics. Our company now sponsors 15 teams in 4 cities – New York, London, Princeton, and San Francisco. We also have 60 employee mentors who have spent hundreds of hours coaching and mentoring the students, as part of Bloomberg Startup, our education engagement program. FIRST students in the Bloomberg Startup program have access to our company’s robotics lab in the basement of our Global Headquarters complete with 3-D printers in addition to our year-round workshops.

Coming together as a team
FIRST Robotics is much more than building and coding the robot. Students learn about teamwork, problem solving, how to manage a budget and communicating with judges or other teams.

The competition puts a strong emphasis on collaboration. The robots, each no more than 120 pounds, the students program the robot to perform specific tasks: lift boxes onto a scale, push a box through an opening in the wall or toss onto a platform. Teams are then assigned to an alliance – red or blue – which forces the teams to work with one another.

Much of the focus is getting students to break out of their comfort zones, said Anthony Neis, a senior software engineer at Bloomberg in New York who mentors students at the High School for Computers and Technology in the Bronx.

“Everybody has their strengths and weakness, it’s a matter of getting people to try to address their weaknesses and grow from the experience,” he explained. Students have a tendency to focus on what they are good at be it welding or coding but “as mentors we wanted to make sure that everyone is learning,” he continued.

Anthony has also taught programming classes to colleagues at Bloomberg, but working closely with students on the robotics team was a different kind of experience. “There’s a lot more pride and ownership involved. People see a massive robot and the students are very proud of it because they have something tangible to show for all their efforts,” he said.

Seeing the students take on responsibility and new challenges has been one of the most rewarding parts of the experience for the mentors.

“When the students first started, the trip to New York was the carrot, but the further we got into the project, you can see their attitudes changing. It becomes more about getting through to the competition, rather than just a nice trip to New York. In the end, how close we became and how behind the competition everyone got – that for me is the most rewarding part. I get to experience this every year,” said Mark Walker, from Bloomberg’s London office who mentors the team at Petchey Academy in England, one of the few international teams in the competition.

The experience, albeit rewarding can also come with ups and downs. Mentors and students alike said that one of the toughest parts of the challenge is adapting to last minute changes. It’s an important life lesson that all teams grapple with: even the best laid plans can go awry. Natasha Stamler, a junior at the Bronx High School of Science and captain of the Fe Maidens (an all-girls team and sponsored by Bloomberg), said the biggest challenge this season happened at the beginning of the competition when another robot smashed into theirs at full speed, damaging it. They had to fix and make changes on the fly to get theirs operational again.

Nurturing talent
While students learn valuable technical and teamwork skills, they also grapple with a unique challenge: high turnover. Students are on the team for at most four years, but it’s usually less. Teams with many experienced students could be left with a team of rookies the following year when experienced members graduate.

“There are schools that will go through waves and then there are schools that continuously build. Having that continuity is hard,” said John Waanders, a software developer at Bloomberg, who serves as one of the competition judges.

The difference comes down to planning. To help the robotics team at Hamilton High West Watson High School in New Jersey (Hive Mind) build on their previous experience, Shaina Palmere, who works at Bloomberg’s Princeton office, guided the students in creating their business plan.

“When I started mentoring the team, there were a lot of ups and downs. Besides me, there were a few other mentors all focused on programming,” she said. It was the first time teammates came to understand how the different parts of the team works together as a whole, she explained. Shaina also helped students establish clear goals for each team member.

She describes how rewarding it is to help students understand that there are careers in tech, even for those who may not be strong in engineering. Like companies in the real world, a successful robotics team needs people with different talents from marketing to communications in addition to programming.

“The biggest thing is just to see students succeed when they didn’t think they could before. [The experience] had a real impact on them and will change their lives,” she said, adding that it was rewarding to demonstrate to students that robotics and engineering is accessible and “not some big scary thing that nobody can break into.”

Mark, from the Petchey team, recalls how one former student decided to go into programming. “She said would never have gone into that field if it wasn’t for her experience on a FIRST Robotics team,” he said. In addition, several former mentees have gone on to internships at Bloomberg. “It’s a nice feeder system to spot talent too,” Mark added.

“Acting as a role model to these kids, watching these kids grow. I’m happy that I’ve been a part of it,” said Zhiquan Yeo, a Bloomberg software engineer and mentor for Team 354 from George Westinghouse High School.

This year, seven Bloomberg sponsored teams advanced from the New York regional competition to the world championship in Detroit. Many of the schools were underfunded and needed a bit of help with fundraising to travel to Detroit. Through the Bloomberg Dollars for Your Hours (DYFH) program, employees were able to raise more than $50,000 for the schools in most need. Sylvia Hung, a Bloomberg software engineer and FIRST volunteer pledged her DFYH to her high school alma-mater John Dewey High School in Brooklyn – Team 333. “I volunteered at the NYC Regional and even brought my kids. FIRST is such a great experience for children I thought it was important to give back to the community and do my part to help the kids at John Dewey get to the finals!”

Team 333 went on to win the 2018 Curie Subdivision at the FIRST World Championship in Detroit and came in 4th place overall in the competition. They were also one of two New York State teams from New York to compete in the “Einstein rounds” or finals of the Championships.

Read more about Bloomberg Startup and our efforts in developing future STEM professionals.

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Bloomberg Startup is the company’s global education engagement program offering year-round mentoring and a series of technical and leadership workshops to support academic achievement and college and career readiness for the next generation of leaders. Startup also provides internship and scholarship opportunities for high-achieving high school and college students from our non-profit education partners around the world.