Robotics is About More than Robotics
This month more than 2,000 people, including 44 teams from high schools across the Los Angeles region, Hawaii, and Taiwan came out to our El Segundo campus for the 2024 Los Angeles Regional FIRST Robotics Competition.
“This is the fourth time we’ve hosted the L.A. Regional, and it’s always very special because robotics has such a special place in our schools,” said Dr. Matt Wunder, CEO and Superintendent of Da Vinci Schools.
Since Da Vinci Schools launched its robotics program in 2011-12 with just 10 students, Robotics has held a special place in the hearts and minds of our current students, alumni, community partners and friends. The mission statement for our FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) Team 4201, also known as The Vitruvian Bots, is to serve as a STEAM Hub where our community members are inspired to learn, grow, and collaborate.
Our Team 4201, The Vitruvian Bots, takes their mission and responsibilities seriously.
Currently, there are 72 high school students on the Robotics team—students from Da Vinci Design, Science, Communications, and Connect High all come together to compete on one team. Even after graduating from Da Vinci Schools, alumni come back as mentors to support the high schoolers in our program, to teach the TK-8 kids in our Wiseburn USD schools, and to teach and establish robotics programs in other TK-12 schools across the region.
Since its inception, Team 4201 has helped to establish robotics programs in 12-14 neighboring schools, as well as share its own space and resources with local teams that don’t have robotics practice fields of their own. Team 4201 also has teamed up with our local Society of Women Engineers (SWE) to grow young girls’ passion and confidence for participating in STEAM fields.
Team 4201 and their mentors also appear in the original documentary “More Than Robots,” streaming on Disney+.
All students and graduates who have been on the robotics team will tell you that robotics is about much more than engineering and robots. Roughly 30-50% of the team’s time is spent building community, teaching STEAM to younger students, and learning how to run every facet of an organization—from fundraising to marketing, animation, photo/video production, social media, overseeing talent, project management, managing a budget, drawing out great ideas and harnessing powerful minds, pitching ideas to the team and judges and sponsors, handling team logistics, computer programming, creating and giving presentations, time management, graphic design, grant writing, and so much more … It’s never just about building a robot.
And then there are the soft skills that students learn by being on the robotics team—everything from how to work well with people; how to work well as a team; how to be creative and innovative; how to handle the pressure of tight deadlines in a team environment; how to pitch ideas to your teammates, sponsors, judges; how to advocate for yourself and the team; how to build a presentation that will be understood by people with varying levels of technical knowledge; and how to build a robot with minimal resources and time. (Hint: Team 4201 fabricates 90%-95% of its robot parts in-house, an uncommon practice yet one which is becoming standard for top-tier teams.)
Da Vinci graduates who have participated on the robotics team have gone on to attend colleges and universities within the UC and Cal State systems, such as UCLA, UC Berkeley, and San Jose State, as well as other institutions such as the University of Southern California (USC), Vanderbilt University, Harvey Mudd College, Howard University, Stanford, Pepperdine, Cal Poly, Chapman University, Baylor University, Rochester Institute of Technology, and many others.
Our robotics program at Da Vinci Schools partners with FIRST, a global nonprofit organization that prepares young people for the future through a suite of inclusive, team-based robotics programs for ages 4-18 (PreK-12).
“FIRST sets students up for success by challenging them to think, build, and work together to solve problems. It forms the pathways in students’ minds that will last a lifetime and does so in an environment that is low risk—allowing students to learn through failure. I always tell my students, “I’d rather you fail on a $5,000 robot, than on a billion-dollar satellite,” said team founding mentor Fazlul “Fuzz” Zubair, whose day job is a Systems Engineering Department Manager at Raytheon Technologies.
As a part of the team’s mission and drive, they helped to establish the robotics program at Wiseburn Middle School and this school year they’ve teamed up with Wiseburn Middle School’s robotics teacher Andy de Seriere to bring robot building and programming to all the kids in grades TK-8 who attend a Wiseburn USD school.
Wiseburn students and others in grades 2-9 also have the opportunity to work directly with Team 4201 during summer enrichment camps that are open to the general public. This summer, Da Vinci is hosting two weeks of LEGO Robotics Camp at Wiseburn Middle School. > Learn more and register here
We are so grateful to have our Da Vinci Team 4201 in our schools, helping our younger students learn how to build and program robots,” said Dr. Blake Silvers, Superintendent of Wiseburn USD. “It’s one thing to have robotics in our schools. It’s another thing to have a world championship robotics team in our schools,” he said.
In 2019, our Da Vinci Team 4201 won the FIRST Robotics World Championship as part of a four team alliance, beating out over 3,000 other teams from roughly 30 countries. The Da Vinci team also has won top honors for innovation and impact for being a role model in their community. Many of the students who have been on our robotics team have received early acceptances into top colleges and amazing internship opportunities with companies like Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, SpaceX, and TraPac.
If you or your student would like to know more about Team 4201 or would like Team 4201 to come to your school, you can reach out to the team here. You can also meet the team and its robots at Wiseburn Education Foundation’s annual fundraising event Rock Around The Block on May 4, 2024 at Wiseburn Middle School in Hawthorne, CA.
Thank you, Team 4201, for representing Da Vinci Schools, the Wiseburn community, and the Wiseburn Unified School District so powerfully. We are grateful for all your dedication and hard work and for your commitment to the team and the greater good.
Go Team 4201!
