{"id":161471,"date":"2025-04-03T11:11:32","date_gmt":"2025-04-03T15:11:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/?p=161471"},"modified":"2025-04-03T11:11:32","modified_gmt":"2025-04-03T15:11:32","slug":"lobstah-bots-head-to-district-tourney-with-boost-from-bu-eng","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/2025\/04\/03\/lobstah-bots-head-to-district-tourney-with-boost-from-bu-eng\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cLobstah Bots\u201d Head to District Tourney, with Boost from BU ENG"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3><strong>Mentored by BU student engineers, high schoolers learn STEM skills through fun competition<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p><strong>By <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/articles\/2025\/eng-students-mentor-bu-academy-robotics-competition\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Patrick L. Kennedy<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Toiling nearly every day after school for two months, a team of 20 high schoolers from<span>\u00a0<\/span><a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.buacademy.org\/\" target=\"_blank\">Boston University Academy<\/a><span>\u00a0<\/span>(BUA) and Boston\u2019s Match Charter High School have been building a robot named Beluga in a workshop at BU\u2019s College of Engineering. The robot, with lifting and grasping mechanisms, looks a bit like a giant Erector set on wheels. With guidance from a group of BU ENG undergraduate mentors, the team has earned high marks in<span>\u00a0<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.firstinspires.org\/robotics\/frc\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">FIRST Robotics scholastic competition<span>\u00a0<\/span><\/a>this season, winning both an Excellence in Engineering Award and a Gracious Professionalism Award. And now, the team has headed to West Springfield, Mass., for the FIRST New England District Championship tournament.<\/p>\n<p>ENG, through its<span>\u00a0<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/about-eng\/outreach-diversity-inclusion\/k-12-outreach\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Technology Inspiration Scholars Program<\/a><span>\u00a0<\/span>(TISP), sponsors Match students and supports the team (nicknamed the Lobstah Bots) overall by sending their undergrad mentors to help in a hands-off way\u2014troubleshooting and serving as sounding boards while the Lobstah Bots tinker and improve their robotic creation.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey\u2019re able to do pretty effective mentorship that almost feels invisible,\u201d says BUA student Maxwell Yu, team colead on computer-aided design. \u201cThey\u2019re not that much older than us, but they have more technical expertise, and they try to guide us by saying, \u2018Have you considered this possibility?\u2019 rather than, \u2018You<span>\u00a0<\/span><em>should<span>\u00a0<\/span><\/em>do this.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The goal of both BU\u2019s TISP and the national organization<span>\u00a0<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.firstinspires.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">FIRST<\/a><span>\u00a0<\/span>(For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) is to expose more young people to STEM fields\u2014and all the possibilities in those fields for difference-making careers\u2014through a fun, exciting extracurricular activity.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cRobotics is the only sport where every kid can go pro,\u201d says Madison McDonald (ENG\u201926), one of the TISP volunteers.<\/p>\n<h3 style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><em>Read the full story at\u00a0<\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/articles\/2025\/eng-students-mentor-bu-academy-robotics-competition\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">BU Today<\/a><\/strong><\/h3>\n<p><em>Photo by Jackie Ricciardi<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The high school robotics team is mentored by BU student engineers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2662,"featured_media":161476,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[236,907,908,1000],"tags":[845],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161471"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=161471"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161471\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":161477,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161471\/revisions\/161477"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/161476"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=161471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=161471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=161471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}