Umatilla High School educates nearly 400 students each year, the majority of whom come from Spanish speaking households. Umatilla is one of the few Title IA high schools in Oregon due to its 86% student poverty level. Our school is full of talented and motivated students; however, not many of them go on to pursue college degrees and very few experience training or a career in a STEM field. FIRST has played an important role in helping students overcome life’s obstacles and creating a culture of success at Umatilla High.
Team 4125, “Confidential,” was established in Umatilla, Oregon, a rural, diverse, agriculturally based community, in 2012. Thanks to a nudge from Senator Jeff Merkley (who wanted to build STEM interest in rural areas) and support from Deb Mumm-Hill (who helped us find our jcpenney/NASA/State of Oregon start-up grants) our robotics team was born. Since then, due largely to the support of a school district focused on creating opportunities for its students, FIRST programs have grown to positively influence the lives of many.
Umatilla High School educates nearly 400 students each year, the majority of whom come from Spanish speaking households. Umatilla is one of the few Title IA high schools in Oregon due to its 86% student poverty level. Our school is full of talented and motivated students; however, not many of them go on to pursue college degrees and very few experience training or a career in a STEM field. FIRST has played an important role in helping students overcome life’s obstacles and creating a culture of success at Umatilla High.
Team 4125, “Confidential,” was established in Umatilla, Oregon, a rural, diverse, agriculturally based community, in 2012. Thanks to a nudge from Senator Jeff Merkley (who wanted to build STEM interest in rural areas) and support from Deb Mumm-Hill (who helped us find our jcpenney/NASA/State of Oregon start-up grants) our robotics team was born. Since then, due largely to the support of a school district focused on creating opportunities for its students, FIRST programs have grown to positively influence the lives of many.
We often hear about robotics teams with industry mentors, custom shops, corporate sponsors, and years of experience. Unfortunately, we have none of these things. However, we have a strong belief that resourcefulness and determination can overcome any obstacle. We choose not to focus on what we don’t have. Instead, our team chooses to build capacity within ourselves to create what we need.
In our first year as a team, we were in need of a mentor. Lacking engineers and STEM professionals in our community, Mr. Sipe, a middle school math teacher, graciously offered to form the team. Assisting him were a local college student, a retired community member, an animal nutritionist, and our district superintendent. Though they lacked professional STEM skills, our mentors taught us ingenuity, creativity, and resourcefulness. When we needed to weld our first chassis, Mr. Sipe and the students watched welding how-to’s on Youtube. Our seams and joints weren’t perfect, but they were ours and we were proud of them.
Our first year of competition was an eye opener for us. We benefitted from gracious professionalism and learned that FRC was not just a competition, but a shared learning experience. Our team was inspired by all that FIRST embodied. We ended the season with a new goal: to spread the FIRST message to anyone who would listen.
In our second season, though still shy on resources and expertise, we were motivated to make our mark on-well, anything we could get our marker on. With a reinforced Marketing Team, we set about getting publicity for our team and the FIRST Community. Though we had a great message to spread, we were limited by few press resources in our area until the unexpected happened.
While our marketers were busy, the rest of the team was having a very productive build season. The result of our team’s hard work was proven with a qualification for the FIRST World Championship, after being a part of the winning alliance at the 2013 Spokane Regional. We were overcome with joy at the news of our win. Then reality set in… we had only two weeks to raise over $15,000 to make it to St. Louis.
Our marketing team leapt into action and quickly organized press releases, a community yard/bake sale, a Paypal account, and several other fundraisers as well as a webpage to track fundraising progress. We also used our social media contacts to spread the word. The news coverage was incredible; our team had all major newspapers in our region print multiple stories to draw attention to our success and need. Not only were we invited to speak on a morning radio show, but our team was featured in a sports segment on KEPR Action News. The community response was astounding! Businesses, individuals, and people from across the west coast helped us. A local rancher sold a cow and donated the proceeds. One community member even brought in a five gallon bucket full of change; she’d been saving it for years for a vacation, but she chose to help us get to St. Louis instead. Numerous individuals, seventeen businesses, and countless yard sale shoppers pooled together to help us surpass our fundraising goal in less than two weeks. It still makes us tear up to think of how FIRST not only impacted our lives, but gave our community a shared joy and something to cheer for.
With the funds in hand, it was time to plan the trip. Even though we’d surpassed our $15,000 goal, our team simply could not afford to fly to St. Louis. What did this mean for us? A road trip, of course! Mid-Columbia Bus Co. provided our team with a small bus free of charge. Our mentors went out of their way to get bus driving licenses so they could drive us to Missouri in shifts. Luckily, Tom Denchel Ford loaned us an Expedition (the adults traveled here when not driving), and our high school football team allowed us to use their cargo trailer for supplies. On our way out of Umatilla, we had a full police escort and community send-off. With our transportation ready, we set off on a reverse Oregon Trail trip. Nothing bonds a team like a seventy-four hour round trip bus experience!
Thanks to the media attention and social networking, we had many new friends in St. Louis. A church allowed us to sleep in their building to avoid hotel expenses, and a community member bought us tickets so we could experience the amazing City Museum. The St. Louis Science Center donated a gas card to fuel up our bus for the trip home. Just when we were completely overwhelmed with the generosity of St. Louis, the Executive Chef of the St. Louis Rams surprised us with pizza in our pit! The people of St. Louis went out of their way to be sure we felt welcomed in their city. Success truly is most precious when it’s shared. The World experience was indescribable; to learn from elite teams and STEM professionals from around the world was an unforgettable experience. We even got to hug Dean Kamen! THE Dean Kamen! While we were in St. Louis, our community support never waned. During the competition, we had over 9,145 Facebook hits. With only 7,000 people in our entire town, the number of people following our progress was unexpected. Though we did not advance to the Finals at the Championship, we certainly felt like winners through each and every minute of the experience.
After Worlds, we wanted to share FIRST with as many students as possible. We decided to dedicate our time to expanding FIRST programs in our region and promoting FIRST as a whole. There are still far too many individuals in our region who’ve never even heard of our wonderful organization. We set out to MAKE IT LOUD, and we haven’t slowed down since.
Over the summer, we focused on community promotion. We sponsored a booth at our community celebration, Landing Days, allowed children to drive the robot while we visited with their parents about FIRST, and were honored to have won the Mayor’s Choice Award in the Landing Days Parade. We were awed by the number of people who had heard of us and knew our story. We held a Donor Days event to thank the many people who pitched in by allowing them to drive the robot and watch videos of the competition.
Our success helped us connect with STEM professionals with whom we wouldn’t have been able to connect with before. Our Superintendent and mentor, Mrs. Sipe, joined the Oregon FIRST Board and helped us associate ourselves with even more sponsors. Thanks to partnerships with Autodesk, Google, Intermountain ESD, Blue Mountain Community College, and Intel, the Umatilla School District was awarded the 21st Community Learning Center Grant -a five year, $2.1 million fund to grow STEM programs in grades K-12.
With this grant, we were able to start ten FLL, seven FTC, and ten Jr. FLL teams. However, we did not have adults in the community to coach these teams. What’s a community to do when it has the funding and the students, but lacks the trained leaders? Put the FRC students to work! Eight members of Team 4125 work with the after-school program as coaches for these young engineers. We’re proud to have a hand in this and know that we are building a FIRST community within our community.
Our team members and mentors have worked with our school administration to add STEM classes during the day as well. Since the inception of Team 4125, our middle and high schools have each added two periods of robotics classes. We also partnered with Team Treehouse (a website created to teach programming, web design, app development, and business management) to create independent study courses in technology for Umatilla High School students. After members of Team 4125 successfully piloted the program over the summer, the courses are now available for all students in Umatilla High and some surrounding schools as well.
To help new members adjust to the FRC experience, we offer two programs: Internships and RoboBoot Camp. We invite FTC members to view team meetings as part of our intern program. Selected interns travel with the team and get a preview of the expectations from competition. At RobotBoot camp, students interested in becoming FRC members are provided with hands-on classes taught by current FRC team members. RoboBoot Camp gives team members an opportunity to improve their technical and presentation skills by teaching a course and giving prospective members a taste of what the FRC build season will entail. We’ve found our internship and RobotBoot Camp programs to be great ways to encourage new membership.
It’s amazing to think of how much FIRST has changed our lives, and our community, in just three short years. What started as a dream for improving student opportunities has now led to new high school classes, K-12 STEM programming, outreach programs, media coverage, and incredible community support. We have been busy these past few years. We’re proud of all we’ve accomplished, but most importantly, we’ve learned that barriers will crumble with ingenuity, hard work, and a can-do attitude.
