UAB’s School of Engineering is sponsoring an initiative to get Central Alabama middle and high school students interested in STEM subjects. (Illustration by Thomas Baldwin).Luke Richey - Staff Writerlrichey@uab.edu
UAB’s School of Engineering has kicked off their 8th annual B.E.S.T.—Boosting Engineering, Science, and Technology—robotics competition for Central Alabama middle and high school students.
UAB’s Blazer BEST program offers students in Central Alabama a place to flex their scientific and technological muscles. The program, which started in 2008, was created by BEST Robotics, Inc. BEST is a non-profit, volunteer organization created in 1993. The program started in Texas, but grew over the years, and went from only two hubs in Alabama to 12 by 2015. For BEST, the term “hub” means a centralized location or center that services different counties around the area. UAB’s central location encompasses five Alabama counties–Jefferson, Shelby, Clanton, Walker and Blount.
“STEM [Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics] programs are necessary for today’s world,” said Lyn Lewis, Co-Director for Blazer BEST at UAB, “For students to succeed they need an understanding of science, technology and engineering in the present-day job market.” UAB’s Blazer BEST program helps to hit at the core of these principles, and gear students to become more interested and engaged in technology and engineering careers.
The BEST program’s mission is to inspire middle and high school students into pursuing careers in science, technology and engineering fields. According to the School of Engineering website, the program is designed to teach students to understand the practical use of math concepts and applied physics, solve real-life science and engineering problems, and encourage abstract thinking, teamwork and problem solving.
Students in the program form BEST teams and build robots that compete with other student creations from all over the Central Alabama area. In addition to the actual construction of the robots, BEST also has teams record their progress in an engineering notebook, create a t-shirt design and make a display design usable on presentation day. The initiative encourages teams to design parts to their robots using a computer-aided design system that uses computers to assist in the creative design, modification and optimization of robotic constructions.
One of the advantages to the BEST program is that schools do not have to pay for their students to participate. The program provides schools with returnable and non-returnable robotic parts that students use to build the robot for the competition.
Blazer BEST started the new season of competition on Aug. 27, where students were introduced to the competition, saw the competition field for the first time and obtained the materials to build their robots. On Sunday, Sept. 27, teams were able to test-run their creations at Mall Day in the Riverchase Galleria Food Court. Game day for the competition will be Oct. 10 at Bartow Arena.
