Michigan’s u69-12 Robotic Competition-Driven Mentoring Program was chosen to receive a $60,200 from the Innovation Generation grant program from Motorola Foundation. With the will to share advance engineering techniques to underrepresented high schools, such high school program was made possible by the Motorola’s Foundation in cooperation with Michigan State University.

The program will focus on building competition designed robots with the help of engineering students from MSU and will focus on high schools with large enrollment of African-American and Hispanic students as well as all-girls school.

The students will also serve as mentors in robotic teams for socio-economically challenged high schools in Lansing and Detroit. The programs will help first and second year undergraduate engineering students in solving complex problems using an engineering design as they design, build, program and test robots for collegiate robotics competitions.

Competitions will encourage high school students in the fields of science, engineering and mathematics integrated together in a robot design event. Dr Kim (assistant to the dean for recruitment and K-12 outreach, in the MSU College of Engineering) claimed that such program will definitely provide mutual learning for the both parties.

As expected by Kim, 20 MSU engineering students will engage in the U69-12 Robotics Competition Program and the fund from Motorola Foundation will broaden MSU’s to the Detroit Area, provide support for the supplies and develop a robust mentoring relationship with the high school students guaranteeing a more successful program compared to the last few years.

“Engaging youth in science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields will be crucial to driving future innovation and keeping America competitive in the global society” said Eileen Sweeney (Director of the Motorola Foundation).

This is the fourth year the Michigan State University attained funding from the Generation Innovation grant program through Motorola’s Foundation –a charitable and philanthropic arm of Motorola.