BELDING, Mich. — The fields of robotics and artificial intelligence are rapidly evolving and Belding Public Schools is making sure their students are fully prepared for the future. It's why math and robotics teacher Alex Colville has been expanding the after-school robotics program over the past four years.
When Colville took over the program in 2020, only three students were a part of "the Scrap Cat Robotics Team." Belding High School junior Kitri Gentry was one of the three and is now the high school team's captain in charge of more than a dozen students.
"It's kind of brought me to see that I can do a lot more than I thought I could," Gentry said Wednesday at Belding High School. “It's brought me to be a much better person, more academic, and I'm more confident in myself."
Before Gentry joined the club, she wanted to be an herbologist. With the help of Colville, her mind has changed since then.
"I want to go to Michigan Tech, and I want to major in biomedical engineering with a minor in mechanical engineering," said Gentry.
"My belief is the future is going to be based off of strong engineers. And I want to try to future-proof our kids," Colville said. "When they graduate, my ultimate goal is... we have some wonderful companies around here, like Rob Roy, like Bell CO, like Granco, Greenville Tool and Dye, that are like, 'Hey, we will help pay for education.' So, my ultimate goal is to get these kids to be able to have a higher education without having to worry about, 'Is it going to cost me 20, 30, 40, $50,000?'"
With the help of assistant coach Ricardo Ramirez, the middle school now also has its own robotics team. It's not just engineering skills that the students are picking up.
"Since May, three to five days a week, we'd have 10 kids here learning CAD, learning programming, learning how to do all these different items," Colville said. "They're still learning communications, how to work together, time management, and they're working on these skills that are still transferable into the workforce."
The goal this year is to get the students to the 2025 VEX Robotics World Championship.
"We are finally at that point of three years of building the foundational work that I think we're going to be extremely strong, and I think that we will go to Worlds this year," said Colville.
It's setting students like Gentry up for success.
"I want to own my own company, and I want it based on type one diabetic technology, because my dad has type one diabetes, and I don't want any other kid to have to kind of watch their dad suffer through what I've had to," Gentry said.
Colville said plans are in the works for Belding's elementary school to also have its own robotics club, where students will get to learn with Lego so that more kids get the opportunity.
"I think there's so many wonderful engineers here that don't know it yet. And that's one thing that our program really pushes is we don't care if you've been building Legos since you were 2 years old, or you don't know the difference between a Philip and a flat-head. We want you so we can teach you all these different skills and whatnot," said Colville.
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