Marlborough – Once again, James McGrath, of Raytheon Network Centric Systems in Marlborough, presented a check to the Assabet Valley Regional Technical High School FIRST robotics team, the AZTECHS 157, as a major sponsor of the program.
The team was asked to bring a few representatives to the Marlborough facility to do a lunch time demonstration for employees, not only to showcase what these students do, but also in hope of recruiting some additional volunteers from the engineering staff.? As employees went back and forth to the cafeteria, many of them stopped to chat and expressed their amazement that the high school students, with some help from adult mentors, actually conceptualized, designed, built and learned to drive a 120 pound remote-controlled robot in only six weeks.
“This certainly mimics the real world dynamics of a manufacturing facility,” commented Marcus Fletcher, the school's robotics program manager, “as these students learn quickly the value of teamwork, effective communication, problem solving, and critical thinking. Many of our students do go on to engineering careers in college, but even those who choose another field have gained valuable skills that will help them in any career choice. We are so fortunate to have Raytheon as one of our major sponsors, and to be able to have Raytheon volunteers step up and interact with the students.”
