IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine - June 2016 - 28

Pipelining
Attractive Programs for Women

The First-Ever All-Girls
Robotics Competition
Organizer says, "Come and play"

w

With the goal of seeing robotics teams
comprising 50% of women by 2020, the
Robotics Education and Competition
Foundation hosted the first-ever allgirls Robotics Championship in Southern California in March 2015. Nancy
McIntyre organized and created this
showcase event, and she works tirelessly to encourage more participation by
girls on VEX Robotics teams around
the world.

her counterparts in other states to roll
out similar programs.
The foundation hosts coed robotics education for kids of many ages-
the VEX IQ Challenge for elementary
school and lower middle school and the
VEX Robotics Competition for upper
middle school and high school. Every
year there's a robotics competition along
with state and world championships,
where teams meet and play against one
another following that year's rules.

For 2016, the VEX Robotics Competition game is "Nothing But Net," where
2-on-2 robots must work together to
score a softball-sized ball into a goal
located high above the playing field. In
2015, there were 850 teams at the world
championship, where the next year's
game is revealed. There were some allgirls teams there, but it's designed for
everyone around the world.
"We invite the girls to come play.
This way, they don't know they're learning," McIntyre explains. "If we've done
our job well, we're sneaking the learning
in. When it looks like work, we scare
people away. We want students to have
as much fun as possible doing this."
Having been in charge of award-winning student robotics teams herself for
more than a dozen of her 23 years teaching, McIntyre wanted her students to be
engaged with the math and computeraided design (CAD) because they thought
it was fun and would make them a better
team. "They didn't realize it would make
them better people," McIntyre adds.

Foundation Supports Robotics for All
The Robotics Education and Competition Foundation hosts more than 12,000
robotics teams in over 30 countries at
the elementary, middle, high school, and
college levels. They provide free curricula, available online mapped to national
standards, and certification exams for
students who demonstrate proficiency in
pre-engineering and robotics.
McIntyre's role involves training
teachers and offering certification programs, as well as working with students and providing scholarships for
both boys and girls, all over the world.
She helps support more than 1,000
teams in California at 100 robotics
events in 15 leagues and works with
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MWIE.2016.2535840
Date of publication: 9 May 2016

28

IEEE women in engineering magazine

Girls compete at the 2015 VEX Robotics World Championship in Louisville,
Kentucky.

June 2016	



Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine - June 2016

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