High school students in southwest Michigan are charging up for the FIRST Robotics Competition season, which means Tim Dunaj is preparing to shine a spotlight on the ups, downs, teamwork and life lessons learned through the annual competition.
Dunaj, a former automation engineer with Kendall Electric and current Judge Advisor for FIRST, is set to open the ninth season of WSJM’s Robotics Roundtable on Feb. 28 – about a week before St. Joseph High School hosts 40 teams for a regional event Mar. 7-9 in the school’s gymnasium.
FIRST is a nonprofit founded in 1989 by engineer/inventor Dean Kaman and physicist/MIT professor Woodie Flowers. Together, they were looking for a way to increase youth interest in science and technology careers. Now, the organization has multiple leagues and thousands of teams from around the world competing.
Each year during the FIRST Robotics Competition, teams of high schoolers compete against – and sometimes with – each other to solve an engineering design problem. This year’s game is Charged Up, and involves moving cubes and cones into areas referred to as “grids” so that teams can score points and “charge up their community.”
Dunaj has been a judge advisor for FIRST since 2014, and first got involved through his job at Kendall Electric in 2011.
“When I went out on the floor the first time, I was like ‘This is really cool,’” Dunaj said. “I was asking a student who had his arms deep into a robot, ‘What’s your role on this team?’ The student never moved his hands from the robot, just kind of nodded and said ‘I’m not on this team, I’m on that team over there.’ That was my first interaction, and I was hooked.”
The culture of FIRST Robotics Competition is built around two values – “Gracious Professionalism” and “Coopertition” – that emphasize the competitive nature of sports, but also instilling empathy and respect for other teams. These values are enforced during three-team alliance competitions where groups must work together for a common goal.
“What you learn through that process is ‘I need to work with you, so I need to have a good relationship with you,’” Dunaj said. “There’s no more goodwill anywhere than at an event like this. The feeling of working together and coming together for a little bit greater of a cause is such a positive feeling.”
Robotics Roundtable is a way to shine the spotlight on the kids, Dunaj said.
“Robotics Roundtable is about giving students the opportunity to talk about their team, what they’re doing, what they’re experiencing, how they’ve benefitted, the downfalls they’ve had,” Dunaj said. “To have those students learning how to deal with people and have a conversation stepping outside their comfort zone, it’s amazing to watch … [and] it’s a skillset they’ll be able to develop down the road.”
Dunaj compares the competition to any other sport, but with a higher chance of reaching the next level.
“It’s the varsity sport of the mind,” he said. “It’s the varsity sports that every one of these kids has a chance to go pro.”
Local teams participating in the St. Joseph event are:
- Tech Tigers, Benton Harbor
- Robotarians, Coloma / Bridgman / Lake Michigan Catholic / Michigan Lutheran / Watervliet
- GreengineerZ, Berrien Springs
- Average Joes, St. Joseph
- Team Lance-A-Bot, Stevensville
- RoboRangers, Cassopolis
- Chieftainators, Dowagiac
- Valhalla Nation, Bangor
- Counter-Torque Robotics, Lawton
- River Valley Gearheads, Three Oaks
- Eddies Circuit, Edwardsburg
- Cougar Coders, Countryside Academy
To learn more about FIRST, or see where each local team will compete this season, visit firstinspires.org. For more on the St. Joseph High School event, click here.
By Ryan Yuenger
ryany@wsjm.com
