Coppell ISD partners with McLaren Automotive for STEM-based summer camp
COPPELL (CBSNewsTexas.com) – This summer, Coppell ISD has partnered with McLaren Automotive to give dozens of middle school students a chance to build their very own robots.
"I was intimidated to begin with because I've never used robots," said 13-year-old Khushi Singla, one of the students attending Robotics Camp. "After a while, I got used to the coding and I was the one who was coding it all."
Teams of incoming sixth, seventh and eighth graders use Legos to build robots, and then they program them to perform specific tasks.
The 10-day summer camp is a crash course in engineering, coding, design and how to work together to find creative solutions.
"Solving problems is the annoying part, but once you solve those problems, that's when it becomes fun and you get to have fun with the robots," said Chris Biju, who is 11 years old.
Volunteer instructors with the Coppell ISD Education Foundation make sure the students understand
"Robotics is playing a big role in many different walks of life, so these kids are getting to see where all they can be applied," said Kamesh Subbarao, one of the volunteers teaching the camp curriculum.
The students can find some real-world examples a few miles down the road at McLaren Automotive. The company moved their North American headquarters to Coppell last year and jumped at the chance to partner with the school district on this program.
"We saw an opportunity to make a sponsorship that could have a future impact on our business because we want to get young folks engaged in engineering," said Randy Nowell, vice president of operations for McLaren.
Showing off a high-performance race car for the road may help provide that inspiration to continue learning about STEM-related fields.
"We know the future is going to be very different," Nowell said. "We know that vehicles in 2035 are not going to be anything like they are today. We don't know what direction it's going to go, but we need a lot of smart young folks working in science, technology, engineering and math – as well as design."
Helping the robots navigate their own set of challenges has given the students not just new skills, but a newfound sense of confidence as well.
"I really enjoy it, and I might pursue a STEM career in the future," Biju said.
The inaugural camp ends this week, but McLaren hopes to sponsor it again next year.
