FTC the Rubies #9890
Back in October we had the great pleasure of meeting with an exceptional group of young women from Southwest High School, a local public school near our office in Minneapolis. These talented young minds were the Rubies: Southwest High’s all-girls robotics team.
The Rubies reached out to our office hoping to learn more about careers in various STEM fields and we were delighted to meet with them. The passion and curiosity that these ladies have is undeniable. On top of the work they’re doing in their 10th and 11th grade science and math classes, these young ladies are participating in the 2017-2018 FIRST Tech Challenge, a program where junior high and high school students compete by designing, constructing, and programming their own robot. They stopped by the Xvoucher office to give us a demonstration of what they are working on for this year’s competition and present to us their plans and goals for the upcoming year.
As all developers know, it’s not just how something looks on the surface that matters--the important thing is how it all works together. Our team was full of questions of our own, and the Rubies didn’t miss a beat when explaining how it all works. As a small tech company, we know the importance of encouraging future generations to continue to learn more about tech. It is exciting to see these young women not only taking the time to teach themselves coding and engineering but to share their skills with younger students looking to become more involved in technology as well. It’s also hard to understate the practical benefit students could gain getting engaged by technology in a world that is becoming more dependent on technology, the US Bureau of Labor and Statistics estimates that over 9 million jobs will be added to the Tech Industry by 2020.
Not only is the tech sector very much on the rise, the average salary for employees within the STEM Industry is more than double the national average of $50,000. So it makes sense in an economy that values technology that our youth become more engaged and involved with shaping the future of technology.The Rubies are an amazing example of young women working together to build each other up as well as their community.
This was a great opportunity for our team to learn more about our community and get involved. Technology is our future, and it is great that there are so many young women out there becoming involved in tech and encouraging others to do the same. The future of tech is bright with these young ladies leading the way. Good luck this year ladies, we look forward to seeing you grow, expand your knowledge of robotics and continue to build up your community!
“Our outreach as a team has also been off to a great start this season. We are now one of 12 FTC teams in Minneapolis and we have mentored the other 11 this season to help them learn more about the program and how to succeed. We are also currently working with 2 community centers in Minneapolis: Brian Coyle and Sabathani to plan a STEM curriculum that we plan to teach there. We’re always interested in having business professionals attend these events so feel free to reach out if anyone you know is interested.” -The Rubies FTC #9890
Xvoucher team & The Rubies
Read more about women in STEM:
Xvoucher is a proud sponsor of the Rubies robotics team, if you are interested in helping build youth robotics interests, consider donating to the Rubies or other youth robotics teams here.
The Rubies current Robot, ready for their upcoming competion on 12/9
Rubies Update:
"At our last tournament, the Minnesota State Championship on 2/9/18 and 2/10/18, we qualified for the FTC North Super Regional Tournament! We were the winners of the 2nd Place Inspire Award; the Inspire Award is given to a team who is the best overall, in terms of outreach, engineering notebook, and robot design. We were also recognized specifically for our outreach through the Connect Award. In addition to these awards, one of our members, Rachel Springer, was chosen as a Finalist for the Dean’s List Award which is given to individuals who have exceptional leadership and have achieved personal technical expertise and accomplishment."
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