Funding a Need Assisting Formation Through Donations

By: Tim LeCras

One of the many advantages of a Saint Joseph education is a student’s ability to carve their own path forward through personalized course selection and a myriad of extracurricular activities.

One of the most popular extracurricular activities is Saint Joe’s award-winning Robotics team.

Founded in 2005, Robotics has grown from just a handful of students to its current roster of more than 60 members. The program is offered as both a club and a for-credit co-curricular activity, which allows students of all class years and interest levels to participate.

Joshua Oliveira ‘23, the captain of the Robotics team, believes the program’s popularity is due in large part to the array of disciplines needed to be successful, including engineering, mathematics and technology.

“Robotics fosters students’ critical thinking and problem-solving skills while developing a wide range of practical skills,” Oliveira said. “It gives students the opportunity to learn and grow, in areas not often covered in the classroom, and builds essential skills for success in the 21st century.”

According to co-moderator Mary Hutnick P ‘14/‘16, the Robotics Team is one of the most unique programs on campus, which provides students the opportunity to grow and try new things.

“We need students who can program, do electronics, pneumatics, CAD design, carpentry skills to build practice fields, writing essays for awards, good communication skills for judging presentations, creating videos as well as brochures,” Hutnick said. “Being able to think outside the box is often the best skill of all. The Robotics team fosters a growth mindset that can be used way beyond Saint Joe’s campus.”

Like every other school activity, the students on the Robotics team need to get creative each season to continue their successful run of robots. Each year, the program spends upwards of $20,000 to cover the cost of tournament entry fees, transportation and the actual robot build. While the team raises some money from holding their own middle school-aged tournaments, the bulk of the funding comes from the support of Robotics families and sponsorship opportunities.

One of the team’s goals has always been to design and build as many parts of the robot in the makerspace as possible. When you tour the Robotics Makerspace, you’ll see wood and metal pieces on tables, electrical wires and batteries in a constant state of construction and the previous year’s robot in the practice area where students are tinkering with the coding as the new bot is being built. One type of equipment that was desperately needed were 3D printers, which, if acquired, would allow for more pieces to be homemade, rather than purchased from pre-fabricators. This would also afford the team more room for trial and error as prototype parts can be created and then tweaked to fit the final design.

John Shibles ‘65 has always been a forward thinker. From his success in the real estate industry to his collection of antique cars, Shibles knows a good investment when he sees one. During his annual visit to campus on the first day of school, he took a tour of the Robotics Makerspace and immediately could see the future potential of the program with the right equipment and technology.

“Nothing was operating at the time, but I could see the potential for what was happening,” Shibles said. “I thought that this was a program that made sense because of the technology that we live with today.”

When Shibles found out that financial support was needed to take the program to the next level, he jumped at the opportunity.

“Robotics is something that I think if it existed when I was a student, I would have been involved in it,” he said. “It’s an area that is of great interest to me and I think you can just see the kids having fun.”

With Shibles’ donation, the Robotics Team was able to purchase two 3D printers, as well as make other functional changes to the Makerspace, including proper organization and other fabrication machines. According to Oliveira, the new tools and organized space will help the program continue to deliver on its goal of “cultivating a collaborative learning environment.”

“This year, we 3D printed our wheel hubs, urethane molds, and intake housing, which has greatly improved our robot’s performance,” Oliveira said. “More importantly however, these new printers have given the team more creative freedom in how we design and build our robot, while giving students a new opportunity to learn and grow. We can’t thank Mr. Shibles enough for his support.”