Tolland County Robotics Foundation Program Expansion

Fall 2023 UConn Co-op Legacy Fellowship – Change Grant Project

Overview

The FIRST Lego League Explore program is a youth robotics program that uses legos and technology to excite students about STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics). The Tolland County Robotics Foundation runs this program for 1st to 3rd-grade students. As part of a previous project, a FIRST Lego League (FLL) Explore program was run at the Mansfield Public Library with five teams of students. When registration for this program opened, it quickly filled up. The positive response to the Mansfield Public Library FIRST Lego League Explore program led us to want to provide more teams for local students.

The Project

As part of this project, we secured a location and meeting time for the second FLL Explore program, Rockville Public Library from 5:00-6:30pm every Tuesday. We then ran the program, which consisted of weekly meetings from mid-January through early April, and a final season celebration. We we responsible for all capacities of the program, including creating and administering the curriculum, recruiting additional mentors, buying the supplies and materials, and helping to plan an end-of-the-year festival for the team.

Impact

This project had an immediate impact of serving roughly 19 students. We ran four teams at Rockville Public Library, each with 4-5 students. The participants in the program got to learn about the FIRST Core Values (discover, innovation, inclusion, impact, teamwork, and fun), learn the basic program, build a Lego model with a moving part based on the season theme, follow the Engineering Design Process, and overall experience working as a team. In the long term, this project laid the groundwork to run this program at the Rockville Public Library in the future.

Future Direction

Because of the success of the Tolland County Robotics Foundation’s FIRST Lego League Explore program, we are actively working to expand it from two locations and nine teams (four in Vernon and five in Mansfield) to five locations and 20 teams next season. We plan on replicating and improving the model that we created in Mansfield and Vernon across the county to serve even more students with this program. We both also plan on continuing in our capacity of lead mentor of FIRST Lego League Explore.

About Youssef

Youssef is a rising junior at the University of Connecticut, majoring in business management while concurrently pursuing a Masters of Public Administration as part of the School of Public Policy’s Fast Track Program. His plans after graduating are to go into the nonprofit management field. His inspiration for the project stems from his 14 years as part of FIRST, an international Pre-K-12 robotics organization. He founded the Tolland County Robotics Foundation to further expand the FIRST teams around UConn. He serves as the President and Program Coordinator, as well as a mentor for several of the local teams that the foundation runs. At UConn, Youssef is also a Resident Assistant, Daily Campus writer, UConn FIRST Co-President, and the Vice President of the Hilltop Halls Hall Council.

About Laxmi

Laxmi is a rising junior at the University of Connecticut, majoring in biomedical engineering. Her plans after graduating are to pursue medical school, hoping to enter the field of emergency medicine. She first became involved in FIRST during middle school as part of a FLL Challenge team. She continued her involvement throughout high school as part of a FIRST Robotics team. Her involvement in FIRST sparked her interest in innovation, and became one of the reasons she decided to pursue biomedical engineering. Hoping to inspire other students through STEM programs, she began working with the Tolland County Robotics Foundation as a mentor for several teams ran by the foundation and board member. At UConn, Laxmi is also an undergraduate research assistant, resident assistant, and holds executive board positions in clubs such as UConn FIRST.