Tri-Rivers Career Center Engineering Technology students Nick Dunn and Dustin Foster won the Cedarville University Engineering Vex Robotics Innovation Award February 4 at the University’s Vex Gateway Robotics Qualifier.

Twenty-four teams competed from Kentucky, Virginia, Illinois and Ohio. Their robot was selected because of the “outside the box” thinking they used in designing their Vex Gateway robot using C programming language with advanced gearing systems and a continuous tread conveyor system that was able to collect 6 inch cylinders and balls on a 12 foot by 12 foot obstacle course in 2 minutes.

Students learn to program and build their robots in the Tri-Rivers Career Center Engineering Technologies program located at Marion Technical College Center for Workforce Development. “Both Nick and Dustin have earned college credit and have achieved great success in Tri-Rivers robotics and engineering courses because of the great preparation they received in John Kuzio’s Industrial technology program at Elgin,” said Ritch Ramey, Tri-Rivers Engineering Technology instructor.  The Senior engineering students are required to successfully pass Project Lead the Way engineering courses at River Valley , Marion Harding, North Union, Cardington and Ridgdale prior to enrolling at TRCC.

Twenty of 22 students (91.3%) in Engineering Technology have also successfully passed the Project Lead the Way pltw.org college Digital Electronics credit exam and have also earned college credit for CAD and Blue-Print Reading courses through Dual enrollment courses at Marion Technical College,” said Ramey.

Ramey said, Students earn Fridays off by completing their online and virtual curriculum on their Netbook computers during the week. Seniors Cameron Smith (Cardington), Erin Thompson(North Union) and Kelsea Sullivan (Elgin) qualified to compete at the Omaha Vex Robotics National qualifier March 15.

All 22 Engineering students will be competing February 24 at the Alber Center on the Marion campus in the Marion Technical College Vex Gateway Robotics Qualifier for an opportunity to compete in the world Championship in Anaheim April 18. Forty-six teams and 180 students from Ohio and Indiana will be participating. The Tri-Rivers Engineering Technology program is a half day program located at Marion Technical College.

Julio Romero’s auto technician video is the winner of the 2012  Drive to Succeed Facebook video contest sponsored by the UTI Foundation. At the end of voting Wednesday, January 18, he had received the most votes. The official tally was completed Friday, Jan. 20 at 7pm. At that time Julio was informed that he was winner of the $25,000 scholarship to the Universal Technical Institute—the “Harvard of Auto Technology” as he calls it.

The outpouring of support from students, staff, media, the Career Center’s home schools, other career centers in the State of Ohio, OSUM, MTC, State Career Tech friends and friends of friends as from New York to Iowa was amazing. 

The top three video have been pulled from the UTI site, but the winning three will be posted again Friday.

View Kurt Moore’s story in the Marion Star.

View Julio’s winning video.

Thanks to everyone who supported this young man’s dream. Thanks for caring!!!

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Twelve area instructors participated in robotics training sponsored by Tri-Rivers Career Center through a training grant through the Martha Holden Jennings Foundation and Honda of America STEM grant hosted by Marion Technical College August 1through 5. The five-day training provided each participant with more than $1,300 worth of robotics hardware that they will provide to their students. Instructors received training in EasyC, RobotC and robotics PBASIC programming language to manipulate Vex www.vexrobotics.com and BoeBot www. www.parallax.com robots to compete various, Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematic (STEM) tasks. [Read more...]