Riverside High robotics team spent years growing interest in STEM. Now, it's heading to the World Championship.

A 3- to 4-foot-tall robot raced across the floor of the Milwaukee Robotics Academy, picking up a yellow cone, dropping it off at the other end of the room, and going back to do the same with a purple cube.

Students from Riverside University High School have spent the last four weeks building the robot at the academy from scratch.

“We go through the process of using computer-aided design software to design the robot, then they learn all the mechanical principles about how to build and design this type of thing, then they learn all the skills to wire it, program it…,” said Erik Orlowski, an embedded software engineer at Rockwell Automation who serves as the lead mentor at Riverside — and by extension, the Robotics Academy.

With stained glass windows, a cathedral ceiling and an emptied balcony, the academy still looks more like the church it replaced than a workshop. From here, the Riverside University High School robotics team, the RoboTigers, has been spending nearly 20 hours a week preparing for the FIRST World Championship. It's the culminating international event in the youth robotics season, and is billed as "an annual celebration of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) for our community as we prepare young people for the future."

In March, the Riverside team competed against 47 other teams from across the state and beyond, losing only in the final match. More important, it won the highest honor given during robotics competitions — the Impact Award, given to the team that best works to grow STEM in their communities over years of dedicated outreach.

“Seeing the entire team all just overjoyed over something we really all put effort in has been my proudest moment,” said Miguel Hernandez, the RoboTigers team captain.

The award allows the team to compete in the world championship in Houston against teams from over 50 countries. The event begins Wednesday and runs through Saturday.

The Academy provides opportunities students can't get elsewhere

The RoboTigers have existed for 15 years. The team launched the Milwaukee Robotics Academy in October 2021 in a former church attached to Messmer Preparatory School in Riverwest, at the corner of E. Burleigh and N. Fratney streets. It serves as a space for students from across Milwaukee to get hands-on experience in robotics and STEM who otherwise might not have the opportunity.

The Academy created a separate Robotics team, Milwaukee United, made up of students from different high schools and home-schooled students across the community. It also provides after-school, weekend, and summer programs; teaches a Lego-based robotics program to fifth through eighth graders; and does career outreach with companies such as Rockwell, Harley Davidson and Rexnord, as well as the National Guard.

“All of this we provide to give the opportunity to these students and kids who are missing out because of the absence within their own school,” Hernandez said. “This could be an individual thing, but robotics has really made everyone here connect. Everyone here is from different parts of the city. It’s pretty diverse.”

Nationally, Blacks and Hispanics make up less than 10% of STEM workers, despite comprising about 12% and 18% of the country’s working population respectively, according to the National Scientific Board.

“As it pertains to individual students, we’re here to help students see themselves in a STEM career, whether that be one that requires a four-year degree or not,” Orlowski said. “But really the goal of the Milwaukee Robotics Academy is to make that opportunity available to every student across the city of Milwaukee.”

Orlowski recalled a high school student whose biggest ambition was to work in fast food, maybe be a manager, but because of the opportunities the robotics team provided, he was able to develop and showcase the skills necessary to launch a career in STEM.

“Literally at championships, in queue for one of our matches, he got a call that — while in high school — he got an internship with a Fortune 500 company,” Orlowski said. “A few years later, they sent him to China for one of his college internships, and now he’s working as an engineer full time.”

This is the case for many students that come to the Robotics Academy, other mentors said.

“They don’t think that this is something they can even do,” said Rochelle Weidensee, a Riverside math teacher and a mentor at the Academy. “The ones we convince to come in and try it, they kind of get the bug.”

Sierrah Coleman is a first-year student with the RoboTigers. She found out about the team through a cafeteria activities fair. Until then, she never had an interest in robotics and engineering, or really any sciences in general.

“It’s opened up my eyes a lot,” she said. “My career choices don’t really involve engineering, but the communication I’ve learned here, working on computers, that will help me regardless of what I pursue. I hadn’t heard about (the team), but now that I’m actually participating, I’m like this is pretty dope. That’s what I want others to have the same experience.”

Since opening less than two years ago, more than 200 students have been involved in some way in the Academy. For Weidensee, this is an opportunity to build a pipeline from K-12 education to employment in Milwaukee.

“This has always been a manufacturing city, but our population isn’t meeting that need, and we need to teach the students that we have to make it more accessible than the public school system is able to do,” she said. “We’re kind of inspiring people that these kinds of careers, these kinds of field are within reach for them, and we can connect them.”

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Milwaukee high school robotics team heads to STEM World Championships