Fifteen students from Vivian Field Middle School visited the Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science this week to learn about robotics and celebrate the holidays.
The law firm of Haynes and Boone LLP joined forces with participants in the UT Dallas Academic Bridge Program to help the Field students build and program their creations.
“The students worked well together,” said Michelle Scholz, a freshman electrical engineering major. “They had a blast – that’s for sure.”
The visiting students worked in five teams to build and program Lego Mindstorms robots, which then performed figure eights and other moves, according to the students’ programming. Later the Carrollton-Farmers Branch ISD students received T-shirts and certificates of completion at a holiday party.
A program of Communities In Schools Dallas Region Inc., the one-day mini-camp was made possible by Haynes and Boone for the second year in a row.
“We recognize the importance of science, and engineering in particular, to our clients, and there is a need for well-educated scientists and engineers,” said Dan Gold, the Haynes and Boone associate who coordinated the firm’s participation in the event. “We hope to spark an interest from the students in the sciences. UT Dallas is a great fit for that.”
The Academic Bridge Program, housed in the UT Dallas School of Interdisciplinary Studies, provides a college “incubator” for students who graduate from Dallas-area urban high schools with high class rankings but who have not completed a full college prep curriculum. Participating students benefit from small initial class sizes, tutoring, campus orientation activities and the supportive resources of the School of Interdisciplinary Studies.
Haynes and Boone is an international corporate law firm with offices in Texas, New York, Washington, D.C., Mexico City and Moscow. The firm is ranked among the largest law firms in the nation by The National Law Journal.
Communities In Schools Dallas Region provides academic support to students of nine school districts and works to help students at risk of failure stay in school.
Electrical engineering major Michelle Scholz helps two Vivian Field Middle School students assemble their robot.
Software engineering major Shwetha Ravikumar teaches visiting students about the finer points of programming their robot.