Gadsden State Community College February 2, 2012 Team Cherokee Trains at Gadsden State Gadsden State is helping a group of students from the Cherokee Career Tech Center prepare for the Food Factor World Festival, sponsored by FIRST(r) LEGO(r) League (FLL). The Team Cherokee students placed first in the statewide tournament to earn the right to travel to St. Louis, April 25-28, where they will be judged on core values, project and robot design. World Festival is considered a culminating celebration of the FLL season, a mix of cultures and skill sets and not just a level of competition. To gain some experience with real robots and learn more about programming the robots, these students along with team sponsor Randy Rainey, recently spent the day at Gadsden State working in the Bevill Center on the East Broad Campus. Gadsden State welding instructor, Frank Miller, served as a mentor to the students helping them with tasks similar to those they will perform at the World Festival. Miller said, "This is a great opportunity for these students. The competition challenges them to think outside the box and enforces the importance and value of teamwork. " He is excited about the opportunity and optimistic about the success as he has followed them throughout their previous competitions. FLL introduces young people, ages 9 to 14, to the fun and excitement of science and technology. The students are challenged to think like scientists and engineers. Alongside adult mentors, FLL teams solve problems using engineering concepts, presentation techniques, and robots. The teams develop amazing solutions every year to real-world problems with their FLL Projects. This year, the FLL Food Factor(r) season challenged students around the world to solve a food safety problem. Each of the teams will build and program an autonomous robot using LEGO MINDSTORMS technology to score points in 2.5-minute matches on a themed playing field. The teams will explore an actual problem that today's scientists and engineers are trying to solve, develop an innovative solution to that problem, and share their findings. Team Cherokee students visited the Weiss Lake Egg Plant to complete their project "From the Farm to the Fork." The project explores ways to prevent salmonella contamination in eggs. Before departing, the students gave a demonstration of the missions that they will be performing at the World Festival for those in attendance. Team Cherokee students worked together to carry out and explain each mission while discussing upgrades and changes that have been made since the state tournament. Gregg Bennett, director of the Bevill Center, was on hand to welcome Coach Rainey, his team and parents to the facility. He congratulated them on their success at the state level and encouraged them to continue building valuable employment and life skills. Bennett told the students that he has visited manufacturing plants in the state which utilize equipment similar to the robots/attachments that they have built and hopes that a tour of one of the plants can be arranged for them in the near future through Gadsden State's CARCAM program. SANDRA M. PHOENIX Executive Director HBCU Library Alliance sphoenix@hbculibraries.org<mailto:sphoenix@hbculibraries.org> www.hbculibraries.org<http://www.hbculibraries.org/> 404.592.4820 Skype:sandra.phoenix1 1438 West Peachtree Street NW Suite 200 Atlanta, GA 30309 Toll Free: 1.800.999.8558 (Lyrasis) Fax: 404.892.7879 www.lyrasis.org<http://www.lyrasis.org/> Honor the ancestors, honor the children.