What We Do

FIRST Competitions 

Each and every year starts in the fall, just as school is starting up again. For older members, it starts a bit earlier, where the team prepares for the new members that are going to be joining the team. With no requirements, many students join the RoboSpartans looking for a fun and interesting club to be a part of throughout high school. The entirety of the fall is spent with the new members, with trainings focused on different aspects of our build team, those being mechanical, electrical, programming and CAD.
​                Once January comes around, FIRST announces the new game for the year, and for the next 6 weeks our team works to build a new robot. From the drawing board to the field, each robot is build from the ground up by our students with the guidance of our mentors. Competeing in the Texas District of the First Robotics Competition (FRC), our team prepares to use our robot to play in the game that was annonced just weeks earlier. With two competitions, our team works to qualify for the District Championship, and the World Championships as well. The same goes for our VEX Robotics team, but instead of working with FIRST, they are partnered with VEX, using a different rulebook and creating robots much different than those for FIRST. Even though it is on a smaller scale, the VEX team is still fairly popular and is still growing along with the club. Each year is filled with days both good and bad, but that has never made our members shy away. With new memebers joining every year, our team starts to take on more ambitious projects, and it's only an upward climb from here!

Outreach 

Along with our competitions, the RoboSpartans are dedicated to teaching about STEM ( Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) to people young and old in our area. Our most common activity are the demos that we hold in a variety of places. Occurring mostly in local elementary schools, our demos are often a student's first look into the world of STEM, with smiles and giggles being some of their first responses when we interact with them. The same can be said about our Girl Scout Workshops, where we play our role in helping them earn some science badges, with, of course, a robot demo. But it doesn't stop there. One of our biggest projects is a collaboration with iEducate USA. Along with the volunteers from iEducate, our team is in charge of a STEM related workshops at -disadvantaged- elementary school summer camps around the Houston area. By creating a lesson plan that'll last the course of the camp, these students are introduced to the wonders of STEM by learning about engineering, teamwork, problem solving skills, and FIRST with presentations and lots of hands on activities!

Outreach isn't all about teaching about STEM, but has many more rolls that goes on behind the scenes and at our competitions. One of our biggest teams in outreach is our Chairmans team. The Chairmans award is granted to the team that best exhibits the qualities of FIRST through a variety of means, such as volunteer work, charity, teaching and other activities that give back to the community. Though we have not yet earned the award ourselves, that doesn't stop us from giving it our best shot each year. Other areas in outreach include spirit, fundraising, and media. Our spirit team focuses on creating new ideas to cheer our team on at competitions and planning fun events outside of the typical robotics meeting for students to enjoy. The fundraing team, though small, helps plan events that can earn our team some money, these include carwashes and spirit night. Lastly, our media team, which is small as well, works to document our team's events and designing and maintaining our social media and website!