By day, Qiaoying “Joy” Zhou is the chair of the Northwest Vista Math & Engineering. By night, she is a volunteer robotics coach for the MAKbots Robotics team.
Joy said on Jan. 28, her team had a FTC (FIRST Tech Challenge) Robotics League Championship and received the following awards.
- 1st Place Inspire Award
- 1st Place Control Award
- 2nd Place in Think Award, Connect Award, Design Award, and Motivate Award.
- Winning Alliance Captain Award
This team’s performance for the 2016-2017 season was so impressive, this is what the one of the judges had to say:
“This team epitomizes the challenge of the FIRST Tech Challenge program. Through superior robot design and advocating STEM with politicians, they have become Ambassadors of the FIRST program. Last year’s rookie team are no longer rookies, they are leaders for other teams to emulate.”
In June of last year, the MAKbots team promoted STEM learning and gave a robotics demonstration to Mayor Ivy Taylor. During this meeting, the team educated the city community on the importance of STEM as well as allowing the Mayor to test their award winning robot and perform commands. Also last July, the team visited Northwest Vista College during the summer PREP session for pre-engineering students. The team advised students on careers in STEM as well as the many disciplines within Engineering they could pursue.
Northwest Vista College has been supporting the team in many different ways. For example, Pat Fontenot of NVC Workforce Education & Training helped the team in mock interview for presentation. And NVC faculty member Yvette Uresti invited the team to present at a recent summer PREP program to advocate STEM education. Joy coaches the team along with another coach.
The next competition will be Alamo Regional Championship on Feb. 23-25. The team’s ages range from 13-16 years and attend Brandeis, Regan, Basis, Clark, and Health Career high schools.
