We provide quality extracurricular programs to pre-college students of all ages in the Austin area, regardless of their educational status or ability. Our organization is particularly focused on providing access to robotics competition teams to students who are otherwise ineligible to participate due to not being enrolled in a traditional school or do not have access to a team at their school. We provide students the opportunity to work shoulder-to-shoulder with volunteer professional engineers and business people in order to collaborate in hands-on activities designed to foster interest and to promote education in science, technology, engineering, art, and mathematics (STEAM). Though we started with a singular focus of one high school level robotics team competing in the FIRST Robotics Competition, we have a much bigger vision of expanding robotics and STEAM education, in general, to children of all ages.
Description
Howdy Bots FRC 6377 started in 2016 when a student expressed interest in joining a FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) team but discovered that he was ineligible because he was not enrolled in a high school and there were no local community teams available to him. Howdy Bots was created to fill that gap and to provide students without access to STEAM the opportunity to participate in FIRST robotics programs.
Howdy Bots is an intense, hands-on, and huge labor of love for the mentors and students alike. Each student averages 464 hours of STEM learning during the 4 months of our busiest seasons-and we meet year-round.
We actively recruit at under-resourced public, charter, and private schools, and homeschool groups, as well as provide them with demonstrations where our team members are able to talk about the robot and let the students come up close to see how it all works. Our robotics demonstrations lead to a broader interest in STEAM.
We offer dues and travel scholarships to students who would be unable to participate otherwise, and we have helped graduating seniors with college applications and essays during robotics meetings.
We pride ourselves on serving students who learn at different paces. We meet students where they are and tailor our instruction to their needs, providing both accommodations and scaffolding. We have created a safe environment for girls and continue to increase our percentage of females participating in our program.
