Chaminade’s Eagle Engineering robotics teams are completing their season at the Vex Robotics World Championship with historic implications. While the STEM Hall of Fame middle school team 83 earned their way to VEX Worlds as a finalist in the Southern California State Championship, the high school’s team 1138 traveled to Louisville with a secret.
Earlier in the year, former Chaminade teacher and Eagle Engineering founder Nancy McIntyre invited her old team to pilot a new program for the Robotics Education and Competition Foundation (RECF). The top-secret project was created to help develop a way to recognize the dedication and excellence that robotics students commit to their sport. The International Robotics Honor Society (IRHS), will be rolled out to all American teams next year and will go worldwide in the 2019-2020 school year. Based on the format of the National Honor Society, IRHS celebrates students who excel in a combination of academic excellence, service and leadership, and a high commitment to their school’s robotics program.
Since late Fall, Robotics Program Director Tommy Smeltzer worked with McIntyre, Principal, Bro. Tom Fahy and team parents Talin Mansourian and Laura Gideon to charter a chapter at Chaminade and devise local guidelines for admission. After a comprehensive application period, some of the new inductees traveled to Kentucky to take part in a surprise announcement on Friday morning’s opening ceremonies. Twelve Chaminade students joined students from a local Louisville school to be the first to be inducted on the main stage in the Kentucky Exposition Center’s 18,000-seat Freedom Hall. Brother Tom Fahy was on hand to witness the event and share in the excitement as both Chaminade teams competed among the 1600 teams from over 40 countries.
Chaminade is honored to be among those leading the way in the development of this monumental program that will encourage STEM programs and recognize the dedicated students destined to become the next generation of engineers, programmers, innovators, and entrepreneurs.
For more information on Eagle Engineering, contact tsmeltzer@chaminade.org.