Recently, the amount of female members in the CircuitRunners has increased impressively. To help broaden this trend across the community, we created a new sub-team: the RoboChix. It is comprised of all of our young women and aims to promote the participation of females in robotics—not just in our club, but everywhere. We plan to take our mission to a national level that includes teams from across the country. The RoboChix are not just a team—we are a movement, and we mean to alter the typical male-majority setting of robotics.
RoboChix was created to help female members feel more comfortable in a male-majority setting. We take pride in the ever-growing number of women on the team. The RoboChix conduct team-building exercises and leadership seminars. Our participation in the club has seen a marked increase since the creation of the RoboChix. Our main goal is to help females find their places in the world of science, technology, engineering, and math.
RoboChix has many things on the horizon. We plan to make a competition team and help other schools create RoboChix teams. Due to the incredible impact that the “Chix” have already had on the team, we want to expand and increase our publicity and exposure to the field of robotics. We have already begun to publicize by handing out our team buttons at competitions and making the rounds with our mascot, “the Chik.”
Our RoboChix movement started locally; we began mentoring a Girl Scout troop’s First Lego League team and coordinating with several nearby middle schools. To project RoboChix to a national scale, we are working closely with several organizations. These include Women in Technology, Girls Go Tech, CEISMC, and Georgia FIRST. In addition to these partnerships, we are sharing the RoboChix mission with local teams and programs. In order to add other high school and middle school teams to our growing number of RoboChix teams, we are promoting the cause at FIRST and BEST events, our tournaments, and with our sponsors. At this rate of expansion, we intend to have RoboChix operating at a national level by April of 2010.
The RoboChix effort is maintained in every facet of our club, including outreach. We incorporate the goals of both teams into plans that spread the RoboChix initiative in a way that aids women in need. We are currently coordinating a drive for the Grady NIA Project for Women. The program is a suicide intervention effort that aids African-American women, especially those who are affected by domestic violence. We plan to raise much-needed donations, as well as awareness, with our drive.
RoboChix Photo Galleries
