STLCC-Florissant Valley Hosts FIRST® Robotics Weekend

St Louis Community College – Florissant Valley continues to support Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) programs for kids of all ages. The weekend of Dec. 8-9, 2012 will see two major robotics events and over 700 elementary, middle and high school students on campus.

Saturday will be the first of four qualifying events for FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) teams in Missouri. Thirty-six teams of students in grades 7-12 will compete for a chance to advance to the Missouri FTC Championship at Missouri S&T on Feb. 23, 2013. This year’s game is called Ring It Up!℠. The game challenges teams to build and program robots to traverse a 12x12 field while manipulating plastic rings into scoring positions on racks while avoiding their competitors. Teams have been working on the challenge since September and are eager to see how they perform.

Sunday is the culmination of the FIRST LEGO® League season for Eastern Missouri teams. One hundred and fifty-seven teams competed in the eight qualifying events offered in November. Now the forty advancing teams will gather for the Eastern Missouri FLL Championship event. The teams will run their LEGO MINDSTORMS® robots on the competition table and present their research from the Senior Solutions℠ Challenge. 

Visitors are welcome to attend the events. They are FREE and open to the public. Activities will run 9 a.m. - 4:30 p.m. both days. The activities will be in the gymnasium on campus, 3400 Pershall Road, and FIRST signs will point the way.

For more information about the programs, visit www.stlfirst.org.