SAN ANTONIO – A group of local students is getting the opportunity to showcase their stem skills at a national competition in Kentucky this week.
STEM Early College High School students created a robot that will compete against other teams from around the world.
For the first time, a group of sophomores from the school is advancing to this competition.
“We have been working on this since the beginning of this year,” Mark Cruz, student, said.
They recently won the design award at the Southwest VEX Regional Championship which qualified them to attend the world championship.
“We weren’t expecting this to exactly happen right away you know or even make it this far, especially since we are a new team and we still are getting to know each other,” Destani Vargas, student, said.
Vargas was in charge of tracking the project and said the project has opened her eyes to different career opportunities.
“I would be interested in technical writing because its fun seeing everything they do. Like the steps, they go along and like the process itself is fun and exciting,” Vargas said.
Teacher Romeo Valdez said this competition is only a small part of what students get out of school. The first two years they take the majority of their courses at STEM. The last two years, the majority of their courses are at Palo Alto College. Students earn an associates degree before getting their high school diploma.
Last year VEX Robotics World Championship brought over 30,000 people, including more than 1,600 teams from 30 nations. Last year VEX secured again the Guinness World Records title of largest robot competition.