Dave Waddell/The Windsor Star
This weekend’s FIRST Robotics Windsor Essex Great Lakes competition may look like a video game come to life, but for employers it’s like scouting the STEM version of the Canadian Hockey League for future star employees.
Many of the best and brightest Ontario high school students in the sciences, technology, engineering, math (STEM) and business are putting their wits and skills on display for some potential future employers.
“People (students) get identified fairly early as high achievers,” said Larry Koscielski, CenterLine (Windsor) Ltd.’s vice-president of process and technology development.
“We’ve hired lots of kids, after getting an engineering degree or skilled trade, who have gone through the FIRST Robotics program. We’ll have workers here mentoring the teams they were on in high school
“They’re helping prepare the next round of potential employees.”
Running Thursday through Saturday at the University of Windsor’s Toldo Lancer Centre, this is the 10th annual Ontario District Great Lakes competition and will feature nine local teams and 20 from around the province. The competition, which can draw thousands of spectators, has also picked up a new gold sponsor in Rocket Innovation.
Each FIRST Robotics competition has a theme or task set out for the teams to achieve. This year’s theme, ReefScape, requires teams to use their skills to tackle tasks inspired by real-world ocean challenges.
Koscielski estimates his company has hired about 20 to 25 alumni of the program. He noted CenterLine isn’t alone in scooping up FIRST Robotics participants.
“We’ve observed, and I’ve heard it from people at other companies, they’re asking what we’re doing to these kids,” said Koscielski, also chair of Windsor Essex FIRST Robotics.
“They’re just different employees. From Day 1, they’re ready to go, solving problems, working collaboratively.
“They’re big thinkers and maybe they’re not entrepreneurs in terms of starting their own company, but they can be that within a company because they think large-scale. We have four program alumni in our product development lab.”
Some local FIRST Robotic participants have in fact gone on to start their own businesses, such as Optimotive founder Scott Fairley.
The Windsor company specializes in automated wheeled and tracked mobile robots to collect data and perform clean-up and towing duties in challenging outdoor settings.
Last September, Fairley received $2 million in funding and additional supports from Silicon Valley venture capital fund Version One and Waterloo-based Garage Capital. The third backer of the project is Newlab Detroit.
Kocielski said over the past decade, he’s seen the positive changes they’d hope to achieve with FIRST Robotics. One of those trends has been a significant increase in the number of females joining teams.
“The shift towards gender balance has been huge,” Kocielski said. “We’re at 44 to 46 per cent female participation now.
“Ten years ago, we were in the 30s. We’ve made great strides toward that (balance).”
And an attraction of FIRST Robotics is you don’t have to be a tech person to participate, said Kocielski. The program is aimed at nurturing passion to help run a team, do accounting, coordinate things, graphic design, business, collaborative work and more.
“Everything that CentreLine would need as a company, you need to be a successful FIRST Robotics team,” he said.