2015
C-STEM Day
The 2015 C-STEM Day
took place at two locations: Davis and Irvine, California on Saturday May 30th, 2015. Both events were a great success, and fun was to be had by all! We send our deep gratitude
out to all of our volunteers, without whom these events would not be possible. A big thank you to all of the teachers whose time and effort paid off in their students' performance!
C-STEM Day Winners:
C-STEM Day Items of Note:
- This year, a team from Roosevelt Middle School in Oakland Unified School District participated for the first time
in the C-STEM Day RoboPlay Challenge Competition. Nearly 90% of students in the school are in the free lunch or reduced lunch program and they have a large number of English Language Learners. As the
RoboPlay Challenge is a level-playing field robot competition, regardless of students' social-economic status and background, any team has the possibility of success. The team won the 3rd place in the
UC Davis Regional Competition. As one student said during the award ceremony, "I am so excited, this is my first time I won a medal and I will come to compete again next year!"
- The American Canyon teams from Napa Valley Unified were featured in two articles
due to their resounding success this year in the RoboPlay Challenge competition: Napa
Valley Register, Times Herald. The American Canyon teams
placed 1st in Division 1 and Division 2 for the UC Davis Regional as well as 1st in Statewide Division 1.
- Susan Johnson, a math teacher from Livermore High School, reported that all four female team members of last year's RoboPlay
Challenge Competition went on to college, where three are majoring in computer science (CalTech, UC Berkeley, and Cal Poly) and one is studying in Biology at UC Davis aiming for medical school. This
was a huge shift in their educational trajectory, as none of them would have considered computer science majors, had they not participated in the C-STEM program. This year, the Livermore team won 1st
place in Division 3 at UC Davis Regional.
- Riverbend
Elementary was also featured in their local newspaper, the Appeal Democrat, pre
and post competition, as they prepared
for the 2015 C-STEM Day. "When they write a computer program that controls a robot, they run the program and watch their calculations come to life," said Ben Gonzales, Riverbend math teacher and adviser
to the Riverbend Robotics after-school club.
- Yassi Motamed, from TeWinkle Middle School in Orange County, was ecstatic to bring students to the competition for the second year: "My students worked
so hard all year, they learned SO much, and they enjoyed themselves. Of course they were overjoyed to win first place, but beyond that there are some future engineers in those groups and they never would
have known that without this program. This also showed them that hard work and dedication is what makes you successful, it doesn't matter where you came from or what your parents do, but when you work
hard you can achieve anything. I know it sounds cliché, but for my kids that is true. THANK YOU from the bottom of my heart for giving me this opportunity and for bringing this program to our schools!"
TeWinkle Middle School has a student population with 75% Hispanic, 24% white, and 1% are of a variety of other races. English Learners make up about 30% of the school's population.
