Robotics team: Building robots and a future in STEM

Amara Small had already spent 11 years working on coding and building robots when she joined the robotics team at the School at Marygrove in her junior year. "I've been super into that since I was really young, because it's like a sport really,- said Small, whose mother is an engineer. "And that's so much different from building robots at your house. It's very competitive and the hands-on work is a lot more rigorous. She credits team coach Leon Pryor for expanding her coding language and developing her into a team player. "He's great at guiding you through a problem without telling you 'this is the answer,'- Small said. "The ability to be able to develop as an engineer, the ability to fully wire a robot from scratch or fully build a robot, like cutting with power tools, designing the robot, and being able to code a full robot from scratch with an autonomous mode, these are all super valuable skills that a lot of us didn't have.