Celebrating 20 Years of Robotics at Parker

Members of the Parker community celebrated 20 years of robotics at the school at a Robotics Reunion event in the Kovler Family Library on a recent fall evening.

Orchestrated by long-standing Upper School Robotics team member and science teacher George Austin, this event welcomed current and former team members, mentors, families and supporters to acknowledge the impressive legacy that founding members helped to set in motion 20 years ago.

What began in fall 2002 as an idea for an independent study by then-seniors Zach Grossman ’03 and Jamie Shkolnick ’03 has grown exponentially. Parker now fields seven robotics teams—four FIRST Lego League (FLL) teams in the Middle School, two FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) teams in the Upper School and an Upper School Marine Advanced Technology Education Remotely Operated Vehicle (MATE ROV) team (a.k.a., underwater robotics)—and has hosted numerous robotics competitions on campus throughout the years.

At the Robotics Reunion, current members of the Upper School teams and their families had an opportunity to interact with former team members and mentors. Several alumni joined the experience via Zoom, allowing past and present team members to share their experiences developing their robots and competing, as well as  how former team members have moved on since their time engaged in Parker robotics.

Founding team members Grossman and Shkolnick joined their former team member and teacher Austin in welcoming everyone to the event before sharing n videos (see below) put together by current Upper School FTC and ROV team member and junior Beckett Nikitas chronicling the development of Parker’s FRC, FTC and ROV teams.

Following the video share-out, this year’s FTC coach, Michael Elman, led everyone down into the science classrooms, where he showed the teams’ practice field and outlined the challenge associated with this year’s series of competitions. The tour continued as the group visited the dedicated robotics shop where team members provided an overview of the materials and machines they’ve had at their disposal in designing their robot each year.

Grossman and Shkolnick were blown away with the resources the school had dedicated to robotics since their time at the school, commenting that they needed at least an hour to set up and take down their work each day when their team would work at the school.

Given the growth in the program and the number of students currently involved on robotics teams at the school, it is safe to say that robotics is here to stay at Parker—and our community couldn’t be happier about it! 

Click here for photos!