Willow Glen Resident
Cover Story
Community joins together in passion for robotics
By Mayra Flores De Marcotte
There's nothing girlie about Presentation High School's robotics program or its latest addition, Panther's Den--a three-bedroom home the school recently acquired to house a robotics center as well as other extracurricular activities. And the robotics team hasn't wasted any time announcing to the competition that it means business.
The garage door to the new facility is open, and sounds of drilling and chatter spill out onto the residential street.
Presentation High School students can be seen in various uniform combinations from skirts to sweats, wearing clear plastic safety goggles with their hair pulled back and their hands at work. The team has attracted girls from throughout San Jose and beyond to the new robotics headquarters on Plummer Avenue in Willow Glen.
The center is one of few of its kind in San Jose and as a result, the school has opened the Den's doors to other schools like Leland High to provide a model for local students to take back with them.
Presentation seniors Arille Virey and Elaine Higashi are co-captains of the 29-girl robotics team, the Presentation Invasion. Both have been part of Presentation robotics since its inception three years ago.
"It's really overwhelming," says Arille, who lives in Almaden Valley. "The generosity of the school with this house--they're putting a lot into this team."
Three years ago, the Presentation High School Mathematics and Science Academy began an initiative in robotics program.
The program is made up of sophomores, juniors and seniors whose goals include giving students genuinely interested in engineering and science a hands-on experience. Panther's Den provides just that.
"Before, we were scattered all over campus," Elaine says. "Now, we have our own place to work."
Girls such as Cambrian neighborhood resident Tori Gonsalves and Willow Glen resident Elizabeth Magana have been interested in robotics and engineering since before the program's inception. Now, they can't see another way for things to be.
"I think the thing that really surprised me initially was that I didn't know where it would go," says John Howe, founder of the robotics program at Presentation. "At the science fair activities, I noticed that the girls really got into mechanical and civil engineering."
From there, things snowballed, and both participation and interest grew exponentially, he says.
So much so that Mary Miller, the school's principal, launched an effort to buy the house across from the school.
The three-bedroom home was sold by its longtime owners as is to the school, Howe says.
The Den has three rooms: the garage, where the hands-on work happens; the clubhouse, where the girls eat, hang out and discuss projects; and the program office, where the robotics coaches and faculty work.
The garage offers everything a legitimate shop would have--a drill press, a grinder and hand tools along with two workstations. It is set up with a section dedicated to electrical engineering and another for mechanical engineering.
"One of the magical things about the workshop are the few power tools," Howe says. "It is really credible as a workshop."
Along with the addition of the Den, the team was also joined by a set of three coaches.
"The idea is that these women, under 40, come in and are strong role models," Howe says. "If you're out in track and someone jumps 6 feet, at least you know it can be done. These girls can emulate their coaches' behaviors."
The all-woman coaching team consists of three successful female engineers with specific experience in robotics--Sheri Codiana, Jen Kulchycki and Casey Kute.
Codiana is a program manager with Adobe and a graduate of Cal Poly Pomona with a degree in aerospace engineering and an MBA from Santa Clara University.
Kulchycki is a program manager with Motorola with an undergraduate degree in engineering from Rutgers University and a graduate degree in electrical engineering from Stanford University.
Kute is the top undergraduate student in mechanical engineering at Santa Clara University.
Rookies to Mentors
The birth of Panther's Den couldn't have come at a more opportune time. The team is preparing for the annual For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology regional competitions: the Silicon Valley Regional Competition, March 13-15 at San Jose State University's Event Center and the UC Davis-Sacramento Regional Competition, March 20-22.
"We've been preparing since Jan. 5 on weekdays and Saturday afternoons," says Kulchycki. "We had six weeks to design and implement the robot. This is where all the hard work comes into play."
Presentation is one of 48 high schools competing in this year's events.
In 2007, the young women made a splash at the event, being one of only seven all-girl teams present, but first place was just out of reach. The Presentation Invasion, however, did not walk away empty-handed. The girls earned the Rookie Award.
Not bad considering the robotics program was only in its second year.
All this momentum could not have happened without the help of the team's mentors, the Leland High School robotics team Quixilver.
Three years ago, Howe asked Dr. Charles Barker, vice president of Aurora networks and part of the robotics program at Leland, to be the girls' mentors.
In 2005, the Leland team walked away with the Oregon regional championships. Since then, it has been working with Presentation to help with its robotics team. Something interesting changed.
"What happened is they saw that we had passed them by in some ways," Howe says. "They came by the Den and were blown away. Their facility is only half or a third of ours."
One word comes to mind with the evolution of this relationship.
"Reciprocity," Howe says. "We can do a lot more together than in isolation. The rules of competition have changed, and now we can share shops and mentors between the teams. That's exciting. We reached out to a public school to learn from them, and now they are learning from us."
