Five Star BEST - Volunteers

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Volunteers

Have you seen all of the robots on TV lately? Shows like "Battle Bots" and "Robot Wars" seem to be popping up all over the place. In fact, since 1999, Montgomery College has been supporting high school students in their efforts to learn more about robots. While we don't have any fire shooting out of the floor or saw blades on the robots, the competition is more exciting than any of the television shows.

Each year, high schools from around the country participate in the BEST Robotics competition. BEST (Boosting Engineering, Science, and Technology) is an organization that teaches students about design, creativity, science, teamwork, and communication through this annual robotics competition. Students are given a problem to solve like removing "toxic" waste, extinguishing "fires" in the Smithsonian, or handling "dangerous" materials. From the day they learn about the game, the teams have 6 weeks to build a robot. At the end of that time, all the robots compete in a game that is more exciting than you can imagine. The gym is full of bands, cheerleaders, and mascots rooting their robots on to victory.

Since the BEST organization is made of volunteers, we need you to help with our local hub, Five Star BEST, that supports schools all over the North Harris County and Montgomery County area and beyond. Here are the 4 upcoming events:

Course Construction: Sawing, hammering, gluing, and painting this year's course
Kickoff Day: Explain the game to the teams and give them their materials
Demo Day: Practice competition and warm-up for the big day
Competition: The big event!

All that is required of volunteers is that you are excited to see students learning more about science, engineering, and technology. We can find a job for anyone interested in helping. Whether you can be there for 1 hour or if you can help at every event, we need judges, referees, scorekeepers, team coaches, and all kinds of other folks to run this competition. Everyone who volunteers is excited to see the innovation and spirit of the students. Seeing the results makes it all worthwhile. And, sometimes we have free pizza!

If you want to learn more about the competition, visit the pages below:

If you would like to volunteer, please contact David Quarles, Five Star BEST chair by email or by calling (936) 273-7431.