Both Sean Pakros of Elkton and Elias Malak of Roseburg have big plans for their future. Both have been interested in robotics since they were young and both hope to use that passion for a better future.
The starting line to that future might be in sight, as both Sean and Elias have been selected as FIRST Tech Challenge Dean’s List Finalists. They will travel to the FTC World Championship in Houston, Texas next week.
Only four robotics students in the state were selected for this award, which Elias describes as “being a gracious professional.”
“It’s about being kind to others and helping them out. Even though they are enemies, you’re still helping them out and teaching. A lot of it is outreach, as well, so teaching the community about robotics,” he said.
Elias is a sophomore at Roseburg High School and has always been interested in how things work. Like most children interested in building, he started testing design ideas with Legos. He impatiently waited until middle school to join a Lego robotics team.
In seventh grade, he was the first person in his school to participate in both the FIRST Lego League and the metals robotics league known as FIRST Tech Challenge.
“I’ve come a long way since seventh grade. I love robotics and I’ve just kept working on myself and tried to get better,” Elias said. “I love the building aspect, the design and test phases and just seeing what I envisioned coming to life.”
Sean, a junior at Elkton High School, has also been involved in robotics since a young age.
“I do the programing for the robot. It’s what I’ve always done. It’s what I’ve always been fascinated with. I just love coding,” Sean said.
Sean is the team captain and lead programmer for the Cybernetic Elks FTC Team. It’s important to him, he said, to share what he has learned with those who are just starting out.
“I think robotics is important because it teaches us all these useful skills,” he said. “Basically, you can join robotics for anything. Anything you want to do, you can do in robotics. If you’re good at building websites, we always need websites. If you’re good at writing, we make a notebook every year about our team. You can do whatever you want. You can learn those skills and further them in robotics.”
Usually, Elias and Sean are competing against one another, but the duo have also worked side-by-side to share robotics with younger students in our community.
“It was a lot of fun,” Sean said. “It was two weeks of teaching them how to build robots, how to program them, basically everything they would need to know to know robotics.”
Neither Sean or Elias are actually competing at the championships; their teams made it to state but did not advance. Instead, these two Douglas County students are part of the 200 robotics students nationwide who are considered leaders in FIRST robotics.
According to the website “students who earn FIRST Dean’s List Award status ... are great examples of student leaders who have led their Teams and communities to increased awareness for FIRST and its mission. These students have also achieved personal technical expertise and accomplishment.”
“It has to do with them being good in their team, but it’s also the outreach and them being proficient in programming or whatever their specialty is for the team and them being mentors for the team,” Cynde Pakros, Sean’s mother and coach, said.
If Sean or Elias make the Top 10, they will receive a trophy, written recommendation from FIRST leadership to the college(s) or employer(s) of their choice, an invitation to the FIRST Dean’s List Award Summit in Manchester, New Hampshire and can apply for the Woodie Flowers Memorial Grant, which is only awarded to FIRST Tech Challenge Dean’s List Award and FIRST Robotics Competition Dean’s List winners.
Elias hopes to become either an aerospace or systems engineer. Sean, on the other hand, hasn’t quite decided what he wants to do, though he knows it will focus on programing and continuing to coach teams or individuals interested in robotics.
“I’m mostly just trying to open doors right now. I’m learning new things, trying to prepare myself for my future,” Elias said. “It’s something I like to do and it keeps teaching me new things because you’re never done learning.
(2) comments
This is terrific! I applaud these young men for their skill, intelligence and perseverance. What troubles me, however, is the fact that they likely had to do it on their own. There are no courses in computer science in our schools, at least not at Roseburg High School. My son, with a BS degree in Biochemistry and soon to earn his additional BS in Computer Science at OSU, had to teach himself computer language and programing entirely on his own. He has done so ever since elementary school. There was nothing available at Fremont or RHS. Six years ago, when my son was a senior at RHS, I complained to the principle about the fact that students in Roseburg were being deprived of education in one of the most important facets of modern technology. It was being utterly ignored. I found it disgraceful and told her so. Today, I looked at the classes offered by RHS on their website and, still, no courses in computer science are being offered. This is an ongoing disgrace.
Calling it disgraceful seems a little harsh, but it is disappointing for sure. I appreciate you bringing attention to this, and I will make it a point to do what I can to advocate for more computer science related learning/teaching. At least at JoLane, they have been offering Robotics as one of the actual electives for 7th and 8th grade, so they actually have an assigned teacher and classroom to work in. My boys are in 9th grade now, and I was surprised that RHS doesn't even have that. They do have a really good robotics club and have been able to have up to 4 teams of approx. 6 students each. I guess I haven't really minded my son doing this on his own because there is so much good content on the internet. If I'm being honest, he has learned more about building computers, programming, engineering and robotics from watching YouTube than he could have ever gleaned from any class up to this point. Sad, but true. Kids can pick up so much on their own through hands on learning with various devices. As a result, I think that all of that content creates such a wide range of interests and abilities that it would be a challenge to decide exactly what to teach. There are so many specific applications. I'm also going to guess that part of the issue is that a teaching salary cannot compete with the wages and benefits of a real-world tech job. Regardless, I agree that we need that computer coding, programming, and system engineering being taught alongside the core/college prep and CTE classes.
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