“The Green Machine” attended Medtronic’s 2022 Jumpstart event to both teach and learn. Venna W. and Kaylie C. presented our ongoing project of Girls in the Workshop. Two of our team’s core values are diversity and inclusion. Recruiting more girls is an important goal for those values. They discussed how Girls in the Workshop helped achieve that goal. Following that, they had the teams in the audience go through the same process. Everyone was able to provide insight and solutions on how other teams could achieve their goals. This ended in great discussion because most of their goals were similar to ours, for example, having more girls on the mechanical subteam or more boys on the business subteam. This was a great experience and we are excited to do it again at the Jumpstart event at Becker High School (https://www.jumpstartrobotics.org). Just in case you miss it, please take a look at our presentation and reach out to us with any questions at edinarobotics.com/contact/.
Other 1816 members were able to take advantage of the large selection of classes from “Diversity – Buzzword or Brainchild,” to “Battery Health”, to “FRC Pneumatics”, and even sessions on critical thinking and project management, taught by FIRST Robotics Competition students, mentors, and Medtronic employees. We all also got to learn from inspiring Medtronic employees about their career paths as well as the opportunities for young engineers at Medtronic.
We would also like to thank Medtronic for acknowledging our Team as leaders in setting and meeting initial Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity Goals. Thank you Medtronic for the generous grant for our initial efforts to expand diversity with our Girls in the Workshop events! We are one of the first six FRC teams recognized for working with Medtronic on diversity initiatives in STEM.
There was truly something for everyone to learn there, we can’t wait to attend another Jumpstart! –By Venna W.