Engineers Week is in full swing with activities like a Girl Day Twitter Chat and Global Engineer Day Thunderclap. Led by DiscoverE, a coalition committed to inspiring and informing present and future generations to discover engineering, this movement is dedicated to celebrating engineers around the world while increasing Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) awareness. As emphasis on STEM education continues to grow, programs from nonprofit organizations such as FIRST (For Inspiration & Recognition of Science & Technology) are becoming more important for kids of all ages.

Founded in 1989 by inventor and entrepreneur Dean Kamen, FIRST offers four different fun yet thought-provoking programs encouraging kids to pursue education and career opportunities in STEM while offering more than $22 million in scholarships annually. These programs include:

• FIRST LEGO® League Jr. – Geared towards kindergarten through third graders, this program enables kids to explore real-world concepts through the use of motorized LEGO® elements to complete a series of obstacles.
• FIRST LEGO® League (FLL) – For grades 4-8, this competition challenges kids to develop LEGO®-based robots to perform autonomous “missions” on a playing field.
• FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) – Students in grades 7-12 design and build robots to play a floor game in a competitive setting.
• FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) – As the most advanced FIRST program, youths in grades 9-12 develop robots to compete in one or more of the Regional and District events that measure the effectiveness of each robot.

Although all of these programs positively promote STEM education, FRC gives kids the most relatable experience to being an engineer and inspires students to be science and technology leaders. These kids are having fun without even knowing they could one day be an engineer.

In fact, students involved with FRC are more than 88 percent more interested in school, 90 percent more interested in taking a challenging math or science course and 90 percent more interested in attending college. Further, FRC has a unique culture, built around two invaluable core values: Gracious Professionalism promotes empathy and respect for other teams; Coopertition emphasizes that teams can cooperate and compete at the same time.

Every year, FRC tasks kids, in teams of 10 or more, with designing, building, programming and testing their 120-pound maximum robots to complete a themed game. Teams have only six weeks to complete their robots, all under strict rules and very limited instruction to encourage outside-the-box-thinking.

The 2016 game was announced on January 9 to more than 3,000 global teams comprised of 78,000 students with the theme of FIRST Stronghold. The premise of this game challenges teams to develop robots to breach their opponents’ fortifications, weaken their tower with boulders, and capture their tower.

Following “Stop Build Day” on February 23, all teams must stop working on their robots and prepare for competition at their Regional and District events. Finalists will then move on to compete in the 2016 FIRST Championship on April 27-30 in St. Louis.

And in 2016, leading sensors and connectivity solutions provider, TE Connectivity continues to support FRC by providing a voucher for all global FRC teams to use to purchase robot parts from TE’s online parts store. Additionally, TE is sponsoring 25 FIRST Robotics teams as well as the North Carolina District Championships and the Mid-Atlantic Region district qualifying tournament in West Chester, Penn.

TE’s involvement with FIRST Robotics started more than 10 years ago and dedication to this program has grown to include monetary and parts donations, and employees volunteering time as coaches, advisors, judges and regional board members.