Bagley College holds BEST Competition for high school students
October 20, 2013
It’s Saturday in the fall. The crowd is cheering, the band is playing, and the mascots are jumping in anticipation for the game—a robotics competition.
This football-like atmosphere is for the Mississippi Boosting Engineering, Science and Technology (MS BEST) Robotics competition. Sponsored by the Bagley College of Engineering, it’s the culmination of the six-week program that is designed to inspire creativity and spark an interest in engineering among high school students.
“The MS BEST atmosphere offers the excitement of a sporting event for robot geeks,” said Eric Heiselt, director of MS BEST and K-12 Outreach in the Bagley College.
The program kicked-off September 7, when the teams were given the materials to begin building their robots. After six weeks 19 teams traveled to Starkville High School to compete for the top spot.
This year’s competition was titled the Gatekeeper. Each team had to successfully build a remote-controlled robot that constructed a simulated series of transistors, logic gates and a 32-bit central processing unit.
MS BEST gives high school students a chance to enhance their research, building, marketing, and teamwork skills to help prepare participants for college. For sophomore industrial engineering major Miandra Maiers, BEST has been a part of life since junior high.
“I was a part of BEST from eighth to 12th grade,” Maiers said. “I knew when I got to MSU that I wanted to be involved with the program. I would do anything to help this competition. It helped me learn in high school that engineering is what I wanted to do.”
As volunteers assisting with the competition, Maiers and other BCoE-BEST veterans were able to help facilitate this year’s competition. They were joined by students from Alta Knizley’s introduction to mechanical engineering class.
Students from Knizley’s class served as mentors to the teams throughout the competition. They assisted the high school teams in problem solving and modeling the engineering design process. Some students were not able to meet in person with their teams due to the distance, but mentors made themselves available to teams through Web-based tools like Skype, WebEx or Whiteboard.
“Having our engineering students help out is a way they can to pay it forward,” Heiselt said. “Many of our students chose engineering after competing in BEST in high school. Now they’re helping younger students find their paths through the program.”
Ben Jamerson, a freshman mechanical engineering student who volunteered through Knizley’s class, said for him it was fun to relive the excitement of the competition.
“I participated in BEST in high school and we placed first one year. That was a good memory,” Jamerson said. “I volunteered to help with the event originally because of class, but I’m glad I did volunteer because this is such a fun and eventful competition.”
In additional to overall honors, the student teams could compete for awards in a variety of areas including marketing and sportsmanship. Scores from the specialty areas also contributed to the team’s overall scores.
The overall winner of the competition was team Stark Tech from Starkville High School led by senior Kelly Mazzola.
“This is my third and final BEST competition. It has been so much fun being able to participate in this event,” Mazzola said. “I’ve learned how to work in a group. I’d never have learned this skill without BEST.”
Starkville High School will travel to compete in the BEST Regionals along with Starkville Christian Home Educators, McNairy-Central and East Rankin Academy. The BEST Regional Competition will be held at the University of Auburn on December 7-8. Heiselt and other MS BEST volunteers will travel with the high school teams to Auburn for the next round of competitions.
For additional information on MS BEST visit www.msbest.msstate.edu.
UPDATE: At the regional competition, Starkville High School placed seventh our of 54 teams in robot performance. They also won second place overall for their marketing presentation.
Fellow MS BEST participants Starkville Christian Home Educators, East Rankin Academy (Pearl, Miss.) and McNairy Central High School (Selmer, Tenn.) all finished in the top 50 percent of competitors at the South’s BEST competition.
By Emily McConnell