(upbeat music)

Last year, Dan's session was one of my absolute favorite sessions. I love hearing directly from the students. This is why we're all here. The REC Foundation continues to bridge the gap between learning and real-world application, so please join me in giving Dan Mantz a very warm and enthusiastic greeting.

(audience applauding)

Thank you, Nicole. You guys are very fortunate to have Nicole organizing it this year. She's an amazing person. I've known her from a previous stop in my career when I worked with her. But Nicole, you did not tell me that I was going to be going against VEX GO, which is one of my very favorite product lines, so I would've declined. I would've said anything against VEX GO or Workcell.

Anyway, again, my name is Dan Mantz. I've learned very quickly over the years that you would much rather hear from students than me, so I have a treat. Diana is gonna come up. I'm gonna speak for about 10, 15 minutes and then Diana, oh, I was gonna put a stopwatch on, but Diana will come up and she's got some remarks prepared as well and to give her perspective.

But first of all, who in this room knows who the REC Foundation is? Wow, there's actually people that don't, so that's good and bad. A, it means it's gonna be fresh material for some of you and then B, it's bad because as hard as we try, we're still not getting the name of the REC Foundation out there. So for those, anybody here last year heard me last year? Oh, only one person, so it's the same slides decorated differently, so you know, it's a good time to catch up email, but seriously, I did add some different content but who we are and what we do is still the same.

First of all, our mission at the REC Foundation is to provide every educator, and that's really important, that's why I bolded it, is educator with competition, education and workforce-readiness programs to increase student engagement in STEM and computer science. So our customer, direct customer for us is the educator, whether it's the educator in the classroom, i.e., the traditional teacher, whether it's your paid-for coach, or whether it's a parent coach, that's who we're trying to reach out. Once we give the educator the resources that they need, that directly benefits the students who then benefit from our programs.

Our vision, our vision is very important to us because we see a future where every student designs and innovates as part of a team. They overcome failure. We're a big believer that failure is part of the learning process. They persevere and emerge confident in their ability to meet global challenges. We do run a global program and even if we didn't, we're not just restricted. Our students' challenges aren't just gonna be restricted to the United States. They're definitely gonna be global in nature.

We have a core set of values, passion, integrity and excellence. These slides will be made available so I won't read 'em to you, but that's what drives us at the REC Foundation.

About us, we were founded in 2010. We are a 501(c)(3). We're also not VEX Robotics, but we're very fortunate that VEX Robotics empowers us to do their programs, their competition programs. A lot of people think we're VEX, but we are a 501(c)(3). And again, we're most known for doing our VEX Robotics competition but we have other programs that I'll talk about briefly. We have 109 employees. For those of that knew us 15 years ago when we were just a couple, or even five years ago when we were like 30, we've grown rapidly in the last seven, eight years.

Our model is that we don't run our events directly. We do run one event. It's called the VEX Robotics World Championship. We do run this event, but we have a model where we empower event partners to run our events for us and they do the work and we're kind of like, a good model, if you're familiar with athletics would be like Little League.

You gotta central Little League, but at each state level, Little League is running their baseball events. We tracked volunteer hours. A couple of years ago, we started tracking, and my mouth dropped open when I realized that our volunteers are giving over 20 million hours a year.

Just a quick recap. This past season, and this data is from two days ago, we had over 11,000 high school robotics teams compete in our programs. There were 13,000 middle school teams and 9,000 IQ Elementary teams, which is for third through fifth grade. We also had 10,000 VEX GO teams. It's one of our fastest-growing programs. That's what I said. If I knew I was competing against VEX GO, I think I would've gone to that session instead, but we love that program.

Our VEX U program is small, with the number being 281, but if you had a chance to walk around and look at the competition, the VEX U program is absolutely incredible. It's actually one of my favorite programs that we have. So it's small in numbers, but it's large in impact because most of those VEX U teams go out there and run other events. For example, the Purdue team ran like eight events for us this year, and they're the nicest group of kids you'll ever meet as well.

We have a pilot program for artificial intelligence, and this is our second year of pilots, so we're at 34 teams. I'm not going to go into a lot of detail, but that is the next generation of competition where the students 3D print their robot and do a lot of advanced programming using advanced sensors.

TSA Robotics, is anybody in here familiar with TSA? We are the TSA partner for robotics, and we're over 1,100 teams, having just crossed that number. Literally four years ago with TSA, we were at 400, so there's been tremendous growth. That's a CTSO. That's another way for the REC Foundation to support robotics programs throughout the US.

Skills USA, anybody here do Skills USA? Wow, I have never ever done a presentation where there's more Skills USA than TSA. Skills USA is an incredible organization, and we're very fortunate that we run their robotics competition as well.

Factory Automation Competition, I know that you've already seen that, and there have been workshops. We run the Factory Automation Competition for the Workcell program. This isn't an exact number, but we've sold around 4,600 kits that actually do the competition. However, there's actually a lot more than that because, in many places, the classroom will do 10 different competitions within the season, but that's how many we've been able to register.

Aerial Drones Competition is our fastest-growing program, and we're up to 1,582 teams. We do the Advanced Bell program and also offer industry certifications. We had 12,511 students take the industry certification exam so far this year.

We're in 99 countries. I know a lot of people said, "Why didn't you just round up to 100? That would've been much cooler," but next year I'm positive we'll be over 100. Last year we were in 79, so we grew by another 20 countries.

This is a US number. Although this is an international program, a lot of people say, "Well, what are you doing? How many students are you impacting in the US?" We had 54,000 students in our high school programs. This is '22/'23, and we haven't done our analysis for this past year. We had 67,000 students in our middle school programs and 160,000 students in our elementary programs in the US.

And you are here at the 2024 VEX Robotics World Championship. It's the largest robotics competition in the world. It's an event that we run for VEX Robotics. It takes many, many months of planning, many, many millions of dollars, lots and lots of coffee, and lots and lots of pizza, but we have 20,000 students competing this week, with over 50,000 unique attendees. The overall attendance for the city will be about 150,000.

All 50 states from the United States are represented at VEX Worlds this week, and over 60 countries are participating. So, of those 99 countries, 60 of them have traveled to the United States for VEX Worlds.

Quickly, these are the programs that we do. We start with IQ and VEX GO in elementary. In middle school, again IQ, V5, TSA, as well as our drone competition. And in high school, we really have a big bang. We have the V5, TSA, Skills USA, our JRTC Robotics Competition, with over 405 JRTC Robotics teams this year. They're having their national championship right now. Aerial Drones Competition, our Bell program, and FAC. What makes us unique to a lot of organizations is we also have post-secondary programs with the Factory Automation, AI, and VEX U.

Last year, the feedback was that you guys would like some statistics, so I like numbers, and I threw a couple of slides together. I will say, if you want more data on how our programs are impacting students, visit RECF.org. You can always email [email protected], or we have a map. You can click a map and click on any country in the world, and it'll tell you who your person is. If you click on a state, it will tell you who your regional support manager is, and they can help you. But if you go to [email protected] and reach out, saying, "Hey, we want some data," we'll do our best to help you out.

Why robotics? 92% of students that participated in RECF programs are more likely to take advanced STEM courses in high school or college. I mean, that's pretty impressive, 92%. 97% of students showed more persistence and patience than their peers. 96% of students showed the desire to collaborate with peers. And then 93% of students demonstrated a positive work ethic. And that's what we see on the competition field, to be honest with you.

You know, people say, "Oh, what's the best thing about competition robotics?" And it's not the building of the robot. That's really, really cool too. You learn how to program, you learn how to build, you learn about electrical systems, you learn about four-bar mechanisms, you learn about gear ratios. But without a doubt, at the end of our program, what students learn most about is collaboration, problem-solving, and teamwork, without a doubt. Whether you choose a STEM career and you proceed with a STEM career, learning those skills will help our students no matter what pathway they take, so those four statistics there, the first four there are absolutely, actually the first five are absolutely mapped back to what we see on the field.

Now let's talk about some, are they going to continue to do this? So 75% of our students report interest in taking additional math and science classes. I think that's important. We're all here because we want our students to engage in STEM and tech education. And then 83% of our students were interested in taking engineering courses in college. So our programs, the VEX Robotics programs, PLTW programs, coupled with robotics competitions really do make an impact.

So this is more recent data, I mean, literally from this past season, and it's a bar chart. Again, that's why you may want us to send it to you. And when you add up the numbers, it's like, okay, so this first question, "How interested are you in taking STEM classes?" And so in the first, above line there is in college. You know, it was 76% and it went to 80%. It doesn't seem like a lot, but that's a 21% increase, and in this market, when we're incrementing progress as single percentage points, it's actually very impactful. As far as, that's high school, 21%. And then for college, it's 12%. So again, five years ago when I joined this industry, we saw larger jumps, but this data shows that we continue to make an impact. This data is from this season. "How interested are you in pursuing a career in STEM?" If you look at the raw numbers, pre-assessment, it was 75%. Post-assessment, it's what, 81%.

So you're like, okay, 75 to 81, but that's an 18% increase. So we're still having those impacts that are so important. Now, this is my favorite chart. I'm not gonna lie. Of all the charts I've ever seen since I've been with the REC Foundation, this is the Factory Automation Competition data.

The REC Foundation was fortunate enough to get a grant through the Department of Defense. And actually, it wasn't about students pursuing college; it was actually about students being interested in manufacturing careers. The numbers on the left are the pre-assessment, and the numbers on the right are the post-assessment. So pre-assessment, 33% were interested in tech careers; afterwards, 53% were interested, showing a 61% increase. 50% were interested in a bachelor's degree; afterwards, only 47%. People say, "Why do you keep that stat? That's a bad stat." Actually, it supports the validity of the data. Remember, the data here was to get students interested in manufacturing and tech degrees, so we didn't focus on college degrees with this program. So actually, the data being flat supports that we were achieving the target we were trying to achieve.

Industry PLC, does everybody here know what a PLC is? It's ladder logic, runs machines, runs robots. Again, pre-assessment, 33% were interested in PLC programming, post-assessment, 73%. That's an amazing increase, a 121% increase. My favorite statistic in seven years at the REC Foundation, and I've seen a lot of data, is that industry robotics training went from 63% interested to 100% of the students who do the Factory Automation Competition now being interested. That's a remarkable statistic. It's exactly what the Department of Defense and our manufacturing industry were looking for. And then finally, machine operation training increased from 30% to 73%.

So I'm not sure with all the educators in this room if you're pushing your students for four-year traditional STEM degrees, or if you're pushing them to get industry certifications, or you're trying to provide all opportunities, but the VEX Workcell, along with the Factory Automation Competition, is 100% a great opportunity to give our students a chance to get good-paying, high-tech jobs. In our partnership with Tesla, we actually use this product, and the beauty is you can come out of high school, get a good-paying job with Tesla, and still go to college. Tesla will first pay for you to do industry certifications, they'll pay for you to do a two-year degree, and they'll pay for you to do a four-year degree. So this product, this Workcell product, can give your students an opportunity to get ahead.

I really do want to get to Diana, so I'm gonna go over a couple of quick slides. I have a full deck here that will be made available, but we do offer different types of tournament options. We have our traditional in-person tournaments. In-person leagues are a great, great way to introduce your students to competition robotics without the travel and the stress. Basically, you set up a field and compete with just a couple of matches a week over the course of 10 or 12 weeks. We have our in-person skills, which is the robot against the field. And then for those rural areas and hard-to-reach areas, we offer what's called live remote skills, where the students will use camera technology and still compete using a robot in fields, et cetera, but they don't have to travel. Matter of fact, we have a team here competing right now from American Samoa. We have another one from Uganda. There are teams whose first access to a robotics competition is from live remote skills. It's really important to think outside the box. Not everything has to be going to a school, going to an arena, and doing 2V2 or 1V1 or any of that.

Thank you for your attention and support. We look forward to seeing the amazing things your students will accomplish with these opportunities.

I mean, that's obviously a great, great way to progress to, but there are other opportunities to start. And finally, and this is gonna be my last slide before I introduce this to Diana, but the RAC Foundation programs. What makes us different than other competitions out there? There are lots and lots of great programs out there, and for us, it's student-centered. It all starts with the student.

In our program, we believe that coaches are mentors and advisors, and it's one reason that coaches can easily assimilate into our programs. We'll provide you all the resources to coach, but we're not expecting you to teach robotics and engineering. The students will learn that themselves. We'll give those the resources. So in our organization, we have a simple color key: red, yellow, green. Oops, I'm blocking the camera. Red, yellow, green, so if it's red, it's not aligned with what we're trying to do, and we provide examples. If it's yellow, it's appropriate adult guidance. I would expect first-time students, first-time coaches, you would operate in the yellow range. And the goal is to get to green where it's student-centered learning and application. That's where we want.

So across our drones programs, across our Workcell, across our VEX Robotics competitions, we want the students to do the work. So anybody that comes up to me and says, "What makes REC Foundation programs different?" That's the difference. So I think this is a really good point for me to introduce Diana.

So Diana is a high school senior out of Washington. She has been in our program for a long time. She actually spoke here last year. And as much as I'm telling you how great I think our programs are, and I do think our programs are great, I'd rather hear you guys hear it from a student who's been participating. Now, if she throws a curve ball and says they aren't great programs, you will not be seeing me anymore, I'll be leaving, but with that, I'd like to introduce Diana. Diana, please.

(audience applauding)

Hi, everyone. My name is Diana Gale. I've been a competitor in V5 REC for six years. I graduate this year 'cause I'm a senior. I'm really excited about going to college, but it's like I don't wanna say goodbye to the program 'cause it was so amazing. Last night I had the opportunity to speak with a fantastic gentleman by the name of Lucian Junkin who asked if I had finished writing my speech for the VEX IQ Opening Ceremonies to which I replied yes, because unlike the typical high school senior, I actually try my hardest to not procrastinate writing assignments.

He then proceeded to give me some advice for speaking at events. He said I actually should procrastinate writing the speech and absorb tidbits of wisdom and knowledge from all the people that I talked to before writing the speech at the events that I attend beforehand. Needless to say, I thought that was a fantastic idea so I wrote this speech last night and the first topic that I'd like to describe to you all today is something that I've been realizing only recently over the past few days. I've been realizing just how much VRC has had an impact on me, not only as a person, but also as a student, mentor, friend, and teammate.

Last summer, while studying for a psychology class, I read about neurodiversity and I realized that I have something called Asperger's Syndrome, which is a disorder affecting my ability to socialize and communicate. At the start of my VRC career, this was pretty apparent. I was very shy and I didn't wanna talk to other people because of my lack of social skills. To add to that, I was homeschooled pretty much my whole life. And while my lifestyle didn't exactly lack social interactions, I didn't have the opportunity to introduce myself to other people so regularly.

Over the past several years, I've had many opportunities to improve my social skills, such as being the only other person on a two-person team with my brother, having to introduce myself to alliance partners in order to collaborate for matches, and countless judging interviews and presentations. Through those opportunities, I've been able to acquire the social skills and confidence to even get up on this stage and talk to you all today. I'm actually so proud of that.

Tomorrow, I'll be speaking at the VEX IQ Opening Ceremonies, which is on a really big stage, so I'm a little bit nervous but also really excited. A few days ago, I attended a social event for VIPs and the rest of the student advisory board. I'm a student advisory board member, and I was able to introduce myself confidently, hold conversations, listen, ask questions, and interact collaboratively, which are all skills I've learned as a result of the VRC Competition. VRC has been so life-changing for me, giving me the opportunities to grow in this regard. The way that VRC has helped me to gain these skills that I need in order to cause positive change in my life is not limited to overcoming a social disorder; it extends long past that.

One of my class requirements for my computer science associate's degree was technical writing. Fortunately, VRC had prepared me for that as well. I'm the Engineering Notebook Specialist on my team, so in order to qualify for and win awards, I had to coordinate entries from team members, write about design changes, write summaries, and do a lot of graphic design, which I actually think is really fun. By the time I took that technical writing class, it was a breeze because I already knew all this stuff from learning it in VEX. A similar story happened with my introduction to C++ class. I had already learned about it while writing autonomous programs in Tower Takeover a few years back.

The most important skill that VRC has allowed me to learn is the engineering design process, the process by which engineers go from problem to solution through a series of steps including research, brainstorming, prototyping, testing, and iteration. Honestly, I've applied this to every single aspect of my life, and it's been so useful. I've even applied it to my career as a musician. Next year, I'm going to Seattle Pacific University for a double major in piano performance and computer science, and I'm a professional pianist right now. I play at my local church and in two bands.

I remember using the engineering design process to write an '80s-style song for my old high school that they used in the school movie, which was also '80s-themed. To write the song, I first did some research. I went out and listened to a bunch of '80s music, then I did some lyric brainstorming and came up with a few drafts for the song, prototyping. Then I wrote the scores out, asked my band director which one would be best for the scene, and then after we picked the best one, I continued to iterate on the song by touching up the lyrics, improving the melody, and then finally making a final design, the final recording. I still can't believe that it's the skills that I learned in robotics that allowed me to write a song, like that's crazy.

These incredible experiences that I've had as a result of being a student in VEX really drive home the point that what you all do as educators is extremely important. It's important because it provides students, especially at younger ages, like Dan mentioned with VEX GO, with a plethora of skills that benefit them in every area of their careers, no matter what career path they choose. Even as a musician, I'll still be using the skills that I learned in robotics.

But one thing is learning why we should have robotics education for students, and another is knowing how to get them to enjoy it.

I'm sure I can speak for my fellow students when I say that if you sit me in a classroom, hand me a textbook, and lecture to me for an hour, I will very quickly zone out. However, I think that the competitive and social aspects of VEX really hit the nail on the head in enticing students to become interested in and pursue engineering and robotics because it's fun. Socially, you get to hang out with your friends. In the wise words of American psychologist Charles Schaefer, "We are never more fully alive, more completely ourselves, or more deeply engrossed in anything than when we are playing."

I remember my first year as a VRC competitor. It was my first year being introduced to technical documentation, and to be honest, I had no clue what I was doing. My team and I pulled up to the first competition with our one-book engineering notebook, and guess what we saw? A four-notebook, three-ring bindered notebook sitting on the notebook turn-in table. It was crazy. I remember my eyes going wide. I'm like, "That's one team. How do they come up with four notebooks? That's insane."

So, the next year I got really inspired. I'm like, "Well, if they can do it, so can I." I put the pedal to the metal. I collected every single detail about our design process that I could. I checked out books from the library about technical writing and graphic design, and I got the rest of my team to help me out with doing timeline, material management, and design change summaries. By the first competition that year, we had two notebooks, and by the end of the year, I was able to walk up to that notebook turn-in table with my own binder of color-coded sticky note tab and index-organized notebooks. I felt so accomplished. That year, we also won the design award at our state competition. That moment when we all walked up and accepted the award, and I knew all of my hard work had paid off, was a real turning point, no pun intended, in my VRC career.

Since then, I've always pushed myself to the best of my ability to learn more and keep having fun while doing it. And I'm sure I'm not alone. I'm sure there are many other students like me who spend extra time to learn more about their area of interest because of the competitive aspect of VRC. And of course, the absolute joy of seeing your hard work pay off. Success inspires, and I think that's really central to what VRC does to their program and how it manages to sneak in all of these awesome life skills into something that students consider really fun. It's social.

The last point that I'd like to touch on is that over this past year, I've also gained some experience as a mentor, and I can relate to your experiences as educators. During and after competitions, online on social media, during workshops, students come up to me and they ask me to help them learn about programming, engineering design, and technical writing. Through all of these mentorship opportunities, I've learned one very important thing: educators are the bridges that help connect students to where they want to be, and the resources, like Dan mentioned, that can help them achieve their goals. I know especially from my experience as a student, that educators are one of the most important figures in a student's life, and it is a privilege and a responsibility to help students through failure so they can learn, grow, and achieve their goals.

So I just wanna say thank you. For those of you in your first year teaching robotics, thank you for being here. Your passion will really help inspire your students. For those of you who have been teaching for a while, thank you for not giving up, as I'm sure you've had challenges. All of your work and dedication matters.

Dan, thank you so much for the opportunity to share my experiences and learn from so many amazing people here at Worlds. I've had a fantastic time.

Through all of your inspiration, leadership, and mentorship, students like me can truly thrive in robotics education. Thank you so much.

(audience applauding)

I should have not spoken at all and just let her speak for 30 minutes instead of 15, right? So you know, obviously not every student in our program is this amazing, but we have a lot of amazing students. Students can be amazing through athletics, music, art, and robotics. There are a couple of things that she said that I'd really like to emphasize. In our program, it's about the design process, and that is the core of what we do. Even in our drones program, we don't call it the design process; we call it a logbook. The students document the iterative design, and that's a core principle of what we do at the REC Foundation. If you're trying to figure out what makes us different, that's one of them.

The result of our program isn't the robots or crowning a world champion. That's the one thing I think is unfair about VEX World; there are a lot of amazing robots out there, and only a couple of them are crowned world champions. The output of our program is actually the students, like Diana. I'm so proud that I got to share a stage with you, and nobody can sign her up to be her agent. I want the first right at that, okay?

We have a few minutes, and we'd love to answer questions. I will not be offended if your question is to her, but if you would like to know about the REC Foundation, I'll be up here as well. Any questions for Diane or me? Not a one? Let's do it, break the ice.

Well, thank you so much for sharing your story. As educators who teach different subjects, the reality is we do teach a wide audience, and it's wonderful to share your story. Taking back home that students with special needs are not excluded from this wonderful experience, so thank you for sharing your story. But I guess to break the ice, what's the next step?

The next step for me is to go to college. I'm really excited, but it's also kind of scary because I've been homeschooled. I'm going to Seattle Pacific University, double majoring in piano performance and computer science. I'm so excited, so hopefully I'll have a band and maybe after that, a project management job. I think that would be really fun.

All right, thank you. Thank you.

Coming for you on the back. Hey, Dan. Hello, Maryland here. Hey, go World.

(audience member laughing)

Are you gonna switch the drone program to VEX AIR? You know, the REC Foundation, I'm just learning about that product as well. It looks fantastic. A lot of people are like, "We've invested a lot of money in the Aerial Drones Competition," and we're absolutely gonna continue to support that program. So if that's what you bought your drones for, that program will continue to exist. I mean, JRTC uses it, for example. If we're fortunate, if Bob and Tony want us to also develop a competition for AIR, we're gonna be happily doing that as well. But we're just learning about the product as well. I assure you, if you've invested money in the Aerial Drones Competition, we're gonna continue to support that program as well. It's actually our fastest-growing program, and we want to continue the success of that program.

Thank you, Dan. My question is about, I'm from Ghana International, so I want to find out what our REC Foundation is doing to support international partners. Most of the time, if you go on REC Foundation's website, if there's a grant, let's say you're setting up a team, it's always, "Oh, you should be in the United States." So what is REC doing, especially for those of us internationally, to be able to get most of our students engaged since this program is student-centered?

Yeah, that is a wonderful question, and we're fortunate that Northrop Grumman Foundation does give us money to support international efforts as well. They choose a different country each year; this past year was Poland, for example. You know, Eaton, who's a brand new sponsor, you may or may not know it, their initial grant to us, which was significant, all went to international, but it was for the Workcell product. And like Dell, for example, gives us money for Ireland, but that doesn't answer your question. I'm tap dancing, right? You want to know what the REC Foundation can do to bring money to countries such as yourself?

We're trying, so in the REC Foundation, you know, growth curve, we're at the infancy. I had our board meeting here, and we went from 8 million to 25 million, and they want us to double that in two years. How they want to do it is with international partners, so I actually see Heath back there. He's their VP of International Sales. Heath and I will be working closely together. They have great opportunities, and we'll work closely with him to try to bring those opportunities to all countries. I know it's a cliché answer, but the reality is we had to firm up our footing here. But as we grow at the REC Foundation, our new partners tend to be global Fortune 500 companies that are supporting global initiatives.

And again, Eaton is a perfect example. Or Google, right? Google, we did a workshop in Singapore, and Andy Lee told me yesterday that now they're going to fund starting 100 teams in Singapore, so it's just taking longer than we want, but it is happening.

Okay, we have one more question over here.

First, I just want to say congratulations on an amazing speech because that was inspiring, and it was wonderful to hear it. It's very challenging to speak in front of adults, and so I know you said you're proud of yourself, but I think everybody in the room is very proud of you as well. Thank you so much.

(audience applauding)

So my question is actually how do you see the robotics programs that you're involved with impacting students who are outside of the program? Other students who are your age, how do you see your thinking impacting them?

Well, I use the engineering design process in pretty much every aspect of my life, and I've had the opportunity to share that with kids who are even outside of our robotics program. So my friends will just have a problem, and they'll come to me about it, and I'll be like, "Hey, have you tried this?" And they're like, "What's the engineering design process?" And I'll explain it to them, and that's just one example. I know that other kids in my organization, Exothermic Robotics, a lot of them are programmers, and they use all of their skills that they learn in VRC to help other students in their classes and stuff like that get them involved through there as well. Does that answer your question?

Lovely, thank you. Tom, do you want to grab this gentleman here? Third row in.

Hi. First of all, once again, yes, very awesome speech. You did a very good job with that. As a student that is now exiting high school, there is a common issue across the United States where students are feeling uncomfortable learning mathematics because it feels like it provides very daunting challenges for them going forward. As somebody who is very well-experienced with this field, how did you overcome those challenges and see mathematics as a, well, what's the best word for this? An opportunity to continue growing and to benefit yourself.

Wow, that's a big question. Sorry. I mean, I am kind of impartial to mathematics specifically. I've been okay enough at it to succeed in my classes, but I don't touch it much aside from classes. It's never been super daunting to me; it's just numbers.

But I don't know if that's a perspective that my fellow VRC competitors share or if they're different, but I know that a lot of students in my organization specifically love math and they spend all their time on it. It's like crazy.

From an REC Foundation perspective, how we're trying to approach that is not necessarily to teach math, but to embed math into our programs, right? So students learn math. My daughter's a really good example. She's a very successful marketing professional now, but she spent seven years in robotics and she was not strong in math. However, by just being on a robotics team and learning how to do gears and stuff like that, she passed AP Calc with a four and got another math AP with a five, never being someone who's considered strong. So we don't shove it in your face, but if you look at the programs from VEX GO, all the way from V5, it's embedded in how we do things and how the competition is structured so the students are learning math and they're learning physics too. I think that's the big secret in our programs. People don't realize how much physics you're learning, but it's embedded in what we do as part of the competition.

To add onto that, actually, my brother is a huge math nerd and in ninth grade, ninth and 10th grade, he was developing an autonomous program for use in the robotics competition and he had to learn vector calculus in order to do that. That really spurred his love of math and now he's an AeroAstro student at MIT, if that answers your question.

I think we can all end on that inspiring note. That was really wonderful. Thank you so much to both of you for sharing. I know everyone's gonna leave inspired, so we'll just pass on a little trophy, take a picture. Thank you so much.

One more round of applause please.

(audience applauding)

(upbeat music)