INSIDE AN unassuming building on the Lincoln County High School campus, tomorrow’s technology is developing, one idea at a time. What begins as a concept mapped out on a whiteboard wall is brought to life and tried and tested. And it’s all the work of area students developing skills to take them and the world into a better future. They are the Lincoln County Robotics (LCR) team, and they are going places.
The team attended the 2023 Tennessee State VEX Robotics Championship, the 2023 VEX Robotics World Championship in Dallas, Texas, and the 2023 Create US Open Tournament in Iowa. They built, rebuilt, iterated, and reiterated working together to show the world what great things are constantly developing in their shop under the direction of Marty LeBlanc, Lincoln County High School engineering instructor and LCR sponsor.
LeBlanc knows what the students learn today improves our lives tomorrow. Although robots have replaced line workers in many manufacturing fields today, new jobs have been created.
“There’s a whole other job building, programming, and maintaining all the robots doing all this intricate work and saving us from the repetitive bending and lifting. The precision with robots is a whole lot better, but a robot’s only as good as its programmer and builder. So our kids are going out and meeting the needs of today’s workforce. You’ve got to have industrial maintenance. That’s why programs at the Tennessee College of Applied Technology are so important, too, because they’re training kids in industrial maintenance on the same robots they will be using when they go to work,” said LeBlanc.
There’s no such thing as a bad idea in LeBlanc’s grading system.
She said, “The kids start with an idea in their head, and it might be a million-dollar idea. I don’t know, but they will get their computer-aided design (CAD) certification, draw it up in CAD, and then print it with the 3-D printers. I’m trying to teach my kids that you can take something from a thought to something tangible and go with it.”
It’s a program that would not be possible without the community’s support.
She said, “These kids are so talented. We show our robots to sponsors who are engineers, and they look at what my kids are doing, and they’re blown away. Our program has a very high budget because what we do is expensive. But we’re 100% sponsor-funded. This is an after-school, sponsor-funded program, and thankfully we’ve had more community members jump on board with us.”
It’s not just the sponsors that are blown away by the program. LeBlanc is the 2023 recipient of the International Technology and Engineering Educators Association Teacher Excellence Award and was recognized at the association’s Minneapolis conference. It’s the highest honor given to technology and engineering education classroom teachers.
“I would not be up for this award if it wasn’t for what my kids do. I have a hard time pointing the finger at myself. Yes, it’s a great honor to get this award. But it wouldn’t happen if it wasn’t for the fact that we had great kids, and people were on board with the programming,” said LeBlanc.
“You can jump on board, too. As the team always says, Support the future — support robotics.” GN
