McEachern Offers New Robotics Class

Riding a wave of enthusiasm from both students and teachers in only its third year of existence,  will be the first school in Cobb County to offer an academic robotics course.

Last year, the after-school club grew from 12 students to a state-high 63. The extracurricular club will immediately follow the class, which starts with school on Monday.

Students are eligible for the class after taking three years of engineering with Paul Eubanks, one of the advisers for the club. They must also have recommendations from Eubanks and one of the other club mentors: career and business technology teacher Robby Blakemore or math teacher Heather Jones.

McEachern Assistant Principal Paul Gillihan uncovered the opportunity to provide an academic robotics course while talking about the club with Eubanks.

“We were just talking together and talking about other classes on the pathways, and I just noticed from the state that there was a fourth-year alternative course for robotics,” Gillihan said. “It’s just finding the kids that are interested and then making the scheduling possible.”

Attracting Club Leaders

Between 14 and 20 students are enrolled in the county’s first academic robotics class. Eubanks noted that all of the eligible students have been in his engineering classes since they were freshmen and were also robotics club team members.

Gillihan said the class is "a normal credit course."

“It’s the engineering pathway—technically they completed it with their third course, but this is just an extension," he said. "We have a lot of young freshmen who are entering the engineering program so they can enter robotics as a senior as an academic class.”

Eubanks said the new course likely will cause seniors to skip school less frequently. 

“These kids will come to school more often as seniors because it’s something they’re interested in,” said Eubanks, who has taught engineering for 13 years at McEachern after retiring as a Sara Lee sales rep. “They’ll say, ‘Now I know why math is important.’ These kids are very passionate about it. Robotics, you see, is super cool.”

Gillihan said the class will be taught every other day during the last period before the extracurricular robotics club meets. This will afford the older leaders of the club to better organize, plan and build robots for competitions, he added.

Students with strong robotic skills are fast becoming some of the most sought after seniors by universities. Eubanks said some top colleges offer robotic scholarships to high school seniors for as much as $5,000 a semester or even more.

Students will have the opportunity to learn robotics in more depth at college "whether in manufacturing or exploration, because you can send a robot down a crater of a volcano in Hawaii, there’s one running on Mars, one on the moon and one on the bottom of the ocean," he said.

Key to America's Future

Ed Barker, who Eubanks calls his mentor, oversees ’s robotics club. He believes the study of robotics is critical to the country’s future and is happy to hear about McEachern offering robotics as a class.

“That’s exactly what this country needs and what employers are demanding,” said Barker, who has advised Kell’s robotics club for seven years. “It’s important that the community view this not as another activity, but as a serious activity that is really important to national defense, health care, energy security and just the ability to create good jobs in this country. Those national priorities are really dependent on the good programs we have at Kell and McEachern and the other (county) schools.”

Barker said ’s robotics club, which dates back to 2003, is the oldest in the Cobb County School District—followed shortly after by Kell. Other county high schools have robotic club programs as well, such as  and . Barker said  may soon offer one too.

Eubanks said the McEachern's robotics club features 60 students from all aspects of the high school, including members of sports teams, the marching band, “every social status,” ethnicity and skill set. The club team, which built two robots, finished fifth last year out of 48 teams at the FIRST Peachtree Regional Robotics Competition.

“I’m excited for my kids,” Gillihan said. “When you walk in and see the diversity of the kids in that club, it just floors you because there are kids from every aspect of class and they’re coming to the class for one purpose—to build a robot to compete.”

Eubanks said “it’s amazing the problem solving these kids do."

“The whole robotics thing is not me telling them what to learn; it’s about them working with each other and them exploring their strengths or weaknesses,” he said. "It’s not my job to hover over them."

He continued: "If they go to work at any company, this robotic competition (is going to help them because it) is about using other people and their skills to accomplish a lot. They have to find their way on their own.”