2007 Alabama BEST
(Boosting Engineering, Science, and Technology)
Tennessee Valley BEST Update
Willie Fitzpatrick, Section Chair
The IEEE Huntsville Section is serving on the Tennessee Valley BEST (Boosting Engineering, Science, and Technology) Steering Committee and serving in the role of the “A-Team technical crew during the local hub Competition to be held at Calhoun Community College. The Tennessee Valley BEST Competition is six weeks long beginning with the Kick Off Day held on Saturday, August 25, 2007. This Year’s game is called “2021: A Robot Odyssey.” Game Day will be held at Calhoun Community College on Saturday, October 6, 2007 between 9 A.M. and 5:00 P.M. You are welcome to attend. On Friday, August 24, 2007, members of the IEEE Huntsville Section met with Dr. George Blanks and Dr. Sue Mitchell at Calhoun Community College to complete finishing touches on 18 returnable kits for the schools participating in the Tennessee Valley BEST (Boosting Engineering, Science, and Technology) competition. Bob Robinson, Rene Robinson, and Keith Jadus, and I got a really good a glimpse of what’s in store for us next year in the preparation and distribution of the kits. We even had a little fun setting up several assembly lines to get the receiver and tether boxes put together before 9:30 P.M. We were joined by Wayne Kendrick on the Kick Off Day, August 25, 2007 and were impressed by all of the enthusiasm displayed by the various students. Please see the photo gallery for some of the great pictures taken by Wayne, Bob, and Rene during this weekend.
After Kick Off Day, we next met with the students at the "dry run" on Mall Day, held at Madison Square Mall (Huntsville, AL) on Sunday, September 23. Mall Day was the first chance some Schools had to try out their robot design on the practice field prior to the competition. The current schools signed up to participate in the Tennessee Valley BEST competition are: Albertville City (Boaz), Athens Bible School (Athens), Austin High School (Decatur), Bob Jones High School (Madison), Decatur High School (Decatur), Gadsden High School (Gadsden), Holly Pond High School (Holly Pond), Homewood Middle School (Birmingham), Hoover Freshmen Center (Hoover), Hoover High School (Hoover), Mountain Brook Junior High (Mountain Brook), New Century Technology/Lee High Schools Robotics (Huntsville), Oak Mountain High School (Birmingham), Priceville High School (Decatur), Riverside Christian Academy (Fayetteville, TN), Spain Park High School (Birmingham), Sparkman High School (Harvest), and Vestavia Hills High School (Vestavia Hills).
You can find out more about Tennessee Valley Best by accessing the following link: http://www.tennesseevalleybest.org/ and more about BEST by accessing http://www.bestinc.org/MVC/ or the South’s BEST at http://www.southsbest.org/ for Regional events. The current IEEE Huntsville section members of the “A-Team” (Technical Crew) are Bob, Robinson, Keith Jadus, Wayne Kendrick, Jim Covington, Frank Parris, and Willie Fitzpatrick. There’s still room for a few more members, please contact Bob Robinson at robert.a.robinson5@ieee.org or me at willie.fitzpatrick@ieee.org , if you are interested in serving as a volunteer for this year’s event as a member of the “A-Team”.
Lanny Upton is recruiting judges for the Tennessee Valley BEST 2007 robotic competition. Notebook judging is set for Thursday night Oct 4. Game day will be Saturday Oct 6. This is your invitation to participate as a judge during the competition. Please use the judging sign up form, on which you can select areas you can participate. The game day competition (Saturday Oct 6) will need several judges, so please consider helping. There are a few changes for this year:
- The competition will be at the Calhoun main campus gymnasium.
- The notebook judging will be in Calhoun's Noble Russell Building Conference room (6:00-9:00) on the main campus.
- No Friday competitions this year.
- The oral presentations will be on Saturday (Oct 6).
- The notebook judging will be Thursday night (6:00 Oct 4).
Judges will have a great meal on Thursday and Saturday. TV Best always needs judges, so if you know of someone who can help, pleases forward to them and encourage them to help. If you know someone who has helped in the past, please forward to them. Let Lanny know you availability ASAP, edit the attached form, and contact him at Lanny.Upton@nasa.gov or phone him at 256-544-6590.
Willie J. Fitzpatrick, PhD
Chair, IEEE Huntsville Section
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