UA Engineering Hosts Robotics Training Workshop for High-School Teachers

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — The University of Alabama College of Engineering will host a robotics training workshop for Alabama K-12 teachers at Central High School in Tuscaloosa Saturday, Nov. 12.

The goal of this workshop is to raise awareness of opportunities in computer science and technology through the exciting context of robotics programming. During the workshop, about 30 teachers will receive robotics training, providing them with the knowledge to introduce basic robotics experiments and projects at their schools.

In addition to training, teachers will receive robot kits on loan from UA’s department of computer science and The University of Alabama at Birmingham. These kits will be used as tools to train students on robotic basics in preparation for a state-wide robotics competition to be held in Tuscaloosa in April 2012.

This workshop is supported in part by a grant from the Association for Computing Machinery’s Computer Science Education Group. This Alabama-focused workshop is one of three similar projects funded nationwide by the ACM and is the only one of its kind in the South.

For additional information about this workshop or the upcoming robotics competition, contact Dr. Jeff Gray, associate professor of computer science, at 205/348-2847 or gray@cs.ua.edu.

In 1837, The University of Alabama became one of the first five universities in the nation to offer engineering classes. Today, UA’s fully accredited College of Engineering has more than 3,100 students and more than 100 faculty. In the last eight years, students in the College have been named USA Today All-USA College Academic Team members, Goldwater scholars, Hollings scholars and Portz scholars.