Women in outreach

Greetings, We are Team 4085! Established with just a handful of members in 2011, our team today has grown significantly to almost 50 members. We owe our growth and success over the past decade to FIRST, as well as the guidance and mentorship provided by our coaches, mentors, and sponsors. Currently, we are a team of 62 members, including mentors, and are honored to uphold FIRST's values. We are split into 9 subteams— some of which being under a marketing category, and the rest being under a build category. The subteams include mechanical, electrical, software, fablab, tactical, business, outreach, media and design. Our team is committed to promoting STEM education among young people, which we view as a key objective of FIRST.

We take pride in being a student-led team, with various sub-teams collaborating and communicating effectively throughout the build and event seasons. Each subteam is supervised by a designated leader, ensuring that all tasks are carried out efficiently. This past season we worked on ways to restructure our team to more effectively ensure that the sub-teams we have are working for our members. Each year during the robotics season and event season, we spend time focusing on how we can improve our team to be more efficient and successful.

Our outreach efforts extend beyond our team, as we endeavor to promote FIRST's message to the broader Columbus Ohio community. For instance, we partnered with StepAhead Tech to host a seminar aimed at introducing minority populations to STEM. We acknowledge that underrepresented communities often face challenges in STEM fields, and we are committed to addressing this issue. As such, we established a Robotics club at a local elementary school with a 71% minority enrollment, where we instruct over 90 students in STEM-related skills.

Our outreach events frequently center on our Girls in STEM initiative, which aims to encourage more girls to pursue STEM fields. We have successfully helped several troops earn STEM-related badges this year alone, inspiring a new generation of leaders. Additionally, we host Girls in STEM events explicitly designed for girls. Our team encourages girls in our community to explore STEM education along with various STEM fields.In the latest 2023 robotics season,team 4085 is made up of 46% of girls. In addition, for the upcoming season our CPM (Chief Project Manager) is a female who is taking the lead and initiative to drive our team to be the best we can be for next year. While there was tough competition for our leadership roles, for the next season our leadership team is made up of 50% of females!  Additionally, we also have outreach events that target the younger generation of Reynoldsburg. We are constantly interacting with our youth through our outreach programs, which include some such as our robotics club at local elementary school Herbert Mills, our appearance at the city hall Christmas on the Town event, COSI (Center of Science and Industry, a Science museum here in central Ohio), and more. We also try to reach out to immigrants in our community, with the majority of the youth at these events being racial or ethnic minorities. This contributes to our newest outreach initiative, R.I.S.E. (Refugee and Immigrant STEM Experience)!

While team 4085 does not limit itself to just the female population, we strongly believe that everyone from anywhere deserves to explore the STEM experience. Rise, Tobi’s Toys, and Girls in STEM are all outreach initiatives that have been a part of team 4085 for the longest time. These outreach events are all ways to pave the way for the next generation of our team. Team 4085 is always up to date on posting about our events on our Instagram @techdiff4085. 

This blog was submitted by Technical Difficulties, FRC team 4085. If you are interested in blogging for FIRST Ladies, click here to sign up on the schedule!