47 Beavers - Beaver Robotics Booster Club, Inc.

While many robotics teams have a competitive nature leading to a stressful environment, the founding members of our team, 47 Beavers formed their own student-led team with the desire to cultivate a friendly and less stressful environment. Since creating our own FTC (First Tech ChallengeTeam), we pride ourselves on being a diverse team environment with members representing various high schools such as Poolesville, Northwest, and Quince Orchard. As a team, we have also had tremendous success in competition settings. We were selected as quarterfinalists in the FTC Howard 2 Qualifiers and semifinalists in the FTC Maryland State Competition. We’ve also been recipients of the Motivate Award and Judges’ Award. Aside from competing regularly in competitions, we have maintained our overall mission of creating accessible and inclusive opportunities for younger students. Our team routinely engages and hosts various STEM-related outreach activities to benefit our community. Each year 47 Beavers holds its very own STEM summer camp, BeaverCamps. BeaverCamps is a collection of STEM-related courses such as Physics, Math, Programming, CAD, and Engineering. Alongside BeaverCamps, we also attend many community fairs like the Rockville Science Day and Cyberninjaz. This year, with COVID-restrictions easing up, 47 Beavers visited Kingsview Middle School to partake in STEM experiments with their students as part of their summer program.

Our team’s mission is to increase STEM awareness in our community, and our volunteers will help us to achieve that goal. They will help organize and participate in outreach activities such as counseling at summer camps, hosting booths at nearby STEM showcases, and hosting wide-scale community events with other local robotics teams. The biggest priority for our team is to help inspire younger generations of students to pursue STEM-related fields. Our volunteers will help us accomplish this goal by providing their unique experiences and perspectives and applying that to the outreach events to better help our students.