Texas Border Business
McAllen, Texas – For more than a week now, Danelo Gonzalez says his son has come home buzzing with new concepts he picked up as part of the first of three groups of students participating in this year’s Governor’s Summer Merit Program at South Texas College.
While being exposed to everything from automated systems to electro pneumatics to programmable logic controllers his son, Danelo III, an incoming freshman at Roma ISD, is getting a head start into a potential career, Gonzalez said.
“Every day he comes home, my son is thrilled with all of the stuff he has learned and with everything they have exposed him to,” Gonzalez said. “It’s opening his eyes to the different things he may want to pursue in the future, and that’s something that you can’t put a price on. It’s amazing that STC has gone to these lengths to help our students grow.”
The Governor’s Summer Merit program is sponsored by Texas Workforce Commission, which established a grant that enabled STC to host three weeklong camps for students.
The first camp was held June 4 to June 8 for students from Roma ISD. Twenty students from Roma were selected to participate in the five-day camp.
The grant from TWC allows for 60 students from three partnering school districts to participate in a fun and interactive summer camp free of charge.
“This is an introduction to engage students outside of the classroom setting as they prepare to enter high school,” said Dr. Rebecca De Leon, interim dean for Dual Credit Programs and School District Partnerships at STC. “Our robotics and automation camps are providing participants the opportunity to start understanding the various options they have within the STEM fields and courses they can enroll in at the high school and college level.
“This is all in preparation to help them engage further into STEM careers,” Dr. De Leon said.
During the camp, students engaged with STC faculty, who instructed them on robotics and automation. Each day was devoted to a different area of robotics while incorporating STEM concepts including facets of engineering, physics, and mathematics.
On the final day, students earn practical knowledge about working with robots in industry.
“We give students exposure into automated systems,” said Felix Zamarripa, a training specialist with the Office of Industry Training and Economic Development (ITED) at South Texas College. “On Monday we introduced them to the fundamentals of electricity for example, on the second day we concentrated on pneumatics, and then we worked with industrial computers on Wednesday.
“Finally on the fourth and fifth day, we worked with robotic simulation, software and then practical knowledge on how to move robots,” he said. “We took them on a very regimented five days of what they need to know about the disciplines and design in order to solve problems.”
More than 60 students in three camps will benefit from the program. Following students from Roma, La Joya ISD students will participate in the camp from June 11 to June 15, and Mission CISD students will participate on June 18 to 22.
