For the second year in a row, Rainier Middle School has captured the regional robotics competition.
Rainier’s “10 Legos in a Bucket” team took first place in the robot performance category and grabbed the Champions Award, the highest award at the competition at the regionals in Des Moines last Saturday.
Rainier will be one of five squads to reach the state competition out of a regional field of 22 teams. The Western Washington State FLL championship competition will be held at Liberty Junior Middle School in Spanaway on Saturday.
Rainier is part of the FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) LEGO League, a global program created to get kids excited about science and technology. FLL uses theme-based challenges to engage kids in research, problem solving and engineering.
The competition includes a 2½-minute robotic challenge, which involves preparing, presenting and executing a selected themed project. This year’s project was a body forward challenge in which FLL teams explored the cutting-edge world of biomedical engineering to discover innovative ways to repair injuries, overcome genetic predispositions and maximize the body’s potential, with the intended purpose of leading happier and healthier lives.
Rainier selected Alopecia Areata – an auto-immune disease that leads to hair loss – as its project theme. The team prepared a five-minute presentation to include its rap, “Jimmy Jam,” which is posted on You Tube. It also created and distributed brochures and presented them to the Alopecia Areata Northwest support group.
Elsewhere
Nine seniors from the Auburn School District’s three comprehensive high schools have been recognized as Commended Students in the 2011 National Merit Scholarship Program. They are: Auburn Mountainview High School – Samantha Fix, Tabitha Lovell, Heidi Milby, Timothy Russell, Parker Sheldon; Auburn Riverside – Karley Thurston; Auburn High – Haeun (Julie) Chang, Alexandra Mihaylova, Cameron Sowards. More than 34,000 commended students throughout the nation are being recognized for their exceptional academic promise. Although they will not continue in the 2011 competition for National Merit Scholarships, commended students placed among the top 5 percent of more than 1.5 million students who entered the 2011 competition by taking the Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT/NMSQT). …
Auburn’s Jeffrey Allen Lawson earned a bachelor of science degree from Excelsior College, an accredited, private, nonprofit institution that focuses on the needs of working adults. …
Evergreen Heights Elementary Trait of the Month (“Keeping a Positive Attitude”) Award recipients for November were: Whitlee Cunningham, Leslie Jimenez, Kasmin Ignat, Connor Wick, Harim Chang, Uri Ridge, Tyson Burtis, Jessica Bucio Lopez, Thomas Dinh, Arzu Beshatova, Jessica Perez, Roman Guerrero, Anastasia Saavedra and Nudia Murillo Moreno.
