Kettering Hosting 400 Students Saturday To Kick Off FIRST 2012
FLINT -- Kettering University in Flint has been selected as one of 74 host sites worldwide for the official opening of the 2012 FIRST Robotics competition season.
Kettering will host 34 of Michigan's best high school robotics teams during the opening ceremonies for the 2012 season on Saturday, Jan. 7.
Around 400 local participants will be in Kettering's McKinnon Theater Saturday morning to kick off the new season. Teams include:
* Carman-Ainsworth's Big Mo
* Flint FIRE
* Grand Blanc Enginerds
* Goodrich's Martians
* Kettering's Metal Muscle
* Lapeer's Chimeras
* The Charge of Midland
* Team Phoenix from Saginaw, and
* Swartz Creek's Dragons
Teams will also drive in from Auburn Hills, Oxford, Port Huron, Pontiac, and other Michigan cities.
Events begin at 8:30 a.m. for team workshops. At 10:30 a.m., there will be an international broadcast on NASA-TV that will introduce the new season's game rules and contest. Students will then receive their 2012 "robot kit of parts" and will have six weeks to design and build robots to meet this year's engineering challenge.
Many of the visiting teams will return to Kettering on March 2-3 for the Kettering District Competition, where teams will qualify for state and national honors.
FIRST -- For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology -- is an international effort to show youth the fun and career possibilities in engineering and technical fields. There are nearly 60,000 high school participants around the world.
For more on FIRST, visit www.usfirst.org.
