UJAA to sponsor J’can team to Robotics Olympics | News
The Union of Jamaica Alumni Associations (UJAA), the New York-based school umbrella organisation, will again sponsor a Jamaican school team to the Robotics Olympics. This year, the event will be held in Athens, Greece, from September 26-29.
President of the UJAA, Donavan Wilson, told The Gleaner that preparations for selecting the Jamaican team to participate in the Robotics Competition has already begun.
“Students from 30 schools in Jamaica are vying for places on the Jamaican team,” he said.
Wilson said that the UJAA hopes to send a full team complement to the Olympics this year, consisting of 10 students and two coaches.
He said that, last year, the was unable to send the full team complement because of funding, but hopes that, with this early notice, the necessary financial support will be forthcoming .
Team Jamaica Robotics, sponsored by the UJAA, won gold at the Robotics Olympics held in Singapore from October 7-10 last year.
The team topped the competition to win the Katherine Johnson Award for engineering documentation.
The award is named after African-American Katherine Johnson, dubbed the human computer, who helped to calculate aeronautics that helped guide astronauts John Glen and Alan Shepard’s return to Earth from space.
The award is given to the team that best documents the journey they took in building their robot.
That team comprised captain Johnathan Smith from Campion College, Shawn-Michael Ferguson from Campion College, Duncan Stanley from Wolmers’ Boys’ School, Glenmuir High School’s Terrance Grant; from Hillel Academy, Kimmi Chgan; and Taeija-Lee Hall-Watts from The American International School in Kingston (AISK).
The Olympics are held annually, with participation from some 160 countries.
The UJAA has been undertaking sending teams to the Robotic Olympics since 2011.
In 2022, the Jamaican team won the silver medal in the Albert Einstein Award category for FIRST Global International Excellence, while the UJAA won the Al-Khwarizmi Award for Outstanding Supporter.
UJAA has been the primary sponsor since the FIRST Global Challenge (FGC) began in 2017. Wilson said:“Everyone agrees that STEM education is the future and the robotics competition is one way of exposing Jamaican students to technological developments taking place.” He said it is paramount that Jamaican students are exposed to robotics if they are to succeed in the future.
The UJAA’s contention is that this programme “provides Jamaican students with the expertise and exposure to a once in a lifetime experience that not only allows them to engage with students from across the globe, but combines their accomplishment with encouragement and pride as true ambassadors of Jamaica for Jamaicans globally”.
The 65-member umbrella organisation of alumni associations of schools in Jamaica – from basic to tertiary – has been consistent and deliberate in ensuring that Jamaica participates wherever in the world FIRST Global competition is held.
This will be the UJAAI s 13th year supporting robotics, and the fifth year as a sponsor of the Jamaican team to the international robotics competition.
