Sixteen members of Ferradermis chose to participate in the team’s 4th annual trip to Madison for Robotics Advocacy Day at the State Capitol on Thursday, February 12.
Over 300 middle school and high school robotics students and their mentors from across the state gathered at Monona Terrace to begin their day with lessons on state government and how to advocate with legislators. As both a parent of robotics team members and a state legislator, Representative Brienne Brown addressed the large group and encouraged students to embrace the opportunity to make a difference.
Wisconsin offers a robotics league participation grant as one way to promote STEM education, and each year, teams descend on the capitol to discuss the importance of continuing and potentially increasing this funding. This year’s ask was for our representatives to consider lowering the age group for the grant to include elementary school teams; currently the grant is only open to teams with students in grades 6-12.
After a morning of speakers and meeting rehearsals, teams moved to the capitol building. Throughout the day, robot demonstrations took place in the rotunda.
Ferradermis members were able to schedule meetings with seven different legislators and/or their staffers over the course of the afternoon. In order to cover the full schedule of meetings, the students split into two and sometimes three groups. Within each group, students divided up their talking points with one student taking on the role of facilitator. At times, Ferradermis joined together with other teams who shared the same legislator.
Ferradermis’ first meeting of the day was with Senator Melissa Ratcliff, a joint meeting with Ferradermis and FTC Team 10100 Phoenix Force from Verona.
Next up was a meeting with Representative Brienne Brown who is very familiar with FIRST already, but the team spent some time talking about the changes coming to FIRST Lego League and the need to extend the Robotics League Participation Grant to the lower grades.
The team then met with staff from Representative Ann Roe’s office in conjunction with FTC 21355 Turtle TEK from Beloit. The Assembly was in session throughout the day, so many of the meetings were with staffers instead of the representatives themselves if the timing did not work out.
Part of the team was then able to meet with staffer Katherine Morgan for Representative Joan Fitzgerald.
Next on the Ferradermis Advocacy Day agenda was a meeting with a staffer for Senator Mark Spreitzer. The Whitewater team was again able to team up with students from Turtle TEK for this meeting.
Thank you to staffer Cameron O’Connell from Representative Tyler August’s office for taking the time to learn about FIRST Robotics.
The final Ferradermis meeting on Advocacy Day was with staff from Senator Steve Nass’ office.
Article and Photos Submitted by Laura Masbruch
Whitewater High School Robotics Advisor
lmasbruch@wwusd.org
