Students from Athens Bible School will be among the more than 1,000 middle and high school students, teachers and parents on the campus of Calhoun Community College today to officially kick-off the Tennessee Valley Boosting Engineering Science and Technology robotics competition.

Presented by Auburn University and Calhoun, the competition begins at 10 a.m. in Calhoun’s Kelley Gym.

Calhoun has been selected as one of three sites around the state to host the competition. During Saturday’s kick-off event, teams from the 18 competing schools will receive their kits of equipment and materials for building their robots as well as see the unveiling of this year’s playing field, which is kept a secret until Kick Off Day. This year’s game is called “2021: A Robot Odyssey” and is based upon NASA’s Mars Rover Project.

Kits for building the competition robots consist of plywood and a box filled with items such as PVC pipe, screws and other hardware, an irrigation valve cover, piano wire, an aluminum paint grid, a bicycle inner tube, and a micro-energy chain system. Teams have six weeks to design a functioning machine that can perform certain specific tasks in three minutes during the actual competition, scheduled for Saturday, Oct. 6 at Calhoun.

According to local competition coordinator Dr. Sue Mitchell, a member of

Calhoun’s Computer Information Systems faculty, the BEST competition has been described as being like a basketball game, chess match and science fair all rolled into one day, with cheerleaders, mascots, pep bands, and wildly cheering adults and kids mixed in.

“There is no entry fee for schools and no limit to the number of students who may participate,” said Mitchell. “All equipment and materials used to build and run the robots are provided by Toyota Manufacturing, which has been the program’s sponsor since it began in 2003.”

“We started the BEST program at Auburn in 2001 to help address the critical shortage of engineers and scientists the U.S. is now facing,” says George Blanks, Director of K-12 Engineering Outreach for the Samuel Ginn College of Engineering. “Alabama, like other states, is simply not educating enough engineers to fill jobs that will be open as the baby boomer generation retires. In addition, many new technology-based industries are locating in the state. To ensure economic prosperity into the future, the state must grow its technologically literate workforce.”

Area schools scheduled to participate in this year’s competition include Austin high School; Albertville City; Bob Jones High School; Decatur High School; Gadsden High School; Holly Pond High School; Homewood High School; Hoover Freshman Center; Hoover High School; Mountain Brook Junior High; NCLC Robotics; Oak Mountain High School; Priceville High School; Riverside Christian Academy; Spain Park High School; Sparkman High School; and Vestavia Hills High School.

Those interested can learn more about BEST can go to www.bestinc.org. Schools interested in participating and industries that would like to mentor a team can contact George Blanks at (334) 844-5759 or blankgw@eng.auburn.edu or Sue Mitchell at (256) 306-2655 or sue@calhoun.edu.