Westwood students particpate in local MESA competition

Four Westwood Middle School students - Bethany Fisher, Andres Margraf, Juliane De Los Santos and William Prater - recently participated in the eighth-grade Spokane MESA (Math, Engineering, Science and Achievement) competition at Gonzaga University, March 10.

According to its website, Spokane MESA strives to improve the diversity and retention of students traditionally underrepresented in sciences, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields.

The organization works during the academic year with high school and middle school teachers to enhance their students' education with curriculum-aligned field trips, guest speakers, competitions and hands-on activities, as well as college preparation support services. This year's competition marked the first time Westwood students participated in the event. In an email, Westwood teacher Emily Audet said there was another team of eight students who created a robotic arm, but had decided to opt out of the competition because "they were not quite ready."

For the competition, students had to design, build and program a robotic arm to perform various tasks such as picking up objects from inside a bucket and placing them in certain areas on a platform. According to Fisher, students are tasked to create the robotic arm that would act as a prosthetic arm for people who have lost motion in their wrist. Students spent two months after school, and some Saturdays, creating their robotic arm.

"The longest part was designing the arm," Margraf said. "Once we got it down, we managed to assemble it pretty quickly."

While other schools focused on having their robotic hand do two motions, the Westwood students "went basic" and programmed their arm to move an object in one simple motion. One difficulty students had was securing the wires onto the robot and preventing them from falling out of place.

"This gave us a chance to take charge and be creative," De Los Santos said, referring to the team's experience in creating the arm. "There were some minor problems, but every time we fixed it, it worked flawlessly."

Students also used some resources from Eastern Washington University's physical therapy department to make the arm, which Margraf said "helped a lot."

Although Westwood ended up finishing second-to-last place, De Los Santos said he and his classmates "loved all of the people we worked with" during the competition.

"You're using your knowledge of math and science and applying it to your robot, but you're also taking suggestions from others and working as a group," De Los Santos said.

Audet said the team also had to make modifications and troubleshoot during the competition.

"They had to use their creativity," Audet said. "I was proud of them."

Margraf said he and the other students had been in other school science competitions before, but the MESA event was "unique."

"The biggest thing is now we know some of the specific things to do for next year's competition," Margraf said. "When you go into something like this for the first time, you don't know exactly what to work on or what the expectations are, and so you try to rush things and do them at the last minute."

Al Stover can be reached at al@cheneyfreepress.com.