Outreach Events 2021-2022

​The Alabama Astrobotics Team participates in many outreach events each cycle. Events range from on campus demonstrations to elementary school visits, with the aim to inspire students to be involved and interested in STEM activities and careers.  We are always looking for new outreach opportunities!

Contact Us to Schedule an Event

​Fort Payne Robotics Mentorship

​Fort Payne Virtual Meeting

Throughout the 2021-2022 design cycle, Alabama Astrobotics mentored the Fort Payne robotics teams. Astrobotics met with Fort Payne virtually to give feedback on their FIRST Tech Challenge robot for the Freight Frenzy competition. This virtual meeting led to Astrobotics mentoring the Fort Payne teams in many different ways. The game rules for Freight Frenzy can be found at this link.

UA Campus Visit

Alabama Astrobotics has worked with the Fort Payne Robotics Team as mentors this year while Fort Payne designs and builds a robot to compete in the FIRST Tech Challenge. The two teams have met virtually and in-person during this mentorship.

Governor's App Challenge

Students from the Fort Payne robotics teams competed in the Alabama Governor's App Challenge. Alabama Astrobotics graded the students' entries and also gave some feedback on future improvements. Click the images above to watch videos about each app!

FTC and FLL Scrimmage and State Competition

The partnership between Alabama Astrobotics and Fort Payne extended to the team volunteering at the FTC and FLL State Competitions held at Fort Payne. The Astrobotics team traveled to Fort Payne for a scrimmage before the big event to learn the rules of the games. On March 5th, 2022, 16 members of the Astrobotics team volunteered at the state competitions. The team members served as judges, game referees, robot inspectors, audio-visual directors, the master of ceremonies, and other logistical positions. During the competition, the world record was set for the 2022 FTC competition game Freight Frenzy.

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In-Class Challenges

Chilton Christian Academy

Three members of the Alabama Astrobotics team traveled to Chilton Christian Academy in Jemison, AL. The team met with K-12th graders to give a short presentation on the team, our robot, and Space exploration. After the presentation, the students competed in a building challenge to build the tallest tower possible in ten minutes using only sheets of printer paper.

Holy Spirit Catholic School

Team members visited Holy Spirit High School to give a presentation on the LUNABOTICS competition and the NASA Artemis program. The students also were given the challenge "On Target" from the NASA STEM Engagement resources. Check out the NASA instructions and video on this challenge at this link.

Woodland Forrest Elementary STEM Family Night

Three members of Alabama Astrobotics visited Woodland Forrest Elementary School for their STEM Family Day. Students got to build towers out of as many sheets of paper as possible, even the parents got in on the fun! Pictured above is the Astrobotics team members posing with their tower right before it fell over.

Tours, Presentations, and Demonstrations

Get on Board Day

Get on Board Day is a bi-annual event for student activities on UA's campus to recruit new members. This event reaches thousands of diverse students who attend UA and are looking for ways to get involved at college.

Space Days

The University of Alabama Space Days is an annual event that brings together industry leaders in Space exploration and student groups on campus who share a love of Space. Alabama Astrobotics presented to interested students along with industry leaders on our work as a team. 

Fountain Inn High School

One of our team members spoke to his hometown's FIRST Robotics about Alabama Astrobotics and the LUNABOTICS competition. In addition to talking about the team, he also got a tour of the schools machine shop and mentored the students on their FRC robot designs.

E-Week

Four student groups  from the University of Alabama gathered to hold a virtual info session for 10-12th graders during the College of Engineering's Engineering Week (E-week). The groups presenting were Alabama Astrobotics, UA Space, Alabama Rocketry Association, and the Association of Computer Machinery.

Alabama Mineral Institute and UA College of Continuing Health Sciences

Alabama Astrobotics was invited to present virtually at the Alabama Mineral Institute and the UA College of Continuing Health Sciences. These groups were interested in hearing about the technical topic of Alabama Astrobotics and the project. For example, at the Mineral Institute, team members and faculty advisor Dr. Ricks presented on technical topics the difficulties of mining on the Moon and the resources reaped from the extraterrestrial body. It was an honor to be invited to these events.

STEM Showcase

Members of the Alabama Astrobotics team attended the STEM Showcase held on the university's campus. Middle school students competing in the STEM Showcase visited the team's table to talk about the team and watch a video of the 2019's national championship robot.

Als Pals

Students from the University's partnership program Als Pals visited the Astrobotics lab as part of their STEM engagement program. The students enjoyed their visit and one 3rd grader said he was going to join his school's robotics class because of his visit to Astrobotics.

Alabama Astroboics Lab Tours

Each year, Alabama Astrobotics welcomes visitors from across the country to visit our lab on the University's campus. We ask each visitor to place a blue sticker on the map to mark their hometown. Each red sticker on the map marks our team members' hometowns.

Tuscaloosa Rocketry Challenge

Alabama Astrobotics team members led a small paper airplane activity at the Tuscaloosa Rocketry Challenge Final organization fair. The Tuscaloosa Rocketry Challenge is a service-learning program in the UA's Honors College that encourages hands-on STEM experiences through the building of bottle rockets in local Tuscaloosa Middle Schools. 

Team Enrichment/Diversity Education

Women in STEM Guest Speaker Series

Angela Herblet and Monsi Roman

Dr. Susan Burkett

Rae Ann Meyer

Rebecca Dietz

This year, we had the honor of hosting four speaker events on the topic of Women in STEM. The speakers were as follows.

• · Monsi Roman and Angela Herblet, Program and Project Managers for NASA Centennial Challenges Office at NASA Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC);
• · Rae Ann Meyer, Deputy Manager of the Science and Technology Office at MSFC;
• · Dr. Susan Burkett, retired Professor from The University of Alabama;
• · Rebecca Dietz, Systems Engineer and Alabama Astrobotics alumnus.

Recordings of several of these presentations can be found on our YouTube Channel!

Women in STEM Virtual Forum

This year, the Women in STEM Virtual Forum was hosted by the LUNABOTICS competition. The forum included presentations by Dr. Dawn Martin from Kennedy Space Center and Dr. Maria Choi from NASA Glenn Research Center. Members of the team attended the event and really enjoyed it!

UA College of Engineering Implicit Bias Workshop

Alabama Astrobotics attended an implicit bias workshop with other University of Alabama College of Engineering student groups led by the UA chapter of WOAA (Women of Aeronautics and Astronautics). This training showed everyone how important it is to identify your own biases and make conscious effort to not act on those thoughts. Astrobotics is very appreciative of the workshop leaders and look forward to applying what we learned to bettering ourselves and the team.