Winthrop Foundation Awards WHS Robotics Club $5,000 Grant

By Delia Parco and Elizabeth Rueda Gynn

It’s amazing what a vision and some action can do.

In 2016, Ms. Rosemary McCarthy and former WHS students Elizabeth Collins and Trinity Rist had a vision to create new engineering, coding and innovation opportunities for students at Winthrop High School. They took their vision and created the WHS Robotics Club, named their team Norse Code to participate in competitions, and every year since, the Club has been an expanding extracurricular organization at the high school.

In May 2022, the Winthrop Foundation was proud to award the Robotics Club a $5,000 grant. The grant will allow the students to participate in the 2022/23 First Robotics Club (FRC) Competition, in which thousands of teams from all over the world compete with robots they’ve created. The Foundation’s grant will also help the WHS Robotics Club increase the number of STEM events in the Winthrop schools, and spread awareness to the youth of Winthrop about the power of STEM skills in the world today.

WHS Robotics Club includes a faculty advisor Mr. Vinny Tarantino, two volunteer mentors, Mr. Rick Brian and Mr. Paolo Correa, and seven students: Elizabeth Carney, Jonah Clark, Hanna Essaouabi, Natalaiya Melnyk, Daniel Nieves. Delia Parco and Club President Ben Prew.

The WHS Robotics Club had a highly successful rookie year in 2019-2020. The Norse Code team created a robot that competed in the two regional competitions, made the playoffs in both, and won the highest “rookie seed and inspiration” award. In the 2020/2021 season, in-person competitions were canceled due to Covid. Even so, WHS was able to participate in an “Innovation Challenge”, designing and presenting to the judges a component that helps wheelchair users navigate crosswalks.

The robotics trend is spreading! With Principal Curley’s permission, some of the WHS robotics students started a coding club at Winthrop Middle School. High schoolers meet with middle school students once a week to teach Scratch (a free programming language where you can create your own interactive stories, games, and animations) and they help give middle-schoolers an early start into STEM.

Any WHS student is welcome to join the Robotics Club, whether they know coding or not. The Club teaches technical skills (robotics, computer programming, mechanical and electrical engineering, coding/Python, etc.).  But students also learn and share non-technical skills: problem-solving, fundraising, leadership, outreach, how to manage media, etc. In addition, the WHS Robotics Club is committed to increasing representation among underserved and underrepresented students in STEM.

The WHS Robotics Club will start around the first week of school in September. If you have questions, feel free to email Ben Prew at bprew@students.winthrop.k12.ma.us or Delia Parco at dparco@students.winthrop.k12.ma.us.The Club will also have a table and candy at Club Day at WHS, so if you’re a student, stop by the Robotics table and see what it has to offer!

If you’re a parent or someone who’d like to mentor, donate, or help out, contact Mr. Vinny Tarantino at vtarantino@winthrop.k12.ma.us. And learn more about the history of how the Robotics Club got started at WakeUp Winthrop (the WHS student YouTube channel).

Congratulations, WHS Robotics Club!

Since its founding in 2019, the Winthrop Foundation has been honored to provide nearly $300,000 in grant funding to strengthen our town’s nonprofits and public-serving groups. Some recipients include: Mi-Amore; CASA for youth mental health; holiday tree lighting; Hometown Health Heroes; Hope for the Holidays; Little League; emergency local economic stimulus; WHS PTO; WMS summer books program; Winthrop Public Library; Trades Scholarships for deserving WHS seniors; Urban Canopy/Winthrop Loves Trees; WHS Robotics Club; and more.  Board Chairman Russ Sanford and all of the Trustees look forward to many more years of serving the Winthrop community.