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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tRibbon cutting marks the opening of Hillsborough County\u2019s new STEM Center. Photo by Leah Burdick <\/p>\n
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tRibbon cutting marks the opening of Hillsborough County\u2019s new STEM Center. Photo by Leah Burdick <\/p>\n
The 2026 FIRST Robotics Games Competition \u2014 Rebuilt \u2014 kicked off last Saturday at Hillsborough County Public Schools\u2019 new STEM Center. It\u2019s the first STEM Center in the district, located inside the former Adams Middle School gymnasium.<\/p>\n
The goal is to help expand access to science, technology, engineering and mathematics\u2013 also known as STEM, for local students.<\/p>\n
The new center will serve as a practice, competition, and learning space for middle and high school robotics and drone programs. This is central Florida\u2019s only permanent full scale\u00a0FIRST\u00a0Robotics Competition<\/a>\u00a0practice field, \u00a0FIRST\u00a0Tech Challenge<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0REC Foundation VEX V5\u00a0<\/a>fields and an\u00a0Aerial Drone Competition<\/a>\u00a0field.<\/p>\n The project is a collaboration between Hillsborough County Public Schools, AMRoC Fab Lab and the Future Centers Development Initiative.<\/p>\n Catherine White is the supervisor of k-12 STEM Education<\/p>\n \u201cThis is the only space in Hillsborough like this. SO before the kids would have to drive hours to go practice. So now they\u2019ll be able to stay in the county and practice and compete. And we\u2019ll be able to hold competitions here and attract other schools and other counties to come and compete with us. So since this is one of a kind space, it means a lot to us,\u201d White said. <\/p>\n She said she is thrilled to know students have a place to practice their robotics and in the future, see if they can build a center throughout the middle school.<\/p>\n Dakshesh Kaki is the chief operating officer of the Middleton Robotics organization.<\/p>\n \u201cThe closest practice field to us was about five or six hours away. A small group would make the drive with the robot and our mentor, practice for a few hours, and then drive back because it was really just a one-day thing,\u201d Kaki said.<\/p>\n He said he\u2019s excited about this year\u2019s Rebuilt competition, now that teams have a larger practice space closer to home.<\/p>\n \u201cIf we were able to do what we did last year with all those constraints, I can only imagine where we\u2019re going to go this year. We went from a ten-by-ten space and a field six hours away to something just 30 minutes from us,\u201d Kaki said.<\/p>\n During the ribbon-cutting ceremony, donors and STEM mentors emphasized the importance of introducing STEM education at a younger age \u2014 and hopes the new center helps make that possible.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ribbon cutting marks the opening of Hillsborough County\u2019s new STEM Center. Photo by Leah Burdick The 2026 FIRST…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":116349,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[113,58725,41315,531,6596,135,137,136],"class_list":["post-116348","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-education","tag-hillborough-county","tag-robots","tag-school","tag-stem","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-headlines","tag-tampa-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116348","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=116348"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116348\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/116349"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=116348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=116348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=116348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}