Donation Will Allow Program to Upgrade Lego Robotics Equipment
South Boston, VA – October 17, 2013 – Yesterday in the Lego robotics lab at Halifax County Middle School (HCMS), Tad Deriso, President and CEO of Mid-Atlantic Broadband Communities Corporation (MBC) and Greg Lytz, VP of Finance and Administration for MBC, presented a $5,500 donation to the Halifax County Public Schools Education Foundation to help bolster the HCMS robotics program.
Coleman Speece, chairman, and Tay Bost, treasurer, of the Education Foundation, Regan Priest, HCMS robotics instructor, Dr. Merle Herndon, Superintendent of Halifax County Public Schools, and Faye Bruce, Principal of HCMS were there to accept the donation. The funds will be used to replace old equipment, whose replacements parts are no longer in production, with new, more advanced Lego robotics equipment.
The sixth-grade students in Mr. Priest’s class were given the opportunity to demonstrate to MBC how the Lego robotics program works and show off their hard work in a mini-competition that was arranged for the occasion. The students coached and cheered as Tad Deriso and Greg Lytz even got to go head-to-head, battling the robots that the sixth graders had built.
Robotics programs are becoming increasingly more important to companies, Tad Deriso noted, as these programs reflect that there are middle and high school students with high-tech knowledge that can be transformed into concrete high-tech work skills that meet the challenges of the 21st-century workplace. This donation is one way that MBC supports workforce preparation in STEM education, which is a vital component of economic revitalization. We hope that the excitement and enthusiasm shown today will lead to renewed interest in robotics at the high school level so that our students can continue to expand their knowledge in such a critical area.