News for and about University of Portland faculty and staff.
Join the STEM Education and Outreach Center and the Garaventa Center for their Joy of Teaching brown bag lunch on Thursday, November 14, noon to 1 p.m., in Franz Hall 120. The theme of this lunch is “Hope.” Time to gather with like-minded joyful teachers for sharing of information, impressions, and the ends and pieces of leftover Halloween candy.
For more information please email salomone@up.edu or childs20@up.edu.
The University of Portland STEM Education and Outreach Center is hosting a Family STEM Night for neighborhood children, grades K-8, and their families on Thursday, November 17, from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m., in Howard Hall. Student volunteers are needed to help with manning the registration table and leading hands-on activities. For more information or to volunteer contact Tisha Morrell, education, at morrell@up.edu.
The University of Portland has been ranked no. 18 in “The Top 21 STEM Colleges of 2016” by Forbes.com. STEM is an acronym used to identify fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. The list of schools, whose most popular areas of study included at least 40% in STEM according to the Department of Education’s College Scorecard, is topped by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. UP came in just below California Polytechnic State University and above Rose Hulman Institute of Technology. The University of Portland is the only Oregon college to be ranked on the list.
To see complete rankings and for more information, go to this link.
The University is sponsoring a free STEM family night on Thursday, November 19, from 7-8:30 p.m., at the Howard Hall gym. All employees and family members are invited to attend the event, which will provide hands-on activities in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) to pique everyone’s interest in those fields.
For more information contact Patricia Morrell, education, at 8013 or morrell@up.edu.
University of Portland business professor Gary Mitchell and his wife, Veronica, coached a team of 13 Lake Oswego students who recently became robotics world champions. The students, ranging from grades eight through eleven, won the Control Award (for Robot Intelligence) at the FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) World Championship, held April 22-25, 2015 in St. Louis, Missouri. Team Axis is a self-funded neighborhood robotics team that just finished its second year of FTC competition.
Only 128 of 4,500 teams from around the world qualified for the annual World Championship. The Mitchells started coaching the team last year when they learned their local high school had no space or budget to support a robotics team. Their son, Colin, is a member of the team as well.
In order to make it to the World Championship, the team had to advance through four levels of competition, including the Oregon State Championship and the West Super-Regional Championship (72 teams from 13 western states). The top 2.9% of teams from around the world competed at the World Championship, including teams from the U.S., China, Germany, Mexico, New Zealand, South Korea, Russia, Canada, Australia, Romania, India, Taiwan, Saudi Arabia, and the Netherlands.
According to the Mitchells, the primary mission of Team Axis is to provide STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) opportunities for kids who do not have access to similar programs through their school.
Team Axis has social media pages at twitter.com/teamaxisftc and www.facebook.com/TeamAxis7187. Additional information on the FIRST FTC program can be found at www.usfirst.org/ftc and information about FTC in Oregon can be found at http://www.ortop.org/ftc/.