Scholarships awarded to area students

MARION – The 2015 RAMTEC Vex League Awards Night was Tuesday with an open house in RAMTEC and an awards presentation in the Tri-Rivers Auditorium.

More than 150 students and family members attended the event, which included the presentation of Ohio State University at Marion Engineering Scholarships to team members with awards totaling $58,000.

"Teams earned $1,000 scholarships for winning the OSUM Engineering Awards at RAMTEC Vex Robotics events throughout the season," said Ritch Ramey, RAMTEC director. "The criteria was based upon their engineering notebooks, interviews and team knowledge of the notebooks, designs and presentations during interviews as well as functionality of their robot designs."

"Many team members won multiple events," Ramey said. "Matt Moreau, director of students enrollment at OSUM, has supported our contests for three years and has distributed more than $100,000 in OSUM Engineering scholarships."

Ramey said the scholarships have reinforced the need to use the engineering problem-solving cycle to continuously improve their robots.

"We have seen a dramatic rise in students' quality of engineering robots, interview skills and the technical knowledge," he said. "They all know their gear ratios, torque, speed and if they have four or six bar mechanisms."

Also during the evening, the audience heard from Tri-Rivers Superintendent Chuck Speelman and Yancey Downey, Honda Engineering coordinator/Technical Development Center. Both speakers emphasized the need for trained engineering technicians and engineers.

"Because of automation, we are bringing jobs back to this country," Speelman said.

Downey said robots are doing the repetitive and oftentimes unsafe jobs that people used to do.

"Robots aren't costing us jobs. In fact, the companies that have automated are adding jobs,"

Ramey said he recently read that "companies must automate or die."

"That's why RAMTEC is so important," Ramey said. "So far, 33 high school students have received FANUC certifications through RAMTEC. We hope to keep doubling that number in order to meet the needs of Ohio."

During the evening, more than 350 Vex Robotics certificates were awarded to the 81 teams represented by the RAMTEC Vex Robotics League, including teams from Tri-Rivers, Marion City, River Valley, North Union, Elgin, Ridgedale, Cardington, Highland, and Grant Middle School.

For students interested in Vex Robotics, Ramey said there is a Summer Camp planned from June 8 to 10 for seventh through 12th graders at Tri-Rivers Career Center. To date, Ramey has received more than 65 applications for the camp.

To apply or learn more about the camp, visit ramtecohio.com or email Rob Smith at rsmith@depcoll.com.