The Westview Robotics Team was founded in 2004. Even though our team meets at Westview High School, we welcome students from other local schools. For the last years we welcomed students from Southridge HS, High School of Science and Technology (Beaverton District), and Century HS (Hillsboro District).

The Team participates in FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology). The FIRST robotics competition is a multinational event where high school students and professionals solve an engineering design problem in an intense and interactive learning environment. In 2007, the competition reached more than 32,500 high-school students in 1,305  teams, including 260 rookies and 37 Regional events. Teams came from almost every U.S. state and from Brazil, Canada, Israel, Mexico, Netherlands, and the U.K. FIRST offers almost $8 Million in scholarships to team members .

Each year a new competition challenge is unveiled at the beginning of January. The teams then have only six weeks to strategize, design, build, and program a robot to meet the challenge. The participants learn to apply science, math, and technology to the design, construction, programming, and troubleshooting of a 130-pound robot.

It is not only about building the robot. The robot is only a vehicle for a learning experience that lasts a lifetime. Students and mentors are exposed to and practice the concept of “Gracious Professionalism”. The only time teams compete against one another is on the field. Off the field all the teams work together, helping each other in every way possible.

A key aspect for the success of any team is teamwork. It goes beyond the group of students, because it integrates mentors from the hi-tech industries, parents, and sponsors, all working together. This is a volunteer based program and runs after school and weekends, all year round. We are honored to have mentors from Synopsys, Intel, PCC, Tektronix, OMSI, and Symantec. Our motto is: “Student designed, Student built, Mentor advised”.

Our team takes gracious professionalism to heart. The students learned dedication, communication, problem solving, and how to listen and respect each other’s ideas. The team does not require previous experience, most of our members had not even touched a tool before.

The most rewarding "Award" is to see how much the team has grown and learn in a few months. The primary goal of our team is not receiving trophies but to teach our students the FIRST concepts of teamwork, leadership, communication, work under pressure of time, dedication, integrity and gracious professionalism.

"FIRST redefines winning for these students. Teams are rewarded for excellence in design, demonstrated team spirit, gracious professionalism and maturity, and ability to overcome obstacles. Scoring the most points is a secondary goal. Winning means building partnerships that last." usfirst.org.

Thank you for supporting the Westview Robotics Team!

Williane Tenca
Team Coach
Email: whs_robotics@comcast.net