Team 1571

The Starting of CAL Robotics

      In the summer of 2004, Microchip and ITT Technical Institute approached the Center for Advanced Learning (CAL) about starting a robotics team to compete in an international competition sponsored by FIRST.

What is CAL?

      The Center for Advanced Learning is a public charter school in Gresham, Oregon.

      Centennial, Corbett, Gresham-Barlow, and Reynolds school districts combined their resources to open the charter school so junior and senior students could further their studies in pre-engineering/manufacturing, information technology, and medical sciences. The students attend CAL four periods and their home high schools for their other four periods.

The Braught Wurst Robotics' team completely starts a new team every year because only juniors and seniors attend the school. The juniors normally do not join the team until mid- season because they do not understand the purpose of the competition until we begin to build a robot. As a result, we feel like a rookie team every year.

We are blessed to be sponsored by Microchip, ITT, and Boeing with mentors from both Microship and Boeing. Braught Wurst Robotics Team prides themseles on a student built robot with mentors advising the students. Final design and build decisions are made by the students. Team 1571 coaches and mentor never wants to hear the words, "I wish our would let us touch our robot" as was said to us by a team member of a winning reional team.