Q&A: Aptiv Continues to Support FIRST’s Robotics Competitions
To encourage the next generation of STEM professionals, Aptiv has long partnered with FIRST® (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology). The late MIT professor Woodie Flowers, who co-founded the organization and pioneered hands-on learning in his engineering classes, once said that students should “compete like crazy, but treat each other well.” It’s an ethos that FIRST robotics competitions practice to this day, with participants as proud of helping one another as they are of winning, explains Lisa Savage, Aptiv’s principal technical lead for functional safety. Lisa got her start in engineering through her participation on a FIRST team as a high school student, and she now leads Aptiv’s FIRST involvement. She recently discussed Aptiv’s sponsorship of FIRST and other mentorship programs.
What is FIRST, and what is Aptiv’s relationship with the organization?
FIRST started in 1989 to get young people interested in STEM by holding annual competitions to build robots. The kids work directly with professionals — engineers and businesspeople — from the community to build these robots, in the process getting a better idea of what opportunities are out there for them. Aptiv has been involved from nearly the very beginning as a sponsor of both teams and events. For example, we’re the title sponsor for the FIRST in Michigan Troy District Event and State Championship. We now sponsor over 100 teams in the U.S. and around the world, and we’re continuing to expand.
A big element of the FIRST organization and the FIRST community is passing on the skills they’ve learned. For example, there have been teams that taught technology literacy classes to the elderly or helped underserved kids get familiar with STEM. It’s part of what Woodie Flowers called “gracious professionalism.”
What ages are the competitions open to?
There are three programs, aimed at students from kindergarten through high school, with subdivisions to progress skills development. The FIRST Lego® League introduces the youngest students to basic concepts in STEM, using Lego bricks to help them understand design and problem-solving. It’s open to students from around age 5 up to age 16, depending on region. The FIRST Tech Challenge, for students ages 12 to 18, builds on those skills and lets students build robots scaled for schools. At the pinnacle, there’s the FIRST Robotics Competition, in which high school age students get to build amazing industrial-sized robots. We support teams across all three of those levels, both financially and with professional mentors.
Who are the Aptiv mentors, and what help do they provide?
What makes FIRST such a great program is that it’s not just focused on how to build a robot — it also helps kids learn how to market their robot, how to communicate to peers and external audiences, and how to design everything from the machine itself to websites and marketing collateral. And they do that even from the youngest ages. That holistic focus means Aptiv employees contribute across the board: They can be engineers, MBAs, marketers, designers — everyone’s helping. I’m so impressed and grateful that our employees put in over 8,000 hours a year to help kids discover what they can do in STEM.
For a personal example, I’m the coach of a high school robotics team, and one of our big focus areas is combating sexism in STEM. We’ve presented on the topic at local and state levels. This not only encourages more women to pursue engineering but also gives our students practice in making public presentations, which opens up new horizons for them. For example, shy students can discover that they like speaking in public and consider careers they once might have been afraid to try. Imagine what this experience could mean, at a professional level, for a young engineer who has to make a presentation to upper management or a regulatory review board.
At the MassRobotics Robot Block Party, which takes place annually across the street from Aptiv’s Boston office, there is a convergence of robotics engineers and artists. Do you see something similar with FIRST students — creative kids who thought of themselves as artists suddenly realizing they could study engineering?
Yes, about half of my team members are involved in theater, as part of the cast and crew, and they’re able to apply their skills across both hobbies. It’s great to see kids realize that these aren’t completely separate skills. There are also kids who are like me: As a high schooler, I had never picked up a tool in my life, but my friends asked me to join the school’s robotics team. The very first hour, I was absolutely hooked. I’m just grateful for that opportunity to join when I was a student. As an adult mentor, I’m amazed by what students are doing today. It’s not just high school students taking college-level engineering courses; there are second graders walking up to me and saying, “Look what I 3D-printed today!”
Are there opportunities at Aptiv for students who participate in the competitions?
Yes, definitely. We try to stay connected during their time on the team, in hopes that they’ll join us after they graduate — either as an apprentice, as an intern, or further down the road as a full-time employee.
Apprenticeships are targeted toward students who might not be going the traditional college route. It’s a one-and-a-half-year program that gives them hands-on training in their field of interest. Once they’ve met all of the program’s goals, we hope to transition them into full-time employment with Aptiv.
We also have internships! Internships are generally three-to-four-month-long programs during the summer. They focus on students who are getting degrees in fields that align with Aptiv’s recruiting goals.