Coronado High School junior Mila Waydo was recently awarded the prestigious Southern California Regional FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) Dean’s List Award. She advances to compete at FTC Worlds which will be held April 17-20 in Houston, Texas.
Waydo was the sole female recipient of the award. “Being a Dean’s List Finalist and going to Worlds to represent Coronado High School Robotics means a lot to me because I have worked hard to help grow opportunities for STEM in our community and school. I started the SWE (Society of Women Engineers) club at CHS to help girls develop a passion for STEM while also meeting new like-minded friends. In SWE we aim to have guest speakers, projects and activities to support the love for engineering in young women,” said Waydo.
FTC is a global robotics community that advances STEM education with a goal of preparing young people for the future. The FTC Dean’s List award recognizes the leadership and dedication of the most outstanding secondary school students from all FTC teams.
Coronado Unified School District Robotics Coordinator and Head Coach Roberta Lenert expressed her pride in Waydo’s achievement. “Mila’s dedication to leadership, innovation, and inclusion exemplifies excellence in STEM and inspires all girls to pursue their dreams in robotics. Her successes in creating a new chapter of Society of Women Engineers (SWE) at CHS, interning and coaching at CMS Robotics, and coding and engineering a winning robot for our rookie FTC team are a few of her amazing talents that make Mila stand out as a pioneer for STEM and First Robotics,” said Lenert.
Lenert explained that from Southern California FTC Regionals there are only five opportunities to go on to the Worlds; one team from robot game, one team for the Inspire Award, and three Dean’s List Award winners (of which Waydo was one). Lenert shared that making it to FTC Worlds is “the ultimate goal” for all teams. “This will be Coronado Robotics first appearance at Worlds,” she said.
Waydo is looking forward to representing CHS in Houston and bringing back information to the team and helping to grow the program, especially for girls, in Coronado. “I want to encourage other girls like me to have a passion for math and engineering as well as community service. An aspect of this opportunity that is most important to me is that it enables me to represent women in STEM on a World stage and can open more pathways for girls to excel at robotics and engineering.”
CHS offers multiple opportunities to participate in robotics programs based on students’ interest and time availability. The application-based teams are the FTC (of which Waydo is a member) which competes against other high school teams in designing, building, and coding of robots; and the Additive Manufacturing Team which provides hands-on experience using 3D and resin printing technology and software and allows students to compete individually as their schedules allow. Additionally, there is a FIRST Robotics Competition team (known as Crown City Robotics) which is open to all students and competes against 50 other high school teams at the FRC competition at UCSD each spring.
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