FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                                                              September 11, 2003

HEARTLAND BEST ROBOT-BUILDING COMPETITION TO BEGIN

            The second annual Heartland BEST robot-building competition gets underway at Northwestern Oklahoma State University on Saturday. Sixteen high and middle school teams from Oklahoma have pre-registered.

            BEST stands for Boosting Engineering, Science and Technology and was originated by two Texas Instrument Engineers in 1993 to foster interest in those fields. The first contest involved 14 schools and 221 students. In 2003, it is projected that more than 700 schools will participate at hub sties in eight states.

            Northwestern served as a hub site for the first time last year and is one of two in Oklahoma. Eight teams competed in 2002 with Freedom and Fairview high schools going on to compete in the Texas BEST national finals at Texas A&M University. Of the 60 teams in Texas, Freedom placed 16th.

            Registered this year are teams from Alva, Blackwell, Burlington, Cheyenne, Fargo, Francis Tuttle, Freedom, Gage, Kingston, Putnam City, Sharon-Mutual, Shattuck, Tuttle, Vici and Woodward high schools and Buffalo Middle School.

            On Saturday, representatives from each school will register from 9 to 10 a.m. in Herod Hall Auditorium. After registration, Dr. Paul Beran, university president, will extend a welcome to

the students, teachers, mentors and sponsors. Sponsors of the event, the Heartland BEST staff members and participants will be recognized. The staff will review rules, guidelines and the identical building kits that will be distributed to each team.

            Lunch in the Coronado Café will be provided by Northwestern.

            After lunch, the students will see the set up of the game field in Percefull Fieldhouse for the first time and receive the building kits that contain all components to build their robots—everything from PVC pipe to motor components to ball bearings to a radio set to drive the robot. There also will be a prototype robot demonstration.

Rotating workshop sessions in physics principles, electronics, fabrication tips and RC equipment will be presented between 2 and 4 p.m.

Teams will have until Mall Day on Oct. 18 at Oakwood Mall in Enid to build their robots. From 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., teams will be able to send their robots for a practice run over the game field, then go back to their schools to fine-tune their robots. That same day, project summary notebooks and table displays will be judged.

            This year’s competition is called “Transfusion Confusion” and all aspects of the game field are kept secret until the unveiling on Saturday.

Game Day will be Saturday, Nov. 1, in Percefull Fieldhouse. Oral presentations will be made in Herod Hall Auditorium at 8 a.m., and teams will be able to test drive their robots from 8 to 9:30 a.m. Preliminary competition is scheduled to begin at 9:45 a.m. and continue until approximately 2 p.m. It will consist of matches among randomly selected opponents. The top eight teams based on total scores will then compete in the round robin finals.

A BEST Award will go to the team with the highest score in all elements of the

competition and a Game Award will go to the team whose robot outperformed all others during Game Day.

To win the BEST Award each team must keep a project notebook, make an oral presentation about their robot, prepare a table display and participate in interviews. Each of

these elements is awarded points, as is the spirit and sportsmanship displayed by team members.

            All students are asked to participate in surveys before and after the competition to gauge how much the program has increased interest in the engineering, science and technology fields.

The two award-winning teams will then go on to the Texas BEST Game Days at Texas A&M University on Nov. 20-22. If the same school wins both awards, the runner-up for the BEST Award also will go to the national competition.

            Steve Maier, assistant professor of physics, is the Heartland BEST director. Staff members include Dr. Martha Evans, assistant professor of education; Tim Maharry, assistant professor of math; John Evans; Amber Maier, Dr. Spence Pilcher, assistant professor of chemistry; and Dr. Cynthia Pfeifer-Hill, chair of the biological and physical sciences department.

            In addition to Northwestern, sponsors include ConocoPhillips, Cargill, Charles Morton Share Trust, Chesapeake Energy Corporation, Pettit’s Carpet, Lowe’s, Oakwood Mall, Central National Bank of Alva, Community National Bank of Alva, Alva Vision Clinic, State Farm Insurance of Alva, Alva’s Wal-Mart Supercenter, Alva Chapter of American Association of University Women, Dr. Jeffrey Pierce, Kent W. Johnson & Sons Insurance, Washburn Motor Company and Radio Shack of Alva.

-NW-

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