MIDLAND, Texas — The Midland ISD robotics teams have been paving their way to the state championship, which takes place later in March. It's a big accomplishment, but one they couldn't have achieved without the support from the community. Some of that support is coming from the oil and gas industry.
Diamondback Energy is a prominent figure in the community and in the classroom, where they've been mentoring the next generation.
“I don't know who gets more excited our volunteers or the robotics team," said Corporate Affairs Representative for Diamondback Erin Bailey.
From energy experts to classroom mentors, Diamondback has been coaching the bright minds of Midland High's robotics team.
“It is amazing to see the different things that they learn, and I can tell you they are all smarter than me when it comes to robotics, and the different things that they present and they bring forward, it is truly phenomenal to see where they have grown over the course of the two years that this mentorship has been in place,” Bailey said.
Diamondback's purpose for this mentorship is for students to have the safe space to explore math and science.
"You're coming in and you can start robotics with absolutely zero experience," Bailey said. "All the students that are involved, all the mentors, all the teachers are here to help you grow. And they are here to make sure that you feel comfortable doing what you're doing.”
For Timothy Witham, a data science geologist for Diamondback, seeing the kids grow has been the most rewarding part of his volunteering experience.
“It's just really amazing to come back every single week and see something new has been added on to the robot from a hardware perspective, but also the student's abilities to get through the code and add more complex controls and functions to the robot's kind of brains," Witham said. "That's been really cool to see."
As for the kids, they think it's really cool too.
“I don't know how it does at our schools or at other teams, but I never had the chance to work side by side with engineers or actually working as a programmer on limited on something that actually does something,” German exchange student Quirin Stetten said.
However, the kids aren't the only one's learning.
"Something that they've taught me in terms of when we write code, it's better to do something called modularization where you kind of make bite sized chunks of code rather than one giant plate of food, right? You want to break it down into bite sized chunks," Witham said. "They've been really good at that and teaching me I need to remember to do that with my own code and my job”
A reminder that knowledge knows no age.
And because the program has done so well already, in the future, Diamondback hopes to expand to more schools in MISD and to involve students in STEM at a younger age.