EDITORS ALERT
"Storming the Bastille," MIT's tabletop robot competition for minority high school seniors
��������� WHEN: Friday, July 14, 2000, 2:00-4:30 p.m.
��������� WHERE: Building 34, Rm 101 (50 Vassar Street, Cambridge)
MIT's summer course for minority high school seniors -- MITE2S -- kicks off its 25th anniversary celebration July 14 with a tabletop robot contest called "Storming the Bastille."
Exactly 211 years after the French stormed the Bastille, MITE2S students will face the challenge once again, fighting for creativity, innovation and teamwork. Their task will be to send as many revolutionaries as possible into the Bastille and release the prisoners from the dungeon. In teams, the 16- and 17-year-olds have designed, built and will operate their remote-controlled machines to mobilize forces and move them around the battlefield.
The MITE2S' participants -- 30 young men and 32 young women hailing from 26 states and the District of Columbia -- live at MIT for six weeks. Their schedule includes 10 hours daily of classes, tutoring and study time. This year, MITE2S received about 600 applications. All the students are admitted on full scholarship; food, housing and tuition are provided.
In addition to the engineering design contest, the students will compete in an entrepreneurial competition, Enterprise Fair, onWednesday, August 2, 2000 at 5:30pm, to show off their business plans for high-tech products (Ting Foyer, 70 Memorial Drive, Cambridge).
Since 1975 the MITE2S program has introduced underrepresented minority students to engineering and science at the university level. The program competes with about 400 other summer academic programs in the United States, but it is unique. Fewer than 15 programs nationally are designed specifically for minorities, and a mere handful of those concentrate on engineering, mostly for a week's duration.
25th anniversary activities include talks by:
��������� Franklin Chang-Diaz, NASA astronaut -- Friday, July 14, ~6:30 p.m.
��������� Sandra Begay-Campbell, director, American Indian Science and Engineering Society (AISES) -- Saturday, July 15, ~6:30 p.m.
MIT Faculty Club, 50 Memorial Drive
