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What I Learned Talking With Elizabeth

Elizabeth Mabrey, Founder-Storming Robots

Elizabeth has a personality that won’t stop. She was passionate and energetic from the very first part of our conversation. She talked quickly and her enthusiasm just jumped out at me.

Working for corporate America provided Elizabeth a high salary but not much real satisfaction. Frustrated totally with the school systems around her she decided to start a program to teach kids about robotics and technology and to teach them to think creatively and outside the box. She is passionate about students needing to learn to be problem solvers in all dimensions of their lives. She uses robotics and technology to strengthen these skills.

Currently Elizabeth’s program has 140 students enrolled. Some come from as far away as Newtown, PA and Spring Lake, NJ. Most come after school on assigned days. Kids being home-schooled often come during the day. Only 5 of the students are young girls, a major disappointment to Elizabeth who claims the girls in the program really do exceptionally well. Last year at this time she had about 90 students. The subsequent growth spurt she attributes to more parents becoming aware of the need to help their children learn the math and science skills to survive and compete in the world that is emerging all around us.

To facilitate students being able to keep pace Elizabeth opens Storming Robotics on Sundays to give students who miss a class or two a chance to make up their assigned project work.

The school year program breaks into three terms, each running for three months. The tuition per term is $330 which allows each student to come to the Storming Robots facility on Route 22 West in Branchburg for two hour sessions once a week.

Elizabeth accepts kids as early as 3^rd grade and allows each to advance at whatever rate they can achieve. At the end of each term Elizabeth and her staff prepare a written progress report for the parents.

While at Storming Robots the kids work both solo as well as with teams on robot development projects that they select. Some of the examples I saw while there were amazing. Teams from Elizabeth’s robotics program compete on a national and international level.

There are five staff members helping Elizabeth including two high school students who are stand outs in the program.

When we talked about the level of interest and the turn over among students at Storming Robotics Elizabeth indicated that 99% of the kids really want to be there. Parental pressure to have them attend just isn’t needed. Storming Robotics becomes like a second home to the students. The students have even started publishing their own newspaper three times a year to highlight the experiences and accomplishments of the students. As Elizabeth said, “If students stay two terms with us they stay a very long time after that.”

During the summer Elizabeth and her team (her husband, ex with Microsoft, also works in the business) run Storming Robots summer camps that provide a great way for new families to get first hand experience with Elizabeth’s concept. The camp runs for 8 weeks and students can attend from 1 to all 8 weeks.

To quote Elizabeth’s web site: “All summer programs focus on problem solving, analysis, the delivery of true robotics experience and engineering, from mechanical building to automation with robotic programming. All hands-on projects are exercised with an engineering process. Projects involve mathematical applications and problem solving, not just "how to calculate", but also "how to apply" under various scenarios in fun but challenging ways.

Complexity of tasks given to each participant is only limited to what each individual is capable of. For example, a 6th grader may be given complex tasks usually given to a 10th grader; but, if and only if, he/she demonstrates his/her ability to take on the challenge.”

I asked Elizabeth where she will be 5 years from now with Storming Robotics? Convinced that she has in fact developed an educational system that works and teaches kids to think and problem solve Elizabeth wants to grow her program substantially but isn’t yet certain how that will happen. She has ruled out franchising as being too difficult a way to maintain quality control over her methods. Early on in her development she tried to integrate her robotics teaching program into both public and private schools in her area but ran into road blocks and a lack of interest at every turn. But I am certain Elizabeth will find a way to expand her foot print and impact on young people. She is too passionate and too capable to be stopped from extending her program.

To learn more visit www.stormingrobots.com. If you have young school age kids in your life you should check it out. This is a real resource.

Editor's Note: This past weekend the teams had a very successful competition. Three of the competitive teams won to advance to next round. The high school team of five, has just won its way to International Space Station Final. The next step is to have their program run in space on ISS and an astronaut will be their referee. How cool is that!

http://www.zerorobotics.org/web/zero-robotics/finalists2011?tournamentId=1 (We are the defending champion).

Then, at another lower grade competitions, two of the rookie teams advanced from FIRST LEGO League Robotics Regional to State Tournament. One group consists of three very sharp 3rd graders, while another group consists of five 5th & 6th graders.

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Comments (1)

|68.38.139.xxx |2011-12-05 13:22:42 Kerstin - LOVE Storming Robots!

I can't rave enough about Elizabeth and Storming Robots. My son has been going there for the past six years and has learned so much on so many levels. Elizabeth motivates her students to work at a very high level but more important, in my opinion, are the ethical standards she upholds. Students are expected to take responsibility for their own work. They learn how to problem solve and become THINKERS and inventors. They learn to work hard and love doing it.
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