Westminster Christian students win awards in robotics competition
Westminster Christian School students recently competed in The Robotics Education and Competition Foundation’s 2018 VEX IQ Robotics Competition, where several teams earned top honors for their performance.
The challenge was created to provide elementary and middle school students with hands-on robotics and research project challenges to enhance their science, technology, engineering and mathematics skills. The competition featured 23 elementary teams from eight local public and private schools, and Westminster elementary students earned the STEM Research Project Award and the Design Award.
Team members included Joey Hernandez-Solaun, Amarri Irvin, Santiago Ganley, Anthony Gonzalez, Jonah Santiesteban, Russell Briggs, RJ Linares, Daniel Fernandez, Andrew Godoy, Gaby Gonzalez, Gabi Martin, Reva Eikenberg, Kaitlyn Walker, Ilysa Hilliard, Zoe DeVarona, Sara Espitia, Gigi Artiles, Lorena Haedo and Caroline Seagren.
Also, Westminster middle school students competed in the foundation’s 2018 VEX EDR Robotics Competition at Ransom Everglades Upper School, which required students to design and build a robot to compete against other teams in a game-based engineering challenge. Two Westminster teams earned high scores in the first half of the competition, and one team made it to the final elimination bracket. Team members included Julia Almirall, Francisco Arango, Emilio Banuelos, Andres Cardenal, Tosh Curtin, Jacob Dumas, Ashley Gomez, Trinity Kinsey, Emily Nasr, Ruben Orellana, Oliver Ruiz, Christian Sanchez, and Cole Woodward.
Archimedean Upper Conservatory Charter School
Diego Torrejon, an Archimedean Upper Conservatory Charter School alumnus, was awarded a $500 scholarship from Women of AT&T’s Florida chapter for his academic excellence.
The Women of AT&T National Scholarship Program awards high school seniors and current college students that have a 3.0 GPA or higher, are active in their community and school and are sponsored by a member of the organization.
In high school, Diego won the Advanced Placement Scholar Award, the Scholastic Distinction Award and Scholastic Achievement Award for his academic performance; he was the head delegate for the debate team — winning several Model United Nation competitions as “Best Delegate,” and graduated cum laude. He is now a student at Syracuse University in New York, studying biochemistry.
NSU School
SeaWorld and Busch Gardens recently presented Joey Goldstein, 14, of Nova Southeastern University School with the $1,000 Youth Environmental Excellence Award for her marine life initiative called Saving Ocean Life.
At age 10, Joey, started SOL with the mission to spread awareness about the problems facing oceans and marine life through educational programming and beach cleanups. In addition to the $1,000 grant, winning the award allowed Joey to visit SeaWorld for a behind-the-scenes learning experience with marine biologists and the SeaWorld Rescue Team.
“It is important to teach our youth about environmental issues so when they grow up, they can be responsible adults,” Joey said. “After all, it is up to us to save this planet.”
With the funding, Joey plans to host three community events in hopes of encouraging the community to help save the oceans and marine life.
This story was originally published October 18, 2018 at 1:36 PM.