TALKS
Mark McCombs | Why Every Kid Should Build a Robot
All 21st-century students deserve a role in engineering the future. Mark McCombs gives a first-person account of what happens when children are given an opportunity to see what they are capable of in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). He believes that hands-on, mentor-driven robotics education contributes to a sense of self-sufficiency, which may be the one of the greatest advances we can see this generation make.
Over the past eighteen years, Mark McCombs has been a part of FIRST Robotics as a student on a high school team, as a college mentor, a head coach, volunteer, tournament director, and then Affiliate Partner for FIRST Lego League in the North Florida Region. As a student in the program, Mark was profoundly impacted by mentors and engineering idols who turned his curiosities towards the field of Mechanical Engineering. Now the founder of a machine design, engineering, and fabrication company, McCombs spends most of his time working on Renaissance Ja,, a nonprofit he founded with the mission of expanding access to the very program that shaped his experiences as a young engineer.
