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Members of Ypsilanti's robotics Team 66 work on a practice robot at the school on Thursday. The team won the Chairman's Award at the state championships earlier this month, and now they're headed to compete at the FIRST World Championships in St. Louis.

(Lauren Slagter | The Ann Arbor News)

The robotics team around which Ypsilanti STEMM Middle College formed three years ago has now won the state's highest FIRST robotics award for its impact on the school and the broader community.

Team 66 of the Grizzly robotics program at Ypsilanti high schools won the Chairman's Award at the FIRST state championship on April 16, securing the team a spot at the FIRST world championship in St. Louis on April 27 to 30.

"It's a bigger award than just winning the actual competition with the robots, because it's about your whole program," said D. Scott Heister, director of the STEMM Middle College and lead mentor for the Grizzly robotics program. "It is a very positive group. It doesn't matter who we're doing, the kids are up dancing. They have a tremendous spirit."

Every year, FIRST robotics gives teams across the globe a different challenge for the competition. They have six weeks to build and program their robots, followed by six weeks of competition where teams band together in alliances to see who can best complete the challenge.

The Chairman's Award -- and the Grizzly program -- is about much more than the robots.

"Our goal is to help raise our culture and help everybody around us, not just competing against each other," said Vincent Artlip, a senior on Team 66.

Teams receive the Chairman's Award for embodying the purpose and goals of FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology). For the Grizzlies, the award is recognition of the schoolwide turnaround the team has contributed to since Ypsilanti Schools merged with Willow Run and restructured its high schools in 2013-14.

The team has grown from about 15 students prior to the merger to more than 55 in the Grizzly program, which consists of two teams -- Team 66 from the STEMM Middle College and Team 470 from the other high schools.

Robotics gives many students motivation to take school more seriously, Heister said. The Middle College has grown to 160 students, who may not have previously considered college an attainable goal, Heister added. When the high schools merged, the graduation rate was 69 percent, and now the STEMM Middle College has a 91 percent graduation rate.

"With a lot of them, they don't have a purpose prior to [robotics]," Heister said. "They don't know why they're coming to school. It doesn't mean anything to them, and they're fighting a lot of different things at their homes that they're struggling with."

Robotics has been the highlight of senior Diana Bernal's high school career; she's been on the team for four years and is a captain this year.

"I've gained a lot of leadership skills. I actually am more involved in the community just beyond robotics in general," said Bernal, who gave a TEDx Talk at Eastern Michigan University in March about the difference FIRST has made in her life.

All of that is included in Team 66's essay, video and presentation for the Chairman's Award. Students also highlighted all the community outreach the team participates in, including running an elementary robotics camp on behalf of Ypsilanti Township, contributing to the local Relay for Life event and using their T-shirt cannon robot at various events.

Last summer, some members of the team traveled to Washington, D.C., to advocate for the Franken-Kirk-Murray Title II STEM amendment, which ultimately passed and designated federal funding for STEM programs in schools.

The team will give their Chairman's Award presentation one more time at the world championship, in addition to sending their robot to compete in the arena. Thirty-six students and some of the program's 22 mentors will make the trip to St. Louis, and they're still accepting donations for the trip.

Bernal and Artlip said the robotics team's success has helped them to move past the negative stigma they sometimes feel is associated with living in Ypsilanti.

"We're kind of like looked down on," Bernal said. "But as a team, we're making a huge impact in our community and obviously on the students. After we graduate, we want to come back and give back to the community, give back to the program that helped us be successful."

Lauren Slagter covers K-12 education for The Ann Arbor News. Contact her at 734-255-1419, lslagter@mlive.com or on Twitter @LaurenSlagter.