In a country where educational funding is hard to come by, there is much doom and gloom about where the U.S. rests in the educational rankings compared to other nations. That same doom and gloom trickles down to here to Dallas County, but one program is truly bettering our children’s educational value and that is the Selma BEST Robotics program.

The program began when two engineers from Texas Instruments were concerned that not enough people were entering the field of engineering. So they went to Texas Instruments with their idea of a robotics competition that would have high school and junior high school students going head to head with their creations. The engineers hoped that the program would pipeline the students into the fields of science and engineering hence why BEST stands for Boosting Engineering and Science Technologies.

The great thing for Selma is this program, which now has a hub in our area at Wallace Community College, can turn regular students into skilled workers and help give our local industries a boost.

Selma has a lot of surrounding land that is prime for development but industries hesitate on relocating here because of the lack of skilled workers.

The Selma BEST Robotics program has the power to change that. It takes students through several weeks of camp throughout the year where they build their own robots, keep a journal about the process and then promote and market their product.

Students might not want to do their algeabra homework but once they learn that algebra is just robot language, they recognize the reason for studying it and want to learn more.