Dasgupta to be Honored by the Millard Public Schools Foundation Hall of Fame as a Community Booster

This Friday, May 11th, Dr. Raj Dasgupta will be honored by the Millard Public Schools Foundation Hall of Fame as a Community Booster. Dasgupta will join over 600 attendees for the Hall of Fame ceremony which honors high school scholarship recipients, outstanding teachers, administrators, and support staff for Millard Public Schools as well as Community Boosters and Alumni.

Through organizing several robotics workshops at the middle school level for students aged 11 – 13 years old, Dasgupta and his team worked to introduce and encourage students to STEM through robotics. For the last three years, Dasgupta worked at Kiewit Middle School as part of the National Robotics Week events and served nearly 100 students.

“We hoped to increase interest the interest in STEM activities and robotics. We were excited to have such a positive reception at Kiewit, most workshops filled up quickly and generated a lot of interest,” Dasgupta said.

As a full-time professor and the CMANTIC Robotics Lab director, Dasgupta was praised for making time in his busy schedule and lead the robotics workshops at Kiewit. Each grade had several different challenges that the students worked through – from using Scratch to program Finch robots, program the “brains of the robot” the Beaglebone Black, to advanced techniques using C programming language. Dasgupta also helped arrange presentations by the NASA Nebraska Space Grant Consortium, UNMC’s Surgery Department, as well as individuals from UNO and UNL.

Nurturing the spark in students from a young age is an incredibly important part of the work IS&T does to ensure more students find their place in information technology. Work like Dasgupta’s creative use of robots in middle schools is a significant piece in showcasing the types of careers students can have in STEM related fields. To find out more about the other work IS&T does in the community, check out our Community Engagement page.