Connecticut has invested more than $6 million into statewide robotics programs for students since 2024. It’s in an effort to get kids into engineering — in hopes that they’ll use their talent in the CT workforce after graduation.
WSHU’s Ebong Udoma spoke with CT Mirror’s P.R. Lockhart to discuss her article, “Amid manufacturing workforce woes, CT bets on youth robotics,” as part of the collaborative podcast Long Story Short. Read her story here.
WSHU: Hello, P.R. Connecticut is known for advanced manufacturing, but the state is facing a skilled workforce shortage that's prompted it to put money into student robotics programs. Is that why you decided to investigate this, and is it actually attracting students and keeping them involved in STEM?
PRL: Yeah, so you know, I started looking at this for two reasons. First, as you mentioned, yes, the state is making these investments. Earlier this year, the Office of Manufacturing announced that it was going to invest $4.2 million into robotics programming across the state. When I got that press release, you know that that certainly interested me and made me want to write about it, but there's also a bit more of a personal reason why I looked at this story. I actually did robotics when I was in high school.
WSHU: Wow, that's interesting.
PRL: And I, so I had gone through one of these programs, actually in Virginia, not in Connecticut, I have no affiliation with the Connecticut programming at all, but I had gone through one of the programs, and you know, when I saw that the state was investing here, it really made me think about my own experiences, and I was curious to see, you know, in the decade plus since I had been a part of this, what it looks like for students now, and if it was helping them. Because the market has only gotten harder to enter for students trying to enter the workforce. I believe you also asked, you know, is this helping?
WSHU: Well, you visited, you visited a couple of competitions to check them out. What did you find?
PRL: The competitions are such rich ground. You go in, and you're just immediately confronted with hundreds of students, you know, they're working on robots in their, in their areas, they call them pits, kind of, you know, like race tracks.
WSHU: So it's like a big sporting event.
PRL: Yeah, it's like a big sporting event. Honestly, it sometimes feels reductive to be like this is just like sports, but it is a really similar environment at the competitions, so yeah, you know, you're seeing them in team gear, you know, they have equipment out, and it's really all student-led. I think sometimes people hear robotics and they think that the coaches and the mentors are leading this because they, like, oftentimes work as engineers, but really, no, the students are fully taking the lead. Like they're fixing motors, they're putting on batteries, they're doing wiring, like it's really impressive that the things that you can see them just do over the course of a competition.
WSHU: Now our problem right now is that we have a workforce shortage, so is this helping? And how is it helping? How is the state money helping? Because you were talking about how expensive it is for the students and the teams to participate.
PRL: Yeah, so I'll handle how the state is helping first, and then I'll handle, you know, how much this investment actually matters second. So for how the state is helping, you know, this investment is covering a lot of things. The state's looking into developing a curriculum program and working with schools on that. It's offering support for, you know, teachers and also some other programming it'll launch for students, I believe, in the future. So this money isn't just going to these competition robotics programs. That being said, the money that robotics is getting is really helpful, because it's helping launch new teams. You know, one thing I note in my piece is that the state is really trying to get teams started in alliance districts.
WSHU: Those are the school districts that are a bit behind, lagging a bit behind, and the state is trying to boost them.
PRL: Yes, yes, that's right. Alliance districts are, you know, schools or districts where, you know, students, they are considered, you know, underserved. They don't necessarily have the same level of access and resources as other students in the state.
WSHU: So, mainly, mainly the big cities and the rural areas.
PRL: Yeah, and there are about 36 districts in Connecticut, and they cover, you know, almost half of public school students in the state. So they really are trying to get as many students as possible exposed to these programs, and they're trying to make sure that money isn't a factor in, like, limiting that exposure, and you know, I think that kind of translates to the next part of the question, which is, you know, how does this actually matter? You know, I think it's helpful to think of a program like, you know, First or RECF, or even VEX, which is a different program that I don't talk about as much in the piece, but it's helpful to think of them as kind of the top of a funnel, so say you know, at the top you have all your students, and at the bottom you have your STEM workforce. What you're doing at the top is just trying to get students to even enter, to think about it, and even have, like, access to, like, looking at some of these sorts of skills that you would need in math and science, and even be able to do engineering at the end of the funnel.
So, these programs are really helpful for doing that first level of exposure, and I think the state certainly needs to be considering the other interventions it has to do later in that funnel; you know, I don't want to say this is a silver bullet. I don't want someone to walk away from my piece thinking that Connecticut's investment in these robotics programs means that it has now solved its workforce problem entirely, but I do think that these programs could maybe be a helpful first step, and at least as far as what parents and students and mentors are telling me they really are experiencing these programs as being valuable and helping them figure out what they want to do with their lives.
WSHU: Well, you're talking from someone who knows, because you were part of a robotics program yourself.
PRL: Well, yes, but I'm also a journalist now, so I think some people would look at that and be like, you didn't, you didn't even make it out of the funnel all the way, but that's why I also wrote the second half of that piece. You know, I try to acknowledge in the piece that, you know, certainly the marquee stuff of STEM skills matters, and this helps with engineering matters, but what maybe matters more to the students, at least, is kind of just helping them feel like fully formed adults by the end of it.
