"Innovation" Grants from business mentors help Montana students tap into imaginations

Technically, the small wheeled contraption built by Austin Calkins and Aaron Hope is called a robot.

But the little machine the two Sentinel High School juniors created in recent months and continue to fine-tune is also a launching pad for their creativity – and careers.

When you design and build an autonomous robot that can navigate stationary obstacles, you enter the uncharted world of innovation.

It’s an exciting and challenging place to explore, said the two young scientists.

"Working with this kind of technology is an awakening," Hope said.

"You run into a lot of problems when you are calibrating sensors and hooking up programs," he explained. "And that’s one of the hardest things, because you have to first know enough about what you are working with in order to identify problems."

Such epiphanies are exactly what Missoula entrepreneur Alex Philp http://www.gcs-research.com/ wanted to spark when he funded "innovation" grants for students willing to stretch their creativity and delve into an experiential learning project based on a tangible concept.

"At a cultural level, if we are not inspiring our students and inculcating a culture of excellence and helping to give students opportunities to be innovative," Philp said, "we are failing as a community."

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If you or your organization would like to be involved in this program, please contact Alex Philp – [email protected] – 406-370-2262.

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By Betsy Cohen

Full Story: http://missoulian.com/news/state-and-regional/grant-program-helps-sentinel-students-tap-into-imaginations/article_48be7742-a48e-11e2-93fd-0019bb2963f4.html

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i3 Missoula offers MCPS students unique, creative summer learning experience http://www.matr.net/article-55152.html