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About Stuypulse Team 694
We are Stuyvesant High School’s award-winning FIRST Robotics team. Otherwise known as Team 694, Stuypulse seeks to impact young adults by cultivating skills in engineering, programming, marketing, teamwork, and leadership through the FIRST program. At the same time, we hope to educate and inspire people in our community, both young and old, about the wonders of science and technology.
FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) is a multi-national, non-profit organization that, in the words of its founder, Dean Kamen, seeks "to transform our culture by creating a world where science and technology are celebrated and where young people dream of becoming science and technology heroes." Through partnerships with local and global businesses, dedicated volunteers with professional backgrounds, and the tireless efforts of students, teachers, and parents, FIRST opens whole new worlds for generations of young adults and equips them with the skills to achieve great success.
The 2005 team after winning the Chairman's Award
Team 694 Today
Today, Team 694 is comprised of approximately 100 Stuy students and participates annually in the FIRST robotics competition. During our six week build season, we work daily in our robotics lab at Stuyvesant High School. Meetings are held nearly everyday during the season as dedicated team members build our competing robot with the help of gracious parents and volunteer mentors.
However, our efforts do not end upon the close of the competition season. We strive to share our robotics experience with others, whether through mentoring of other teams or schools, street-level demos in our community and in our school, and newspapers, television, and other media. During the off-season we also holding fundraising events to raise money for our team, recruitment to bring in new members, and other exciting events.
How we got started
Our team was founded in the fall of 2000 by a forward-looking group of dedicated students and their parents. Although much of the team started out unfamiliar with each other, we shared a common interest in robotics and were ready to take on the formidable task of building our first robot. The team quickly learned the importance of cooperation and teamwork as we rallied together team members, sponsors, and mentors, as well as raising the initially daunting entrance fees to the FIRST competition. Our robot scored the highest in its division at the Championship Event making Team 694’s rookie year an immense success as well as a jumping board to our exciting career as a FIRST team.
What’s unique about Team 694?
One of the things that Team 694 takes pride in is our overwhelming diversity. Our approximately fifty-five member team is over one-quarter female while half of the team members were either born outside of the United States or are children of first generation immigrants.
Team 694 is a championship team, winning the prestigious New York City Regional Chairman’s Award in 2005. We were also a finalist in last year’s New York City Regional and have participated in several championship events during our seven years as a team.
About Stuyvesant High School
Stuyvesant High School, a.k.a. "Stuy", one of New York City's specialized math/science public high schools, has demonstrated a tradition of excellence for over a century. Entrance is based on a rigorous and competitive test. About 900 of the top scorers are admitted each year out of approximately 26,000 students who take the test.
Consisting of over 3000 students from all five city boroughs with diverse international backgrounds, Stuy is located in a modern, ten-story building in Lower Manhattan. The school was moved from its old building on East 14th Street to its current site in 1992.
Team 694 in the media
A large part of Stuypulse's mission is to help spread the word of FIRST through newspapers, TV, and other media outlets. The local paper The TriBeCa Tribune and the chinese-language paper China Daily have done segments of our team during the build season, and we make regular appearances in our own school newspaper, The Spectator. At demonstrations and other events, we've been interviewed by radio and television stations in both Arabic and Russian, and at the NYC Regional competition, footage of our '09 robot, Michael 1, in competition was shown on NY1, a local television station. Stuypulse also has made appearances in two articles in Popular Mechanics.