PYRS Sponsors & Partners

Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of BC

The Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of BC (APEGBC) serves the public interest through the regulation and promotion of the practices of engineering and geoscience in British Columbia. Under that mandate, the Association supports and actively promotes student interest in science and technology generally and engineering and geoscience specifically. APEGBC is helping extend accessibility of VEX Robotics for secondary school students throughout the province  by annually subsidizing the purchase of game sets for Anchor schools – schools that provide space for practice fields that can be used by all neighbouring teams.

BCIT

The British Columbia Institute of Technology (BCIT) is one of British Columbia’s largest post-secondary institutions with more than 48,000 students enrolled annually (16,600 full-time, 31,600 part-time). From electrical engineering to construction management and electronics to mechanical engineering, BCIT’s Engineering programs can help transform students affinity for solutions-based design into a career that lets students do what they love.  Within Engineering, the Mechatronics and Robotics program is a unique, multidisciplinary combination of courses that blends knowledge in electronics, mechanics, and computer programming to provide students with both the theory and practical skills they need to design and maintain mechatronic systems. At BCIT, students learn theory and put it into practice all in one process.

BCIT provides significant sponsorship to PYRS and high school robotics in BC, including hosting the Annual Regional VEX Robotics Championships at the BCIT Burnaby campus. BCIT invites the teams to their fitness center in Burnaby, providing the venue for the 2 day event at no charge. In addition, BCIT students and staff volunteer at the event, BCIT provides meals to keep the more than 100 person crew of field setters, queuers,  judges, referees,  information technology and equipment managers going strong.

The BCIT Broadcast program brings profession sporting event coverage to this Regional Robotics event, filming, interviewing  and providing live-streams of the event  throughout the day.  View the BCIT coverage of 2013/2014 Regional Championships.

The BCIT Technical Education department, in conjunction with PYRS, runs a series of workshops for teacher/coaches to help them acquire the expertise to provide technical leadership and support to students in classroom and competition.

The Robotics Education & Competition Foundation

The Robotics Education & Competition(REC) Foundation seeks to increase student interest and involvement in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) by engaging students in hands-on sustainable and affordable curriculum-based robotics engineering programs across the U.S. and internationally. The REC Foundation develops partnerships with K-12 education, higher education, government, industry, and the non-profit community to achieve this goal.The REC Foundation’s vision is to change the world by inspiring young people in all communities to pursue degrees and careers in STEM fields by providing access to high-quality programs.REC provides online resources, curriculum, and program offerings to support robotics and technology events and initiatives that aim to inspire and motivate students to excel in STEM education. REC hosts the World’s VEX Robotics Competition,  and supports PYRS regional events with technology, education and resources.The REC Foundation also operates the Robot Events website to help support robotics and other STEM activities that aim to inspire and motivate students. Robot Events is a community website that provides event promotion and professional online registration for STEM events. The site helps the two main groups who make all of these programs possible: teams (schools, students, teachers, mentors, parents) and event organizers (local groups and volunteers).