Segway inventor wants students to be more passionate about science

Dean Kamen, right, entrepreneur and inventor of the Segway Human Transporter (which he is demonstrating), speaks in Hollister Hall, Oct. 30, to promote his national high school program, For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology. Charles Harrington/University Photography

By Lissa Harris

Imagine a world in which science projects generated as much media frenzy as the Super Bowl. Imagine high school freshmen competing as earnestly for a spot on the engineering club as on the varsity football team. Imagine the Michael Jordans of the nation also being scientists, engineers and inventors.

Welcome to the future, à la Dean Kamen.

On Wednesday, Oct. 30, Kamen, self-taught engineer, entrepreneur and inventor of the Segway Human Transporter, spoke in Hollister Hall to promote his national high school program, For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST), which he hopes will transform the way young people think about scientists and engineers.

Since last year's public unveiling of his Segway (a two-wheel, self-balancing transportation device designed for pedestrian use), Kamen has enjoyed the kind of publicity normally associated with film actors and major-league athletes. Through the FIRST program, however, Kamen hopes to spotlight not his own achievements but those of the many college students and young science and engineering professionals across the country -- what he calls "the NFL of science and engineering."

Said Kamen: "Our culture is in love with sports and entertainment. Let's use the power, the imagery, the fun, the excitement, the prestige of this media-driven, sports-driven, entertainment-driven culture, but add some content, so that if kids get passionate about something, it isn't bouncing balls, it's something that will matter the rest of their lives."

The model for FIRST is very much like that of a sports competition. High school FIRST teams, with the help of mentors, have six weeks to design and build a robot that can perform certain tasks, such as putting balls into a container or hanging from a bar. The robots then compete against one another in regional competitions and, finally, a national championship, scoring points for quickness and dexterity. Many of the schools even bring their cheerleading squads along to the events.

Kamen founded FIRST in 1989, with help from 21 corporate sponsors. Thirteen years later, more than 600 companies have signed up to provide sponsorship, and 640 high school teams compete in 17 regional FIRST championships in the United States and Canada. The national championship event now is held in EPCOT Center at Walt Disney World in Florida and is shown on network television.

But Kamen won't be satisfied until FIRST is large enough and popular enough to compete with Hollywood and the major leagues for the imagination of schoolchildren across the nation.

He is proud of the program's success stories, including a young FIRST participant who found engineering more exciting than gang life, and who now is pursuing a degree at the University of California-Berkeley in aerospace and aeronautical engineering.

From left, Krishna Athreya, director of Minority and Women's programs in the College of Engineering, and her daughter, Ambika, an 8th grader in Boynton Middle School, speak with Dean Kamen after his Oct. 30 talk. Charles Harrington/University Photography

Still, Kamen says, the program has far to go -- and he has been frustrated by the initial support he has received from the academic community. "Institutionally, compared to companies, universities seem like a dysfunctional group of people that share a campus," he said.

Indeed, last year, as the keynote speaker at the American Society for Engineering Education annual conference, Kamen gave a grade of "D minus" to the higher education community for its failure to inspire young people to pursue science, engineering and invention.

Now he has hope that he can persuade more universities to support FIRST and programs like it -- and he hinted that Cornell would be an ideal location for a FIRST regional championship.

Several Cornell engineering students already are involved with the program and have been mentoring a FIRST team at Ithaca High School for the past two years. Junior engineering student Vicki Niebrzydowski, president of the Cornell team, said she hopes Kamen's talk will motivate more Cornell students to join. "I'm trying to get as many more people involved as I can," she said.

Kamen's talk was part of the Culture and Diversity Lecture Series sponsored by Engineering Minority and Women's Programs in the College of Engineering.