Mechanical engineering graduate Tj Nguyen is working toward his master’s degree while serving as assistant director of the newly established Southeastern Center of Robotics Education, or SCORE. Nguyen says he has a powerful ambition: to increase the abilities of Alabama schoolchildren in STEM and dramatically improve their achievement scores.

The only center of its kind in the country, SCORE is designed to more effectively develop and deliver robotics education to K-12 students and teachers. The program centralizes the

robotics education activities already underway in Auburn Engineering, the College of Sciences and Mathematics, and the Auburn University Aviation Center, providing a mechanism for growth in the area of robotics education outreach.

“We work with classroom teachers on their professional development as they learn how to use robotics and engineering in more traditional science and math classrooms,” Nguyen said. “We also host student robotics competitions to provide some context for the students to practice engineering design.”