BAY MINETTE, Ala. — Boosting Engineering Science and Technology Robotics (aka BEST) students and mentors are thinking inside the “bot,” while other middle- and high-school students partake in more typical, summer-fun activities.

During a workshop held at Faulkner State Community College last week, 40 students and 10 mentors from middle and high schools in Baldwin, Marengo and Mobile counties attended workshops on program-writing for video games and robot- and water-gun engineering, to name a few.

Jubilee BEST Robotics Hub Director Robin Fenton said the workshop helped students prepare for the upcoming, robot-building competition Oct. 29 at the University of South Alabama Mitchell Center in Mobile, while also teaching them career skills.

“One of the goals is to fill the technology void between middle and high school to prepare them (students) for industries,” she said during the workshop. “The teachers don’t have the expertise or the time to offer training. This is so they (students) don’t get discouraged.”

According to the Jubilee BEST website, the nonprofit organization came about in 1993 when two Texas Instruments workers worked with students at the company’s Engineering Day.

“Together with a group of high school students, they watched a video of freshmen building a robot in Woody Flowers’ class at Massachusetts Institute of Technology,” the website stated, explaining that this inspired the employees to work with local students to do the same thing.

Since then, BEST Robotics competitions have come to be led throughout the country, opening the free contests to students in any school, regardless of economic background. In the Southwest Alabama region, Jubilee BEST implements local and regional competitions, the site stated. Within the region, teams are organized by “hubs, consisting of at least eight schools.”

At last week’s workshop, Baldwin County schools represented were Daphne High School, Spanish Fort High School and Baldwin County High School, according to Region Three Coordinator Kellie Andrews. Three private schools, seven public schools and one home-school group attended.

Fenton explained that such training prepares students for careers in solid works, computer-language programming, marketing and engineering-design processes.

“It fills that niche not taught in schools,” she said.

Fenton also noted that the “significant, work-force development system” produces high-tech-capable students “needed by industries, so they stay in our communities and companies grab them for internships. It pipelines them, so they’re not leaving. I see it really starting to take off in Baldwin County, because y’all have so much industry and career-tech centers.”

Fenton said there’s another aspect to the program.

“It’s applicable to where it’s fun,” she said. “I was amazed at how many read instructions and wrote notes — and it’s summertime.”

For more information, visit www.jubileebest.org.