About
Team STEAM Robotics is an all-area high school robotics team based in Lawrence, Kansas. We are a group of driven high school students interested in Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math – hence the name Team STEAM! We participate in FIRST® Robotics Competition and assist with FIRST® LEGO® League and VEX Robotics. While working on the team, members gain practical engineering, design, and programming skills as well as develop important traits such as cooperation and leadership.
Along with attending local FRC competitions, we host summer camps for middle schoolers, an FLL scrimmage, and a FIRST® LEGO® League tournament. We have also done several workshops with the Lawrence Public Library and local middle schools, as well as traveling for sponsorship presentations on a frequent basis.
Our team has been around for over 10 years, and has won the following awards:
- Team Sustainability Award (2025)
- Imagery Award (2024)
- Woodie Flowers award for Grace Young (2022)
- Innovation in Controls (2022)
- Team Spirit Award (2019)
- Innovation in Control Award sponsored by Rockwell Automation (2018)
- Entrepreneurship Award sponsored by Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers (2017)
- Highest Rookie Seed Award (2014)
Through real-world work experience, we aim to assist students and mentors of all FIRST®teams in growing science and technology through promoting skills in business, engineering, computer science, design, and management.
Mentors
Jeannie Merritt
Jeannie Merritt is a reading specialist at Lawrence High School, who became our team coach many years ago. Team STEAM is forever grateful to have such a hard working coach, always ready to support us. She has always kept the team organized and enthusiastic, coming to our meetings every thursday. Without her, Team STEAM could not have participated and hosted all these events.
Grace Young, Ph.D.
Grace Young is a professional Data Scientist at Garmin and has been a passionate advocate for FIRST robotics since 2012. She moved to Lawrence as a Self Graduate fellow, joining the Team STEAM mentors in 2018. She works diligently with the team’s marketing and creative departments revamping our sponsorship campaigns and team branding. Grace has helped organize and carry out the Girls in Tech Conference, with passion for increasing diverse gender representation within STEAM fields, evident in all of her services to the team and the community.
Daniel Owen
Daniel Owen is the most recent member to join the Team STEAM mentors. He brings his expertise and insights both from the Self Graduate Fellowship and his time on FRC team 2022 to teach and advise our controls department. He works with our controls members to perfect our autonomous programs (where the robot performs without direction from a driver), as well as to solve complex programming issues such as utilizing vision systems with cameras.
Subteams
Creative – The creative subteam is responsible for the production of all web, print, and digital marketing material, managing content strategy for all projects, and enforcing brand guidelines across the entire team.
Design – The design subteam provides a functional, strategic, and manufacturable design to mechanicals and controls. They use Onshape (a CAD software) to design our robot for competitions.
Mechanical – The mechanical subteam is responsible for building the robot from the ground up, manufacturing, assembling, and wiring the plans provided by the design team. As a member of this team, you would learn how to use power tools,
Control Systems – The control systems subteam is responsible for writing all of the code for our robots, bringing our projects to life. We program in Java, as well as fine tuning the robots movement, and enabling out robot to execute complex objectives.
Marketing – Marketing focuses on expanding our team and increasing awareness to our community about robotics and Team STEAM.