UCS team earns national SkillsUSA championship

SHELBY TOWNSHIP/UTICA/STERLING HEIGHTS — Two recent Utica Community Schools graduates competed against students from 24 states and became national champions in a robotics and automation problem-solving competition this past summer.

Logan Derenge and Max Pagel won the championship at the SkillsUSA competition. Page and Derenge had graduated from the Utica Center for Science and Industry in June and brought home the first national SkillsUSA championship for the CSI program, according to Utica Community Schools. CSI is a half-day specialty program that the district offers to students. Derenge also attended Henry Ford II High School, while Pagel also attended Eisenhower High School.

“CSI provided us a lot of robot experience. The competition required us to get our work done very fast, and we were prepared to be efficient,” Pagel said in a UCS press release.

Scott Spry is the Utica Center for Science and Industry mechatronics instructor who advises students in the SkillsUSA competition. Spry said the students were asked to create a robotic workcell that performed certain tasks.

“Parts and materials were provided, but the workcell had to be built. In their case, the tasks included picking up a series of blocks and checking them for errors. (A hole or indentation would be considered an error.) Then sorting those blocks onto pallets, good and bad. During this a series of lights would also go on indicating the robot was moving, if a block was good or bad and if the system was interrupted. Additionally, after the blocks were sorted, they were again picked up by the robot arm and tested for color. Clear, white or black. This was done with a camera technology. In the end, the blocks were sorted by error and color.”

The students programmed the robotic arm, a programmable logic controller and a camera to do these tasks. The students knew how to program the robotic arm going in and had experience with the programmable logic controller, and they “figured it out” in the eight hours they had to complete the tasks.

The students learned most of the skills at CSI, but competing at the national level also requires preparation after school.

Superintendent Robert Monroe said the community can take pride in this national title.

“It reflects on the hard work and talents of Max and Logan, and the difference that UCSI makes to prepare students for success in fields that are driving our local economy,” Monroe said in an email.

Pagel and Derenge are both attending Kettering University to earn engineering degrees.

“This accomplishment means more opportunities for others to follow in our footsteps as well as proof of the effectiveness of CSI and everything we learned from it,” Derenge said in the press release.

SkillsUSA is an organization for middle-school, high-school and college/postsecondary students who are preparing for careers in trade, technical and skilled service occupations. Its goal is to make sure the country has a skilled workforce.