Team 1398 at Keenan High School captured the Regional Chairman's Award, the most prestigious honor of the FIRST Robotics Palmetto Regional competition.

The award to the Robo Raiders, who were just a rookie team in 2004, honors the team that best exemplifies the true meaning of FIRST. The win makes the Keenan High team eligible to compete in the FIRST Robotics international competition April 27-29 in Atlanta.

The FIRST Robotics Palmetto Regional was sponsored by BellSouth, USC's College of Engineering and Information Technology, the SC Department of Education and the SC Chamber of Commerce.

Keenan principal Dr. Steve Wilson said student interest in the FIRST Robotics competition is high at his school. "The students love hands-on experiences, and this certainly gives them that opportunity," he said. “You wouldn't believe how involved these kids get in their math, science, physics and technology classes. We have a waiting list of students who want to participate."

In addition to their skills in designing and building robots, the Keenan students also have launched a literacy program through FIRST that encourages young people to read books about science, technology, and engineering.

At the FIRST Robotics competition, Keenan had a puppet and storytelling booth and spent hours outside the playing field talking to elementary and middle school students. Kimberly Martin, a member of the 2004 award-winning rookie team, said the group has sent letters to thousands of librarians around the world to encourage them to promote books on science and engineering. "If we do this for the younger students, they might want to be engineers, too," she said.

USC's College of Engineering and Information Technology is a partner in Keenan High School's engineering program, called Project REAL (Raider Engineering and Academic Leadership). The program, designed to encourage minority students to study engineering, has 85 students, the majority of whom are African-American females.