Building a Lego robot in less than eight minutes is not a skill all college students can include in their repertoire, unless they’re on the technology team currently traveling for the University.
According to Lisa Keith, the Admission supervisor overseeing recruitment with the traveling teams, this semester’s technology team is an all-girl team: Caroline Clater, Rebecca Luttrell, Emily Meyers and Becca Talbert, as well as Kim and Eric Lloyd, a married couple on staff with the University.
None of the team’s members are science majors, but they have all mastered the art of building and programming Lego robots. “What’s key is that [the team members] love interacting with young people,” Keith said.
The team travels to Christian high schools throughout Virginia, West Virginia, Massachusetts, Delaware and Pennsylvania conducting two separate hourlong sessions promoting the University and helping the students build and program robots.
The team will also be holding workshops at the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky, for children and teens. Throughout their approximately 60 meetings this semester, the team members will be talking to students about the value of attending a Christian college, specifically BJU.
Team member Caroline Clater said that, as an all-girl robotics team, they naturally receive some skeptical looks, followed by questions about whether they are science majors.
The team is actually made up of three education majors and a business major, with three of the girls having already graduated in December.
Clater said that by holding two sessions a day, with about 30 students in each session, five days a week, 15 weeks of the year, they are able to touch around 4,500 students’ lives.
Both Clater and Rebecca Luttrell, another team member, said the members encourage each other in the Lord and keep the traveling fun.
Clater also said, “Our team leaders, Kim and Eric, are wonderful examples of patience, leadership and self-sacrifice.”
Keith said the team has the opportunity to visit many churches through traveling, and since they are a technology team, they don’t participate in the service, but instead are able to worship and fellowship with the members of many different congregations.
According to Luttrell, the team stays in host homes every night instead of hotels. She said that when one pastor they stayed with learned the girls were all single, he offered to perform a wedding ceremony right there for one of them and his son.
Clater added that the number of people with suggestions of eligible men for them has been “astounding.”
Luttrell said that as the members of the team represent the University through the avenue of technology, they are able to talk with many students who have never considered attending Christian colleges before and encourage them to think about that possibility.
