Sunday, 5th August 2012 – Today, 63 senior high school students arrived at Ashesi's campus to participate in the Ashesi Robotics Experience 2012 (ARX2012) programme running from the 6th to the 10th of August. The students, representing schools from every region in Ghana, will be living on campus for a week, and will be working with Ashesi student mentors, staff and faculty to learn how to build and program robots.
ARX2012 is offered in partnership with the The MasterCard Foundation and aims to encourage African high school students to study computer science, engineering and other market-relevant fields at the university level.
Though the weather in Berekuso was cold, the campus welcome for the students was warm and exciting. “It took us three days to get here, but I love it already,” says Jortuotey Christopher from St. Francis Xavier Minor Seminary in the Upper West region of Ghana. “Our mentors are really wonderful, and they are fun people!"
“The students are really interesting,” said Susanna Ndede ’15, an ARX mentor. “They are a really smart group, and it will be interesting to see how they solve the problems they face in building their robots throughout the week.”
After settling in, the ARX students went off for supper and then participated in a short orientation seminar with their Ashesi mentors. There, they got to introduce themselves to the entire group, participated in icebreaker activities, and learned about Ashesi’s campus and its community.
“Our Ashesi mentors are treating us like their peers,” Alberta Bow of Wesley Girls also added. “They don’t treat us like ‘juniors’, as we had thought they would, and I am really happy about that. I think this week is going to be a lot of fun.”
