After joining the Harker’s Robotics Club in freshman year, Andrew Tierno’s  (’17) passion for robotics has motivated him to further his cooperation and innovation skills

Andrew joined the robotics club without much prior knowledge nor experience with robots of any sort.

“I started as a freshman who knew pretty much nothing, so I barely worked on the robot because I wasn’t qualified to.”

Gradually, however, Andrew began moving up the ranks to head the software department of the team in his sophomore and junior years. Now as a senior, he is the president and overlooks all aspects of the robot’s building process. This includes its timely construction, programming and team cooperation.

“Now that I’m leading the whole thing, my job is no longer to work on the robot itself and make sure the robot works, it’s to make sure the team works, which means I have to worry a lot more on how people get along and [if] everybody remember what they need to do.”

After all these years, Andrew believes that robotics represents an opportunity to be creative and learn ways to construct a robot from scratch. He attributes his happiness to his ability to participate in a team in building a robot.

“For me, robotics has always been a great way to learn about how to build things and how things work. Honestly, that is the reason why I love robotics,” Andrew said. “When you see everything working, you look at it and say, ‘I helped make this happen,’ which is really really gratifying.”

In the end, he thinks the competition is not his priority and the process of building the robot is the most important.

I’ve never really seen it in terms of competition, and quite frankly, results, win or lose, at a competition isn’t relevant to anything,” Andrew said. “What is more important is all the stuff you learn along the way.”