Peter Tanaka ’15, believes that one of the keys to helping Baltimore is mentorship. “I believe that many of the problems Baltimore experiences can be solved by empowering students to believe that they can achieve things when they work hard,” he says, “and having a mentor to help them get there can go a long way.”

In service of that belief, Tanaka and other members of the Johns Hopkins University Robotics Club are reaching out to provide guidance in STEM education to students in need. They visited the Community School, an academic and mentoring high school in the Remington community, to share their passion for robotics and electrical engineering. The Robotics Club plans to launch a three-week education program in January 2016 where students will gain hands-on experience in electrical and computer engineering projects. At the end of the program, the students will build and program a robot car that can avoid obstacles autonomously.

To garner interest, Robotics Club members showed off their own personal electrical engineering work—including Arduino projects and a tiny electric motorcycle—and a demo of the robot car the students will build.

“At the end, there were many students who signed up for our program,” Tanaka says. “I really enjoy being able to use my interests to help the community…I think we can make a big impact on students’ lives.”

Peter Tanaka is graduating with a BS in Electrical and Computer Engineering in December 2015. After graduation, he will work as an electrical engineer at Textron System in Hunt Valley, MD, and he plans on continuing with this educational outreach program.