Central Lane Robotics, Inc

Building Skills, Friendships, and Futures at South Eugene Robotics Team (SERT)

SERT is more than a robotics club — it’s a hands-on life lesson in career-building skills. It’s also a welcoming, inclusive space where students with a passion for STEM can find purpose and community. And, the team is open to all high schoolers in our area.

Working together to build robots, our students learn valuable technical skills. But that’s not all: to compete on a world stage the team must also strategize, test, and iterate solutions under pressure. Students quickly learn that collaboration and communication are as valuable as technical knowledge for achieving success.  

This practical focus on technical and communication skills is foundational to SERT's decades-long record of launching young innovators into jobs that benefit the community in a wide range of industries. 

By investing in SERT, you help the team:

Purchase critical supplies: SERT is supported by experienced industry professionals who volunteer their time to mentor students. We have no paid staff. That means your entire contribution goes toward providing the tools, materials, and resources that fuel these transformative experiences. 

Engineer solutions outside the classroom: Our students use engineering to solve real-world problems for our community. Every year our team creates assistive devices for people with disabilities, organizes STEM outreach events, mentors middle school and elementary school students, and provides hundreds of hours of volunteer service.

Provide access to every student: The team is open to any high school student in the area. Our members come from a wide variety of backgrounds and we never want money to be a barrier. Donations help us fund scholarships to ensure every young person—regardless of finances—can be part of this incredible journey. 

Give structure and community at a critical age: Providing young people with community while instilling values such as teamwork, inclusivity, and community service is increasingly important. SERT fosters the development of trustworthy, hardworking, altruistic youth through dedicated mentorship and team culture. Your support will help us help raise the adults of tomorrow.

Build a Brighter Future: By donating to SERT, you're not just supporting a team; you're fostering a generation of creative thinkers, problem solvers, and compassionate leaders. Join us in breaking barriers, building opportunities, and inspiring innovation.

Click “Donate” now to support SERT’s mission! 

Your contribution makes all the difference.

Hello South Eugene Robotics Team supporters!

As you may know, SERT’s 2024 competition season has been one for the record books — literally!

Oregon and the PNWs #1 robotics team!

SERT has clinched a spot at the FIRST Championship in Houston next week. Thanks to an extraordinary season record, we head there as Oregon and the PNW’s top-ranked team!

Competing with the world’s best

We’ll test our mettle against 600 of the best teams from around the globe. While an amazing experience, competing comes with a steep price tag for registration and equipment transport. We've made headway with fundraising, but still have a ways to go.

Why your support matters

Contributions from supporters like you have allowed SERT to invest in essential equipment and upgrades, ushering in an exciting era of competitive success. Your assistance also goes to fund scholarships that allow more team members to participate in the competition experience.

More than robots

Beyond the thrill of winning, this successful season has given us the opportunity to spotlight the transformative power of STEM education, illuminating pathways to diverse career opportunities.

Help spread the word!

Please share our GoFundMe link far and wide, especially to those with a passion for encouraging STEM education. Remember, SERT is open to any area high school student!

We deeply appreciate your support! 

Together, let's empower the next generation of STEM innovators. Thank you for your unwavering support!

Prefer to donate traditionally? Mail a check to Central Lane Robotics/SERT, 2545 Alder Street, Eugene, OR 97405.

SERT has come a long way since our scrappy beginnings, when a small handful of students crowded around a drivetrain in a Eugene garage.

With limited resources, but with a lot of talent, dedication and desire, the team has grown, and this season represented Eugene at the World Championships, ending our regular season ranked 1st in Oregon, and finishing in the top 2% of scorers among Championship teams from around the globe.

Our success was due in no small part to the sponsors and donors who believed in us and invested in us. The dollars raised help us upgrade equipment, which allows us to stay competitive with more deeply resourced Pacific Northwest teams and gives our Eugene students a chance to see their engineering efforts realized on the field.

And while we love it when our robot wins competitions, the real triumph is the impact SERT has on our students and within the community.

Students learn a variety of skills, from mechanical engineering, electronics, computer-aided design, programming, fabrication, and business. And they go on to use those skills to build community. In fact, the team's Go Baby Go program transforms ride-on toy cars so they can be used by kids with limited mobility, providing a range of developmental benefits. The team was honored with the United Way Volunteer of the Year award for this continuing effort.

Our team is deeply grateful for any support, big or small. Know that your tax-deductible gift will go toward educating and supporting teens interested in STEM and engineering careers. Thank you!

IMPORTANT NOTE: a very special donor has agreed to match every dollar up to $5,000 that we raise, multiplying the impact of your gift!

Dear supporters of South Eugene Robotics Team: What a pleasure it is to share this update on SERT’s amazing competition season!

Oregon’s #1 robotics team!

SERT finished its regular season as the #1 robotics team in Oregon and placed 8th in the entire PNW District—a stupendous season that earned us an invitation to compete at the FIRST World Championship in Houston, Texas next week!

We’ve qualified for the Championship. Now we just have to get there.

You won’t be surprised to learn that competing at this level comes with a steep price tag. We estimate that SERT will need to raise $45,000 to cover event registration, travel costs, robot and tool transportation, and other expenses. We’ve made progress thanks to many generous corporate and individual donors, but we have a long way to go.

In truth, it’s a heavy lift for our team, but this trip will be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for many of our students. Our fundraising efforts will help ensure that every student who wants to travel to the Championship will be able to attend, regardless of ability to pay.

Training the next generation of tech-savvy leaders. If you aren’t familiar with SERT, our robotics team is part of FIRST Robotics, a global organization that offers a progressive series of robotics challenges for K-12 students. We are the only team in the Eugene/Springfield area that builds the complex robots rated for arena-style competition. As a student-led team, adult mentors provide guidance, but our high-school aged students design and build the robot from the ground up themselves, first learning from experienced team members, then teaching younger students themselves.

SERT is more than just robots. Inclusion is deeply important to SERT. Our outreach and volunteer efforts have included mentoring robotics groups in middle schools, and bringing STEM activities to those traditionally underrepresented in STEM such as girls and LGBTQ+ youth. Our team also provides innovative assistive technology for young children with disabilities, an effort for which our team received the prestigious United Way Volunteer of the Year award.

But it’s also about robots. SERT's robot has been a powerhouse! Reliable, durable, and a top scorer. The team has been very happy with how it has performed all season, and it's now tuned-up and ready to take on the world!

We believed in our robot. You believed in us. If you noticed our robot zipping forward, backward and sideways while gobbling up cones and cubes, that’s thanks to SERT’s new swerve drive, which we have because of supporters like you.

We’ve long recognized that in order to compete with the top teams – to BE a top team – we need to invest in components like swerve. Donors like you heard our hopes, took us seriously, and invested in us. Our aim is to be good stewards of your funds and your trust, and we hope this season has shown our commitment to that goal.

We deeply appreciate your support! Please share our GoFundMe link far and wide, especially to those with a passion for encouraging STEM education in our youth. These students have worked incredibly hard—thank you for helping us make this trip a possibility for them!

Note: If you prefer a more traditional donation approach, you can send a check to Central Lane Robotics/SERT, 2545 Alder Street, Eugene, OR 97405. We’ll send you a receipt showing our non-profit tax ID information for your records.

Dear supporters of the South Eugene Robotics Team:

Our team is back thanks to you, our community of supporters!

We are so grateful to the family, friends and sponsors who helped SERT rebuild our team after the COVID shut down. Not only did we come back last year, we came back strong, ending our season with our highest-ever rank at the Pacific Northwest Championships. That wouldn’t have happened without your support. Thank you!

We're building on success.

This year, we've had an unprecedented influx of new members, all learning the CAD, mechanical, electrical, and programming skills needed to build a competition-ready robot. We're ready to break through to the next level of competition, knowing that requires funding new equipment. Significantly, it means investing in a swerve drivetrain, the standard for fast and nimble robots.

Can you help us across the finish line?

We have raised most of the money needed to fund this upgrade, but walk a narrow path: Parts break, materials need replenishing, and tools need upgrading–often when you least expect it or can afford it. Your donation will go a long way to helping us build and compete with confidence!

SERT is more than just robots.

SERT helps members develop practical engineering knowledge while fostering leadership, communication and collaboration skills. We’ve restarted numerous pre-COVID programs like community volunteering, equity outreach, gender-diverse inclusion efforts, and summer camps like GoBabyGo, which adapts ride-on cars to be mobility aids for children with motor impairments.

Every bit helps.

We are deeply grateful for contributions of all sizes, and most of all, for being part of a community that continues to cheer us on, year after year.

Thank you for helping us become the leaders of tomorrow!

South Eugene Robotics builds more than just robots. We build careers, teach hands-on technical skills, model teamwork within and between teams, and develop empowered leaders.   

 

This year, we are also rebuilding our team. Despite Covid shutting down two competition seasons, SERT started this year with a core membership of skilled juniors and seniors and a surge of new members eager to learn from them. Now we need to make sure they have the tools and materials to do it!

 

Donations of all sizes are appreciated. Funds you give go toward the nuts and bolts needed to build a robot, but make no mistake, your investment is in these students. As they build a robot, they learn electrical, mechanical, CAD and programming skills, business and communication skills, leadership, and in-the-moment problem solving, all in a hands-on environment. (Note: your donation goes through Central Lane Robotics, our fiscal sponsor.)

 

"More than just robots" in action. During the Covid hiatus, SERT members used skills learned in robotics to help our community by 3-D printing and distributing more than 1,000 face shields and other PPE, and by modifying ride-on toy cars that are donated to children with mobility problems.

 

That's the ultimate promise of robotics: providing a venue that develops skilled, empathetic, proactive contributors who are ready to meet the challenges of the world beyond school. And as always, SERT is open to any high school student interested in learning.

 

Thank you for helping us (re)build robotics at South Eugene!