Mr. Robotics
How V Teamer Paul Hausman combines his passion for STEM and safety with his local robotics team.
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On today’s edition of Up To Speed we meet Paul Hausman, a manager on our Environment Health and Safety team.
In addition to his work at Verizon, Paul is also a safety and mechanical design mentor for the Mount Olive robotics team, the team is one of many that encompass the First Robotics worldwide program.
His involvement first started after his son joined his high school’s robotics team . Paul felt as though his background in the Environment and Safety field he could help make a difference by volunteering in managing the safety at the competitions.
“The robots the kids build weigh 125 pounds a piece and are built out of steel aluminum. There are plenty of power tools involved and plenty of opportunities for injuries,” Paul said.
First Robotics is a worldwide program where teams compete in qualifying matches and the top teams compete in a championship at Lehigh University. Then, they vie for the opportunity to go to the world championship. The team that Paul works with has been lucky enough to consistently make it to the World Championships .
“The kids actually work most days after school from the end of school until maybe 9:00 p.m. In my role as a mentor, I’m usually there two or three evenings a week and so far this year, I think I put in about 250 hours,” Paul said.
Paul also shared how great he feels about Verizon’s involvement with this organization.
“Verizon provides financial support for organizations that its employees volunteer at least 50 hours a year at and I do know that a lot of the individual First Robotics teams out there get that sponsorship from Verizon because V Teamers volunteer that much time every year.”
Paul feels the program is invaluable and helps inspire the kids to success and fairness in business in a way that he hasn’t seen out of any other high school based programs.
“For me there’s just the joy of working with these kids; it's enough to make me want to come back year after year,” Paul said.
