Science and technology will be on display when Tennessee Tech in Cookeville hosts the FIRST LEGO League East Tennessee Championship Tournament on Saturday. The competition is expected to draw around 48 10-member teams comprised of youth ages 9-14 from Johnson City, Tullahoma, Nashville, Knoxville and Kingsport.

“These are youngsters and many of them have not been on a college campus before. Even though they may not be thinking about their futures, bringing them on campus exposes them to what a campus looks like and what it feels like,” said Kris Craven, interim chairperson of Tech’s basic and general engineering department. “Some of them may begin to think about whether they want to go to college and focus on one of the STEM areas or maybe a different area.”

The competition, which will be held mostly in Memorial Gym, as well as Matthews-Daniels Hall and Henderson Hall, has each team building a robot entirely out of LEGO pieces that use an autonomous microcomputer connected to light, touch, position, temperature and visual sensors. It is held annually at the university.