The Team > Mentors

Mentors of the Buena High School Robotics Team

Kent Cudaback

Kent Cudaback is the Chief Engineer at the Intelligence Electronic Warfare Test Directorate (IEWTD) of Fort Huachuca, Arizona. It was nearly four years ago when he had his initial encounter with FIRST and ever since then he has been hooked. After returning from the 2005 Manchester Kickoff Event, Mr. Cudaback knew that he had to get a robotics team started at Buena High School, the nearest local high school. Working in close collaboration with Tad Bloss and Tom Heller, Team 1726, The NERDS was created in time to participate in the 2006 FIRST Robotics Challenge, Aim High.

Mr. Cudaback is an extremely dedicated engineer at the IEWTD, and is regarded with a high amount of respect. During the six-week build season, The NERDS are extremely privileged to have him dedicated almost solely to our cause, rather than his normal responsibilities. Mr. Cudaback is also the President of the Cochise Robotics Association, a local, non-profit organization that helps to raise money for the team.

Dave Tanguay

Dave Tanguay is an Instrumentation Engineer who is also employed at the IEWTD. Along with Mr. Cudaback, he is extremely dedicated to our cause during the six-week build system. Mr. Tanguay is the code guru of the team, and is knowledgeable about electronic systems. In 2006, Mr. Tanguay wrote the autonomous code that made the MegaMaid™ such a productive member of any alliance.

Over the past three years, Mr. Tanguay has imparted a great deal of knowledge about programming on various club members. He is always willing to lend a helping hand with programming and his input is usually the solution to the current problem.

Jim Forbes

Jim Forbes began his true mentorship during the 2007 FIRST Robotics Challenge. Although he was present for a portion of the 2006 build season, he never really got a chance to prove just how much he knows. Mr. Forbes is a Mechanical Engineer and after having worked on cars for his entire life, he is quite knowledgeable about machines. As is the case with most of our mentors, Mr. Forbes contributes a great deal of his personal time to our cause, showing up when the students do and leaving with them at night.

The grand architect of the club, Mr. Forbes is responsible for orchestrating the overall robot design, and helps the students to get an idea of the foresight required when managing any project. Without him, we most certainly would not have built Ringo™ or our current project, TOM I™. It is his guidance, which is sometimes overbearing, that allows us to build such competitive robots.

Elizabeth Maslowski

Elizabeth Maslowski is our current teacher sponsor; she generously took up the helm of this club after Tom Heller moved to Johnstown, New York in the summer of 2007. Throughout this season, she has helped us to obtain a new level of organization. Mrs. Maslowski is also responsible for organizing all of our traveling, as well as making sure that we raise enough money to be able to afford participation in FIRST.

Joanne Deakin

Joanne Deakin is another teacher at the local high school, and she has been generous enough to assist Mrs. Maslowski with the club this year. Mrs. Deakin, a physics teacher, is quite knowledgeable about robotics, and has provided several needed insights into how various laws of physics apply to our robot. During our Saturday build sessions, Mrs. Deakin in the teacher on duty, and we greatly appreciate her giving up her Saturdays to help our cause.

Tom Heller

Tom Heller is the founding teacher sponsor of the Buena High School Robotics Team, and is responsible for initiating just about everything Team 1726 does. During his tenure with the team, Mr. Heller gave up more time than anyone, and attended every event and competition. Although some team members never quite listened to his ideas, his input was always appreciated. Mr. Heller also took the role of our team coach, and after several years as a sports coach and video game expert, was able to construct some powerful strategies. Without his guidance, we never would have won a regional in our rookie year, nor would we have advanced to both a final and a quarterfinal at two separate regional events in 2007.

Now that he has moved to New York, he is no longer able to fill his role as coach, and he is unable to give up as much time as he previously was. Nevertheless, Mr. Heller is still very active on our team; he frequents our team forum on a regular basis. His input on the forum has contributed to the beautiful machine that is TOM I™.
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