Building life skills

BATAVIA – Ron Karabowicz didn’t set out to build a robotics club.

But in the last decade, fueled by the passion of the young people at its heart, the club that Karabowicz leads has undeniably taken on a life of its own.

“This is about more than just winning competitions,” he said. “It’s about opening the eyes of these kids, getting them to move beyond the Internet, helping them work through something, as a team, and watching the ear-to-ear smiles when that thing actually works.

“Those moments are the best.”

For more than a decade, Karabowicz, now known affectionately as “Mr. K,” has coached the Fox Valley Robotics teams.

His involvement began about 12 years ago, when his daughter joined a middle school robotics club.

Karabowicz said he was in the kitchen one evening helping his wife, Judy, cook dinner, when he heard his daughter growing increasingly frustrated with her project, and went to help her.

“At about 10 p.m., my wife said she was going to bed,” Karabowicz said. “When she came back down at about 3 a.m., we were still working on it.

“Needless to say, I was hooked.”

Eventually, Karabowicz took leadership of the team. The club since has expanded, adding students from the Tri-Cities, building robots for various competitions.

Today, the organization boasts 30 teams and 180 students, ranging from first to 12th grades.

Mary Jordan noted that her son, David, was among the first students to benefit from Karabowicz’s coaching.

She said his influence has been most pronounced in students from whom he has drawn out such qualities as pride, perseverance, leadership and “gracious professionalism.”

Jordan recalled an episode in Karabowicz’s first year with the club, when two of the team’s three robots broke before the competition, leaving only David’s robot.

Rather than competing by himself, David allowed the other two students to drive the robot during the competition, as well.

“For me, that was pretty cool, because that was not a side of David that had been displayed to that point,” she said.

“This is about more than building robots. It’s about building real life skills.”

Jordan said her son, now grown, has pursued a career in computer engineering – a decision Jordan credits in large part to Karabowicz.

Many other students also have used their experience in Fox Valley Robotics to make similar career choices, heading into engineering, technology and science-related fields.

Karabowicz said hearing such success stories makes the volunteer task of running the club, which gobbles up 20-40 hours of his time per week, rewarding.

But every new group of students brings him much the same feeling, as he watches the robots work their magic on the young people.

“It really is most satisfying, to me, to see the light bulb go on in their eyes, when they realize they can actually apply that stuff their learning in school to something as fun and rewarding as making that robot work,” he said.

The Karabowicz lowdown

Name: Ron Karabowicz

Town of residence: Batavia

Age: 54

Family: Married to Judy, with two grown daughters, Amy and Denise

Hobbies: Fishing, camping and running

Fun fact: Enjoys unplugging for a week at a time every year, heading up to the Boundary Waters region near the Minnesota-Ontario boundary with his wife to do "remote camping." "We leave technology behind, for just a little while," he said.