Senior Spotlight: Will Ingarfield
June 5, 2018
As the project manager of Robotics Club, a science fair judge and a UIL computer science captain, senior Will Ingarfield worked hard to create an impact in high school. In middle school, Ingarfield delved into lego robotics and during his freshman year of high school he continued to pursue his passion for robotics. He helped the high school team place fourteenth at the regional competition in San Antonio, Texas, and assisted the UIL computer science team in achieving first in the district competition and second place overall at their regional competition.
“The amount of growth that we have had in the robotics team as well as the UIL team has influenced how I have become a better leader,” Ingarfield said. “We have gone to more regionals this year than we have ever gone to before and we went the furthest we ever have in UIL. The tangible output is really cool and rewarding to see.”
In addition to seeing these organizations improve, Ingarfield said that he has also seen himself grow as a person.
“I’m much more social than I was when I went into freshman year,” Ingarfield said. “I think that robotics helped me improve my public speaking skills because I have to talk to every single person all of the time.”
Ingarfield said that he enjoyed his experience with FIRST Robotics (an international youth organization that operates various robotics competitions) so much that he decided to mentor high schools next year.
“I think that FIRST does a great job of getting you into STEM, even if you’re not interested in it,” Ingarfield said. “I’m excited to do it from the mentoring side.”
Ingarfield will attend the University of Texas at Dallas and major in computer science in the fall. He said that robotics helped him gain a better understanding of what he enjoyed.
“Robotics helped me branch out in my interests,” Ingarfield said. “I had no clue that I would become the head of business, let alone the project manager when I joined robotics.”