Our History
In 2005, Dr. Johnson met with Dean Kamen (Founder, FIRST Robotics) and Bart Sudderth (Founder, Millennium Training Systems) to collaborate on a robotics program for underserved youth in the city of Atlanta. Dr. Johnson donated part of his downtown Atlanta building to the program. The inaugural class of the robotics program started with just 1 team of 6 students. Thanks to Dr. Johnson’s generosity, the team had ample space and a once in a lifetime opportunity to learn from Dr. Johnson. Over the next decade, dozens of robotics teams were clamoring to call Dr. Johnson’s facility their “home”.
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By 2014, over 200 students from several robotics teams were donated space to design and build their robots. The popularity of the program increased exponentially as the demand exceeded the space donated by Dr. Johnson. In 2016, approximately 2,000 students from the metropolitan Atlanta area participated in robotics at the 20,000 square foot facility. The following year, the facility was aptly given the name Johnson STEM Activity Center and officially became a legal non-profit entity. By 2018, over 8,000 students were utilizing the Johnson STEM Center. With the addition of an ultra modern computer lab in 2019, the number of participating students surpassed 10,000.