The Goodnight Scholars kicked off their speaker series with their first presenter, “Spare Parts” inspiration Fredi Lajvardi, Wednesday night in the Talley Student Union.

Lajvardi is an educator from Carl Hayden Community High School in Phoenix who gained international fame when his team of four undocumented high school students competed in the National Underwater Robotics Competition and won first place against schools such as MIT and Virginia Tech in 2004, and placed first again for two more consecutive years. 

Lajvardi has been featured in publications such as Wired Magazine, and has been documented in the book, “Spare Parts: Four Undocumented Teenagers, One Ugly Robot, and the Battle for the American Dream” and the documentary “Underwater Dreams.” 

The January 2015 motion picture, “Spare Parts” starring George Lopez as Lajavardi, details his story. 

“The movie, ‘Spare Parts,’ almost did not get made,” Lajvardi said. “Hollywood had to put in a lot of work. I never got slapped, and I have not had eight jobs. It is more lighthearted than the documentary.”

The robotics team initially started with FIRST Robotics, a robotics competition that costs $5,000 to enter and starts running in January. 

Lajvardi proposed the idea to implement the underwater robotics team, which would run during the fall. Initially, Lajvardi wanted to observe the first year before competing, but he found that other teams were not as keen to observation from the competitors so he ended up entering the team in the competition.

Lajvardi described how, in the process of building the underwater robot, he and his team of four students had to contact various scientists and engineers. One consultant was an engineer for NASA who predicted Lajvardi’s win.

During the process, the team went through a lot of trials and errors. One problem occurred when the robot sprung a leak the day before the competition. The last minute solution that the team came up with to solve the problem was to fill the robotic component with tampons, which absorbed all the leaking water. 

Lajvardi claims that the tampons were what might have won them the Judge’s Special Award during the competition.

After six months, the story received national attention from Wired magazine, and the group received $100,000 of donations to send the four students to college. 

“The most important thing from it all was that it broke down barriers for the kids that followed,” Lajavardi said. “Kids see what they are doing is a mission and not just a competition.”

Bailey Craddock, a junior studying middle grades education with a mathematics concentration, said the good news that came from the story was refreshing.

“Going to get education is very inspirational because a lot of the times you only hear negative things coming out in the news like the state of public schools and what’s becoming of them, so it was very inspiring to see somebody who took what seemed like a terrible situation from the outside and made it very inspiring to others,” Craddock said. 

Ashley Lawson, a freshman studying mathematics education said she wishes there were more people like Lajavardi in the school system. 

“It was interesting to see his perspective and how much passion he had for his students because you could see that he really cared and all he wanted to do was to inspire his students to actually achieve what they were capable of,” Lawson said.

The event concluded with Q&A session. For non-education majors looking to support public education in particularly underserved schools, Lajavardi urged people to vote.

“When you get the chance to vote, make sure you vote for people who support those policies which you think are appropriate for the school,” Lajavardi said.

Overall the event was a success, according to Goodnight Scholars director Allison Medlin.

“I thought this was a fantastic event,” Medlin said. “I am just so delighted that we were able to bring folks such as Fredi to campus, and this was a great kickoff and we are looking forward to hosting more speakers in 15-16.”