Engineering Inspiration Award

[MelodyPond]

I realize that teams do not apply for the Engineering Inspriation Award. However, have any teams in the past either geared their Chairman's presentation or even had displays in their pits which were geared to showing judges inspiration of engineering in the the community. All this in an effort to recieve the Engineering Inspiration Award?

I ask because, while putting together Chairman's materials, our team's activities have been geared more to engineering/STEM advocation in the community than just Chairman's/Charity events.

What sorts of materials have teams used either in the pits or given to judges geared towards the Engineering Inspiration Award? We'd appreciate any advice you have to offer!

[popnbrown]

...our team's activities have been geared more to engineering/STEM advocation in the community than just Chairman's/Charity events.

I'm fairly certain engineering/STEM advocation qualifies as outreach and what is expected of a role model Chairman's team. It's a subjective award, but from what I've seen teams that win Chairman's don't necessarily do work for charities, not STEM related orgs etc, that's only a small part of what they do. The bigger part is how well they inspire others to recognize STEM. If your team is heavily advocating engineering/STEM that definitely fits under the Chairman's criteria.

Unfortunately, I have no experience in specifically going for EI award, but in my experience it seems to be a lead-up to Chairman's. Chairman's is given to a team that deserves to be a role model, and EI (in my view) is given to a team that is an inspiration but not quite yet a role model. When I was on the team, my team won EI awards back to back years and then after another year won the Chairman's award, as we worked on becoming a more professional looking team with better documentation etc. Between the two years of EI and Chairman's our outreach/[engineer/STEM advocation] was likely about the same.

[RoboMom]

Team 1629 here in Maryland has twice won the EI award at Worlds as well as at many regionals over the years. They have posted a lot on their website. Check it out.

[cadandcookies]

The Engineering Inspiration Award: Celebrates outstanding success in advancing respect and appreciation for engineering within a team’s school and community.

The Chairman's Award: The most prestigious award at FIRST, it honors the team that best represents a model for other teams to emulate and best embodies the purpose and goals of FIRST

As the Engineering Inpiration Award falls essentially as a subset of the Chairman's Award, if you focus on how your team fits the stated goal of the Engineering Inspiration award, you should be golden.

At some Regionals, Engineering Inspiration is essentially treated as second place Chairman's, in others, it's treated completely separately. If you know how judges at your regional treat the ward, you put yourself in a better position to win it.

Just emphasize your Engineering outreach, maybe with a scrapbook of the events your team has run/taken part in.

[MelodyPond]

Thank you for all the helpful advice! I love the scrapbook Idea!