View Full Version : How many students does it take to maintain a team?
About how many students could maintain a team? My team (648) has about 25 students on it and if we were to jump ahead to the 2006 season right now, my team would have only 6 students on it.
Jessica Boucher
23-04-2004, 09:42
Bryce-
There really is no set number of people to maintain a team. I've seen many teams with many different sizes, and Ive seen them succeed as well as fail. The trick isn't a magic number of students, it's having members that are dedicated to the project.
Secondly, you have a whole year! When I came through SigmaK, I heard a story about in 1998 when our chapter was left with 3 active members. Seeing as though the average number of greeks in a chapter on our campus was 10 times that, there was the chance of being closed down. But those three perservered, and even though the growth was slow, we are now at the healthy count of 32 lovely ladies :)
Being aware of the problem is the first step to fixing it. So, dont give up. If you want recruitment help, let me know....I've done quite a bit of presentations in my day ;)
jpsaul7usa
23-04-2004, 09:58
My team started off with 5 students last year. This year we had 10. To me at least, the number of students you have doesn't matter, it's how hard they work and how good of engineers and mechanics they are. When you have such a small amount of people everyone works on something, and I think they learn more as a result. The only downside is that it's hard to do the extra stuff like pins and giveaways with more limited resources, and you can kiss having good scouting reports from your team at competions goodbye. I personally like small teams, but I've never experienced a big one.
What have you done in the past for recruiting?
If I remember correctly, at UTC there was a team of four girls and one or two adults. (I remember this because I thought "Wow, pit crew and drive team all-in-one!")
They won an award for something owing to their few numbers.
Bryce-
The trick isn't a magic number of students, it's having members that are dedicated to the project.
I agree. I my years on a team , I would much rather have few students dedicated to the task than many students who show up and do what they want. This did not come out the way I wanted it to, but I am lost for words at the moment.
MOEmaniac
23-04-2004, 11:47
Theres 35 students on MOE and it seems to work out fine :)
ebmonon36
23-04-2004, 12:38
We have around 40 students on our team. Personally, I prefer around 25 on a team. It's hard to really get to know everyone when there are so many students..not to mention all the advisors we have too. With a team of 25, there is enough work to do to keep everyone busy, but not too busy. Once you start getting larger, you notice more and more students sitting around doing nothing. I'm curious - what do the larger teams do to prevent it from turning into a '20% of the people do 80%' of the work' environment. This is something that I noticed this year on our team.
Eric
TJ usually has 100 students sign up and by the time they realize all the work involve it drops to about 40-50... We usually have 45 and things are a little easy when all the work is distributed like that...
Joe Matt
23-04-2004, 12:43
Back in 2002, we had over 50 kids on the team. 2003 we had around 35. This year the max is 25. Next year is 15. Yes, 15. Frankly, we are loosing tons of people, and I think we can do well next year. I think a minimum of 10 people is needed to perform like a true team, but you can build and run a robot with only 5 IMHO.
Ben Lauer
23-04-2004, 12:52
Team 1272 from bloomington, Indiana only have 4-5 i believe. They made it to the Arcimedies final. Like Jessica, it's not the numbers, it the amount of dedication.
Elyse Holguin
23-04-2004, 13:02
This is our 9th year of competition, we usually have between 30-35 sign up, and about 20 people actually stick it out the whole season.
Rob Colatutto
23-04-2004, 13:26
Last year on my high school team, 263...
We had 9 students and 2 teachers on the team. With our few numbers we did not submit a chairmans, an inventor, an animation, a website, or a WFA nomination.
We did however win a Motorola Quality Award, seed 5th in our division at the championship, and attend 2 off-season events.
The number of students you 'need' on your team varies greatly based on what you want to do with the season. You can have very few students and still be just as competitive as everyone else.
By the time the 2006 season comes around I'm sure your team will gain some new members. If your very concerned about it, consider doing robotics demo's around the school. We found in 2002 that running our robot around during open houses helped attract a few members here and there. If your only a team of 6, you might need to eliminate some of the optional awards, but you can still have a great team and a great robot.
Lisa Rodriguez
23-04-2004, 13:30
This year we had 34 students, with the 20% of the people do 90-100% of the work. Its a real problem, we are currently trying to think of ways to make the team more difficult to get onto or a way to weed out the people who loaf off of those 20%. In my opinion you can have 5 really dedicated students run a team, no problem, but you'll probably want more, to share the workload, but it can be done.
btw if anyone has ways to try to keep out the loafers-pm them to me, my team is having a great deal of discussion on the way to do it, and any experience with this could help, thnx :)
I know this sounds very un-FIRSTish, but I think last year (Houston championship) was a true test of dedication to FIRST. I remember in 2000, we had 30 people sign up for Nonnebots. Roughly half of them would talk about nothing more than the "cheap ride to Disney." By the time the build season came around, we had about 15-16 students left. For the past 2 years, since the change away from Disney for championships, I've never seen more than 15 or 16 turn up for the initial planning meetings, and we ended up with 14-15 students on the team for both years. In any case, we've done pretty well with around that number. Of course, not all students could be there at all times, but we ended up with a core group of 8-10 dedicated students who were at every meeting, and it works out fine.
The Friday Judges award at UTC went to team 1059, I believe they are a team of 3 students and 2 engineers. To rehash what many have already said- it's quality, not quanity that makes a team.
I am curious though, how larger teams (35+ students) are managed. How's the leadership structure? Do you have sub-groups work on different projects? How do you decide who the operators/human players are with a group that large?
Astronouth7303
23-04-2004, 13:46
we have about 20 show up occasionally, 8 building the bot. Of course that build team has 6 seniors :yikes:
There has 1 team next to us at Buckeye with 3 people: a kid, his dad, and his physics profesor. Any smaller than that and I think you just spend a lot of cash to try to make a bot by the next kick-off. :)
Eric Bareiss
23-04-2004, 13:52
About how many students could maintain a team? My team (648) has about 25 students on it and if we were to jump ahead to the 2006 season right now, my team would have only 6 students on it.
Although between 15 and 25 is a good number, the answer that I would give you is 3. You only NEED 3 people to run a team. 2 Drivers and human player.
Asking other teams how many people they have isn't going to get you an answer about how many people your team needs. Over time you will figure out how many your team can sustain. If you only have 6 oh well.
As for recruiting the only advice I can give is: START WINNING. No one wants to join a team that won't win. So set a standard of at least doing well and people will be on your team like stink on a monkey.
This year we had 34 students, with the 20% of the people do 90-100% of the work. Its a real problem, we are currently trying to think of ways to make the team more difficult to get onto or a way to weed out the people who loaf off of those 20%. In my opinion you can have 5 really dedicated students run a team, no problem, but you'll probably want more, to share the workload, but it can be done.
btw if anyone has ways to try to keep out the loafers-pm them to me, my team is having a great deal of discussion on the way to do it, and any experience with this could help, thnx :)
try setting up rankings and say only a certain number can go... works for us... we count hours, money, odds and ends... also set a requirement of hours if you already don't...
As for recruiting the only advice I can give is: START WINNING. No one wants to join a team that won't win. So set a standard of at least doing well and people will be on your team like stink on a monkey.
Our team HAS been winning--648 this year was a midwest regional finalist and we finished 8th seed in the Archimedes field at the championship.
we have about 20 show up occasionally, 8 building the bot. Of course that build team has 6 seniors :yikes:
Well that sounds familiar! Let's see....a teammate and I made a list of people we thought were "frequent contributors" so we could keep a smaller contact list. There are 27 people on that list. If you take away the people we probably should have left off the list =) as well as animation, chariman's and webteam, it becomes 16. (Not that those subteams aren't important, but it means we have 16 on our build team.)
If you think about it, 16 people can build a robot. We're planning recruitment to make up for graduating seniors and to get more people working on those "other" things. (The animation and web design and all that.) Our required school cirriculum is actually pretty heavy in Inventor, so I think we could have an Autodesk team. You need to use info like that to play to your strengths and figure out what your team should and shouldn't try for.
But I personally think that you can build a robot with only a handful of really dedicated people. Actually, it's more like I have complete confidence in the fact that really dedicated people can do anything. Especially really dedicated FIRST people. =)
Who doesn't love having a full list of spotlight quotes to pull from? =)
The only thing a team needs to survive is people who want it to survive.
Good topic.
Our team has always had around 20 to 35 people on our team. Last year, we had about 20 members, 10 of who were graduating seniors. We decided to do massive recruiting so that we wouldn't have a 10 person team. We ended up doing so much recruiting, that we got 30 freshman to join the team. Since we had no limitations on # of members who can join, we accepted every student. However, only about 4 of them proved to be any kind of asset to the team. The rest just took up resources. Suffice to say, I regret every moment of that recruiting.
Now that the freshman have been here for a season, we can't just kick them off. It's great to have a large team, but if the majority of the people aren't dedicated, it ends up hurting the team.
The few of us who are dedicated, are drafting a handbook over the summer. We're going to setup a selection process. The purpose of the selection process isn't necessarily to cut people, but to try and make people feel like they earned there way on the team. If they feel privileged, we hope they'll be more inclined to work. Along those lines, we're also going to setup up some 'fundraising requirements.' We're going to require each of the students to search out companies to sponsor us. Many of the slackers may just quit right there because they don't want to make the effort to even visit a business. Like I said, we aren't going to cut the people that can't find a sponsor for us, but at least they'll start taking active roles in the team.
This year, I disagreed with a lot of decisions our leaders made (students and adults). We ended up having a pretty unsuccessful season both award-wise and fun-wise. Myself and a few others are trying to put the FIRST back into our FIRST team for the 2005 season and beyond. So don't worry about # of people on your team, you can get the job done with only one or two dedicated members.
If you need some ideas for recruiting, feel free to ask... that's one of the few things our team has lots of :)
Jeremiah Johnson
23-04-2004, 21:27
Here's our numbers:
Team members: 22
Freshmen:3
Sophmores:2
Juniors:13
Seniors:4
Yeah... after next year we will lose over half of our team but we are going to do some heavy recruiting over the summer. We are going to try as hard as possible to get some larger schools around to join. (PV, North, Central, Assumption, Moline, Rocky, East Mo, Orion, Rockridge, Alleman) Wow! That's going to be a lot of work. :eek: Oh yeah, we also have a bunch (3) mentors. After this year we will be without our head engineer (Ed). :ahh:
Last year we had a grand total of 4 students and had an extremely successfull year. It just means that everyone has to be able to do everything and you cant get sidetracked with cad/web type stuff
Rob Colatutto
23-04-2004, 22:00
Here's our numbers:
Team members: 22
Freshmen:3
Sophmores:2
Juniors:13
Seniors:4
Our numbers on 263 last year:
5 Seniors
1 Junior
1 Sophmore
2 Freshman
Don't be afraid of losing most of a team in one year. Last year when 5 main portion of the team graduated they just found new members and ended up being just as competitive as we were in our past years. The team even had a 2 speed transmission this year, something we had only talked about in the past. The year before that we had 8 seniors leave the team and almost no new members join up and things worked out fine. As long as your members can work together and have some type of guidance, I'm sure you will do fine with any size team. Just don't tackle something too huge for your members. Besides, training and inspiring new people is part of what FIRST is about.
Steve Howland
23-04-2004, 22:07
For us we probably only have about 20 core students. I believe 9 are Seniors (including entire drive team, and head scout), so we believe that some heavy recruiting needs to be done. After seniors, we have around 5 juniors, 4 or so sophomores, and one freshman (I feel so alone :( ).
We find that in order to have efficient scouting, drive team, and pit crew we probably need about 13 people. Then there is spirit and other smaller things to be incorporated into the team. Our webpage needs to be posted, and we will need a couple of people on that, probably. Then there is animation and chairman's, both of which require multiple students if you really want a decent shot at winning either. Overall I would prefer to have about 20 people, like we did this year, except some of the less active people doing more active off-robot activities. Any suggestions to motivate people who just seem to be along for the ride? (I don't dislike these people, just think that they should realize that FIRST is more of a commitment) PM me...
-Diobsidian
Chris Fultz
23-04-2004, 22:10
However, only about 4 of them proved to be any kind of asset to the team. The rest just took up resources. Suffice to say, I regret every moment of that recruiting.
Now that the freshman have been here for a season, we can't just kick them off.
We have about 25 this season.
No one is guaranteed year to year (students or mentors). We have interviews each May for the new team. Students must submit an application. They have a 15 minute interview with mentors and teachers. The must identify what the team has done for them, and what they have done for the team. The expectation for a returning 3rd year member is higher than for a returning 2nd year member. We recruit freshmen in the fall, using the same process, only a little easier. We do our best to take most applicants, but, honestly, some do not make it for a 2nd or 3rd or 4th year.
We also remind students during the season that they are expected to be contributing. We have an attendance requirement to travel.
I think the key is - how many students do you have that want to be on your team. That is usually the ideal number.
For our 25 /
What do they all do -
During most of the year:
Machining team
Build team
Inventor team
Animation team
Outreach / PR team
Chairman's writing team
some are on multiple teams.
At competitions:
Drive team
Pit crew
PR team
Scouting team
Stay in the pit area to talk to visitors team
Seems to work well - I will ask any Cyber Blue students to add comment....
No one is guaranteed year to year (students or mentors). We have interviews each May for the new team. Students must submit an application. They have a 15 minute interview with mentors and teachers. The must identify what the team has done for them, and what they have done for the team. The expectation for a returning 3rd year member is higher than for a returning 2nd year member. We recruit freshmen in the fall, using the same process, only a little easier. We do our best to take most applicants, but, honestly, some do not make it for a 2nd or 3rd or 4th year.
Yeah, I'm considering implementing a system similar to that next year. I think 25 is a good number for a team. Thanks for the idea!
I think our team was about 13 people....and out of that...probably only 8 or so did a lot of the work, and even less than that could be counted on to be there all the time. But...some of those people had other things such as a job. True, having a larger team would help, and we've been recruting, but when it comes down to build season, those who want to be there will be, and those who don't wont.
My team's been around for three years now. The first year I'd say we had 30 odd students participating. And we were pretty gung ho for that first year, putting a lot into it.
But next year the team got smaller and the apathy got worse.
And this year the team got smaller and the apathy got worse.
It's getting really hard for me (student alumni/mentor), the other one teacher, and the two major parent mentors to keep the team running. Seems like apathy is winning against the FIRST bug in my school; and it really sucks. The most depressing thing is the fact that we can't seem to get other teachers onboard... at anyrate, the 15-20 students we have now isn't enough... especially when only about 3-4 of us actually put forth a real effort into this team... Unless something major happens in my school to kill the apathy war, there probably won't be enough adult support, let alone students to have a Team 783 next year. ;_;
The smallest team I saw was the rookie team from St. Ignatus at Buckeye with 1 kid. That was not an acceptable situation as he required at least a human player from the HOT team to assist him.
The smallest I think a team can at least function was with four students to work the drives team and make a bare bones robot like team 1450 GMAces which has five kids.
To make a true assesstment of what would be an optimal number you first need to ask what do you want to accomplish?
you guys don't know what a blessing it is to have over 20 people.
these are active team member who have come at least 10 times since build.
Freshman:2
Sophomores:3
Juniors:2
Seniors:2 (now 1)
Total:9 and we went to quarters at both our regionals
Joe Ross
24-04-2004, 12:58
330 has had anywhere between 18 and 9 students in their 7 years of involvement. This year it was 9, with only 5 making the trip to nationals.
This year, they won AZ, were finalists at LA, won chairman's at AZ, 4th seed in Archimedes (and semifinalist), and won a national judges award.
Eric, In 330's experience, having a winning team only helps for a year or two at most. Now the people at the school have gotten so used to 330 winning, that it's no longer a draw.
Having a small team is definitely not a disadvantage that cannot be overcome
Having a small team is definitely not a disadvantage that cannot be overcome
It certainly is easier to manage and it's not a matter of the amount of team memebers you have it's the level of dedication they bring to the table. Quality over quanity.
Goobergunch
25-04-2004, 13:35
Our team stresses quality over quantity - if you don't contribute to the team, our teacher will kick you off. Malvern Prep is a fairly small school as it is (~440 people in the entire HS), with a lot (too much IMHO) of emphasis on the achievements on our athletic teams, so our team was fairly small this year and will be even smaller next year.
This year: Freshmen - 1
Sophomores - 3
Juniors - 4
Seniors - 7
We're going to be hurt a bit by graduation, but we aim to increase recruiting a bit and we also feel that we could build a robot just among us underclassmen as is. Sometimes, however, I do worry about the team going out of existence due to lack of interest - there definitely aren't enough sci/tech activities at our school, and the Malvern community seems to emphasize sports over science.
That being said, I prefer having a small team - everybody on the team contributes something, and there aren't any "hangers-on".
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