FIRST Dean's List- Thoughts? [Archive]

DonRotolo

22-02-2010, 21:50

I'm upset that FIRST gave mentors/teams 3 days to come up with nominees, and develop an adequately written statement of nomination. 4000 characters is nowhere close to a Chairman's essay, but do they realize how long teams spend on carefully crafting Chairman's and Woodie Flowers submissions?!?!?
If you type one character every 2 seconds - including spaces - surely you can think about every character adequately? That takes about 2.2 hours, out of the 72 given. Plenty of time, especially if you say is succinctly and use fewer characters. :)

Rich Kressly

23-02-2010, 01:25

wendymom

23-02-2010, 02:18

I agree that the award is nice however I also agree that 4 days is not enough time to get it done. They want the team to choose a nominee. Our team isn't meeting again till next week. We have to get through the FTC State Championships. So I guess we will do it through the Forum and emails.

The way I read it, mentors can write the essays. Thank heavens we have been writing college recommendations so at least we have information we can pull from at our fingertips.

AnibaS

23-02-2010, 02:28

It does seem kind of strange that they just sprang up this award on us; I wouldn't have even known about it were it not for this thread. But it is a very good opportunity for students, and we are all on the same boat in terms of the shortness in time.

The description implied that anyone can write the letter, just as long as it is 'approved" by the entire team.

GaryVoshol

23-02-2010, 07:32

Plenty of time, especially if you say is succinctly and use fewer characters.Or leave out a random word or two. :rolleyes:

KC1AJT

23-02-2010, 15:56

Great idea, but would be nice to have a little heads up on this.

Does anyone know if mentors can write these? If so it looks like you need to have a students awards submitter log on to enter/submit. Correct?
mentors or teams can choose the nominee here are the rules:
http://usfirst.org/uploadedFiles/Community/FRC/FRC_Documents_and_Updates/Deans%20List%20Web%20Posting.pdf

AnibaS

26-02-2010, 19:17

I did not notice that the deadline was 4:30, and though it would be 11:59 as usual. This is a lesson in reading carefully!

Akash Rastogi

26-02-2010, 19:22

I kinda wish we would be allowed to nominate students from other teams.

rsisk

26-02-2010, 22:10

I really like the idea of the award, it is the perfect compliment to the Woodie Flower's award for mentors.

The short time frame didn't phase me, I work better under pressure :)

Jessica Boucher

26-02-2010, 22:32

Just all part of the challenge, people.

David Brinza

26-02-2010, 22:44

Just all part of the challenge, people.

You left out the sarcasm emoticon! That sounds more like a dodge for poor planning and execution.

Why the 4:30 pm EST cut-off today? Staffing for supporting their broken submission tool? Let's just ignore the fact that for half the country, students are still in class and ONLY students could do the submission. Not very nice. :mad:

Jessica Boucher

26-02-2010, 22:54

No sarcasm intended at all - there's just a few things that stick out to me right away:

1.) Engineers aren't the only ones who need to think on their feet. Students of all areas of study should learn how to communicate well, quickly.

2.) This is an award with no precedent of a winner. Just give it your best shot - what is there to lose?

ebarker

26-02-2010, 23:15

Just give it your best shot - what is there to lose?

The loss is poor participation on the part of teams. If there is poor participation then you get a low statistical sampling and at least in the beginning Dean's list will not be recruiting the best in student leadership.

There are thousands of fine student leaders and unfortunately only a tiny fraction of them will get submitted, I fear.

If the point is to exercise teams speedy response to requests then we can call it Dean's speedy test.

If the point is to identify and recruit highly committed and talented individuals to carry FIRST into the future then we have a whole new ball game.

I'm going out on a limb a little bit but I'd venture to say there is a fair amount of frustration out there about the timing and the cut off time for the event. 4:30 pm EST is particularly mysterious. What does that do for the west coast and Hawaii ?

Dean's list is a great concept but the execution this year leaves a lot to be desired.

My team has been hammered this week handling other issues. In spite of getting hammered we didn't get enough sleep and still got the essays done only to be denied by the early cutoff time.

Most of the time things work out. Sometime you just flat out run out of gas.

Such is life.

EricH

26-02-2010, 23:55

Concept: 10/10 or higher.

Execution/Implementation: Reminds me of an FRC team getting an idea at 2:30 AM two days before ship and barely managing to implement it before ship. As in, it'll work, but it's almost certainly not the best way to do it. We'll see how the judging goes--if they don't get enough to fill the pool at Championship, then the execution is an EPIC FAIL. (It's currently close to regular fail.)

If they'd had the announcement out last week, teams could probably have flooded the inbox for the list. As it is, Bill's Blog (from Wednesday) states that they had 5 total submissions the day after opening--at the time, 2 days after the initial announcement. It'll be interesting to see how many were actually submitted, and I'd bet that with an extra weekend, there'd have been a lot more coming in. Or even with the extra couple of hours gained by extending the deadline to some time in the evening--say, 8 PM EST, or even midnight in the same time zone--there would probably have been a substantial increase.

No comment on the submission process; I'm not familiar enough with that entire system to say anything that would actually make sense.

JaneYoung

27-02-2010, 00:04

Implementation: Reminds me of an FRC team getting an idea at 2:30 AM two days before ship and barely managing to implement it before ship. As in, it'll work, but it's almost certainly not the best way to do it.

That would stand a good chance of becoming a shipwreck.

R.C.

27-02-2010, 01:11

David Brinza

27-02-2010, 02:08

Alright,

Today as the deadline approached, our mentor got done with the Nomination around 1:00 pm Pacific time. I tried to upload the essay but got an error, so we had someone else on our team try and we got an error again.

Then our mentor tried though the TIMS, but that didn't seem to work either.

So he called up FIRST before the 4:30 EST deadline and FIRST told him that it had to go though the Student TIMS. He was not allowed to upload the nomination or email it to FIRST.

Has anyone else had the same problem? Its very disappointing not to get in due a problem with TIMS.

Thanks,

-RCPretty much the same deal with us. Two essays were sent to FIRST via e-mail before 1:30 pm because our students don't have internet access in school. A call to FIRST indicated that they weren't able to accept the e-mail submission.

The real problem is that this award shouldn't be submitted by a student. But, FIRST didn't have time to develop an alternative submission method, so they were stuck with using STMPLGIS (or student TIMS).

Selecting the nominee(s) and essay writing should be done by mentors, otherwise it's a popularity contest (or worse). The notion that a student would read my assessment of the capabilities, commitment, contributions of a peer doesn't sit very well with me. That kind of evaluation should be kept discrete.

Cory

27-02-2010, 03:05

Pretty much the same deal with us. Two essays were sent to FIRST via e-mail before 1:30 pm because our students don't have internet access in school. A call to FIRST indicated that they weren't able to accept the e-mail submission.

The real problem is that this award shouldn't be submitted by a student. But, FIRST didn't have time to develop an alternative submission method, so they were stuck with using STMPLGIS (or student TIMS).

Selecting the nominee(s) and essay writing should be done by mentors, otherwise it's a popularity contest (or worse). The notion that a student would read my assessment of the capabilities, commitment, contributions of a peer doesn't sit very well with me. That kind of evaluation should be kept discrete.

We made a fake account with the student TIMS so the mentors could submit.

Akash Rastogi

27-02-2010, 03:11

ebarker

27-02-2010, 07:09

..... then the execution is an EPIC FAIL. (It's currently close to regular fail.)

I'd like to see a good working definition of 'regular fail' and 'epic fail'..haha

David Brinza

27-02-2010, 11:18

We made a fake account with the student TIMS so the mentors could submit.We gave some serious thought to doing that (http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showpost.php?p=928523&postcount=11), but decided not to.

I really should have introduced "Ima Mentor" to our team. I wouldn't be whining so much now. :o

JaneYoung

27-02-2010, 11:21

We made a fake account with the student TIMS so the mentors could submit.

I'm hearing a lot about getting around the system in order for the mentors to submit an essay or two that highlights the character of a student, hoping to garner a prestigious award that Dean Kamen has created to honor his parents. There's something very wrong. Especially when the team getting around the system is a HoF team.

With the way that it was set up this year, we took a collaborative approach, involving the students that had been selected by our team, in the process. Because of the different constraints involved, we approached the situation as best we could while continuing to maintain a semblance of order and integrity. When mentors from other teams contacted me seeking advice, I advised against doing anything to get around the system.

For this award, is it really that important that only mentors write and submit for the student(s) being honored? Or - is it valuable to include the student(s) and their team (and community) in which they are such a big part of and from where the inspiration has come? I can understand that mentors are asked to write college recommendations year after year, and we all take that very seriously and adhere to the privacy aspect of that. This is a little different. At least this year. One of our sub-team awards members e-mailed the essay submissions to the team yesterday. I printed them out and will frame them and place them where I can see them every day. Are they perfect? No. Could we have used a lot more time than we had. Absolutely. Am I proud as can be? Yes. Am I still frustrated? No. The students' tenacity and perseverance calmed me way down. They're good like that.

Jane

David Brinza

27-02-2010, 12:05

I agree that "gaming the system" is not the best way to go, but in this case, it's an indicator how broken the implementation really is.

Team 980 didn't have time to do the team collaborative approach to writing and approving the essays. But even if we did have the time, we don't think that is necessarily the best approach for determining and submitting nominees for this award.

Here is the Team 980 rationale for believing the Dean's List award is the purview of mentors not the students:

A "consensus" submission might turn the Dean's List award into a popularity contest within the team - not a good thing. Even worse, debates might arise among team members (remember, we're dealing with emotional teenagers who are as sleep-deprived and burned-out as the mentors) that actually harm the team. The Dean's List Award should be the mentors' opportunity to identify students that delivered above and beyond expectations. These students might be very shy, very driven, and/or even very "weird" in the eyes of their peers. An adult mentor can easily push aside the "petty stuff" and get to the heart of the matter for the Dean's List award: contribution, commitment, capability, and creativity.

A socially-adept student might contribute to team spirit and perhaps boost the number of students on the team. But I much rather have a student that takes on the design challenges and is committed to work creatively to meet those challenges. If this dedicated student isn't a Facebook friend with other team members, that student shouldn't be penalized in consideration of this award.

This year, no LEGAL mechanism existed in FIRST for mentors to make awards submissions. FIRST must address that next year. FIRST also should give due consideration to teams that did all they could to submit their Dean's List nominees on time - even if it was done by e-mail or FAX to HQ, or created a temporary "fake" account to submit the award.

JaneYoung

27-02-2010, 12:15

Excellence rises and can be seen/experienced by everyone.
--
So as not to respond with yet another post, I'll add on here.

David, regarding your posts - I can't help but think that we are saying the same things only different. I have great respect for the struggle regarding the timing, the exhaustion of the mentors/students, and the frustrations of working with/contending with the new system set up for submitting for awards. Perhaps, sometimes FIRST forgets that we are all human when they ask for these extraordinary superhuman efforts.

Peace.

David Brinza

27-02-2010, 12:35

Excellence rises and can be seen/experienced by everyone.I agree, and I didn't mean to infer that a consensus approach wouldn't work. I applaud your team's approach. I would be proud of the student's efforts as well.

There are some factors here that cannot be ignored. All of our team members would stand behind our nominees. Given the time constraints (for our team, one evening), selecting nominees and developing collaborative essays (which is what the award call required), would have been asking too much. We selected the two workhorse team leaders, then wrote from the mentor's perspective. Is that the best or correct approach? No, it's just what we could do under the constraints. I think things will be much better next year after FIRST sorts out the implementation.

Cory

27-02-2010, 13:17

I'm hearing a lot about getting around the system in order for the mentors to submit an essay or two that highlights the character of a student, hoping to garner a prestigious award that Dean Kamen has created to honor his parents. There's something very wrong. Especially when the team getting around the system is a HoF team.

With the way that it was set up this year, we took a collaborative approach, involving the students that had been selected by our team, in the process. Because of the different constraints involved, we approached the situation as best we could while continuing to maintain a semblance of order and integrity. When mentors from other teams contacted me seeking advice, I advised against doing anything to get around the system.

For this award, is it really that important that only mentors write and submit for the student(s) being honored? Or - is it valuable to include the student(s) and their team (and community) in which they are such a big part of and from where the inspiration has come? I can understand that mentors are asked to write college recommendations year after year, and we all take that very seriously and adhere to the privacy aspect of that. This is a little different. At least this year. One of our sub-team awards members e-mailed the essay submissions to the team yesterday. I printed them out and will frame them and place them where I can see them every day. Are they perfect? No. Could we have used a lot more time than we had. Absolutely. Am I proud as can be? Yes. Am I still frustrated? No. The students' tenacity and perseverance calmed me way down. They're good like that.

Jane

We barely had the time for the mentors to work on it, let alone to form a committee of students to get this done. We had two options here. The mentors write the submission and hope the kids can get it in on time, or the mentors write the submission and slightly circumvent the system (which is completely broken) to ensure that our students have the chance to be recognized. It was a no brainer to us.

I agree with everything that David has said. As mentors we know our students a LOT better than the students do. I also feel that the team does not need to know what we wrote about the students we submitted for.

The point here was to recognize an outstanding student (or two) on your team. We did our absolute best to make that happen, which is what any team should have done. I see absolutely no reason why that is "very wrong"

JaneYoung

27-02-2010, 13:25

We barely had the time for the mentors to work on it, let alone to form a committee of students to get this done. We had two options here. The mentors write the submission and hope the kids can get it in on time, or the mentors write the submission and slightly circumvent the system (which is completely broken) to ensure that our students have the chance to be recognized. It was a no brainer to us.

I agree with everything that David has said. As mentors we know our students a LOT better than the students do. I also feel that the team does not need to know what we wrote about the students we submitted for.

The point here was to recognize an outstanding student (or two) on your team. We did our absolute best to make that happen, which is what any team should have done. I see absolutely no reason why that is "very wrong"

Creating a false account was wrong, in my opinion.

What is very wrong is the way the rollout of the award was handled. That would be "very wrong" with any award. With a new award that already has too much prestige/value to be ignored - it is very wrong to put teams of your caliber with such an incredible reputation - into such difficult positions as to feel that you have to make choices like this. To put all the teams through this.

(In our case - it was a collaborative effort within the team - students and mentors working together.)
Jane

EricH

27-02-2010, 13:31

I'd like to see a good working definition of 'regular fail' and 'epic fail'..haha
Regular: Something's screwed up a little bit. SNAFU, only minor.
Epic: "Something" hit the fan. Major SNAFU.

(I thought about posting a quantitative version, but then realized that I'm the only one on here who knows the units for that one and what they mean.)

The rollout would have been best left for next year, or earlier than it was this year, IMO.

Chris is me

27-02-2010, 13:33

I really like the idea of the award, it is the perfect compliment to the Woodie Flower's award for mentors.

My only concern award is that I hope the award doesn't take anything away from the Woodie Flower's Award. I was a little used to the concept of awarding adult mentors as the only individual recognition.

The short time frame didn't give me time to write essays about students that particularly inspired me, but they wrote about each other fast enough to submit.

I guess in a way this is a lot like the IRI Scholarships in terms of honoring student achievement.

Karibou

27-02-2010, 17:31

What is very wrong is the way the rollout of the award was handled. That would be "very wrong" with any award. With a new award that already has too much prestige/value to be ignored - it is very wrong to put teams of your caliber with such an incredible reputation - into such difficult positions as to feel that you have to make choices like this. To put all the teams through this.
Jane

Do you mean rollout as in the time constraint? I feel like that was VERY unfair. It was hurtful to every kind of team - small teams may not have the spare bodies to write the submission, large teams probably had problems getting the team to get a general consensus on time, and teams who don't have a specified awards/PR team run into the same problems as small teams - who's going to write it if everyone is more robot-oriented?

(and then there are teams such as mine - we're a 30-student team who didn't have a team meeting until Thursday, and our Imagery team, which is our equivillance of a PR team, is both rather small this year and typically doesn't handle award submissions)

Bharat Nain

27-02-2010, 18:30

Do you mean rollout as in the time constraint? I feel like that was VERY unfair. It was hurtful to every kind of team - small teams may not have the spare bodies to write the submission, large teams.....

But since it hurt everyone equally it's okay right??? right??? :D

All jokes aside, the students whose teams were able to nominate are lucky to have something written about them. This is yet another example of how FIRST does not know how to roll-out programs. This brings back memories of when the FIRST alumni site was introduced.

The point is that the award was submitted. The award description does not say that "the award must be written and submitted by fellow team members". If an account had to be created to submit the award, then it is not a big deal especially considering the circumstances under which this was rolled out. It is a prestigious award and honors someone greatly influential while giving students in FIRST an opportunity at something meaningful (hopefully).

My 2 cents.

-Bharat

ebarker

27-02-2010, 18:34

Regular: Something's screwed up a little bit. SNAFU, only minor.
Epic: "Something" hit the fan. Major SNAFU.

Now that we have our definitions I'd say this event should be classified as 'epic'.

This 'thing' doesn't fall into the category of "should FIRST or should FIRST not" do it. It is clearly a good idea.

The entire system would have clearly benefitted by waiting until next year.

Akash Rastogi

28-02-2010, 02:08

Ian Curtis

28-02-2010, 03:52

I talked to a few kids and mentors today who said they had problems submitting and never even got to submit. They even called FIRST BEFORE the deadline asking for assistance and FIRST did nothing.

How is this a competition of any sort if ALL the kids who deserve to be recognized AREN'T EVEN COMPETING :mad: ?!

And yeah....4:30? Seriously? Could there be a more unintelligent/arbitrary time to submit for an award? :mad:

I doubt 4.30 was arbitrary. I'm reasonably certain that FIRST did not pick 4.30 PM because 200 Bedford Street wanted to screw as many teams over as possible. Likely they had some schedule constraint that mandated having all of them in one place prior to the weekend. At least, that's what I'd conjecture by the 4.30 PM EST deadline.

However, FIRST not going the extra mile to help teams who contacted them for help runs in the face of every experience I've ever had with FIRST HQ. And that's a little bit upsetting, especially when this is much more closer to FIRST's mission than building a robot. :(

rsisk

28-02-2010, 10:04

One thing to consider; we don't know all the facts and there may have been a legitimate reason for the short time frame.

Speculate all you want, but if you consider the complexity what FIRST does every year, rolling out a new award should be fairly straight forward. So maybe the concept has been in the works for some time and something caused the rollout to be accelerated for this year.

Assuming that was the case, now consider that potentially a hundred submissions for each first week regional must be reviewed and two winners selected before 3/4 or 3/5. That includes the evaluators figuring out how to score and select the winners. Ugh... I'm glad they didn't stretch out the deadline.

Reasonable possibilities for the late rollout and the short deadline.

So, this is a great award and I think there are going to be 10 very proud students round about the middle of April. And many proud teams that those members came from, and thousands of students who will be proud to know their teams thought well enough of them to submit an entry.

Kudos to FIRST for another great award and kudos to all the students, mentors, parents who pulled it together to get a submission in under a tight deadline.

I'm sure in the cases where rules were stretched to make an entry, a valuable reminder about integrity in all cases can be read in Jane's post. There are probably many who have not posted about their submission techniques, read that post, and thought to themselves "Oh yeah... thanks for the reminder".

Bharat Nain

28-02-2010, 10:55

One thing to consider; we don't know all the facts and there may have been a legitimate reason for the short time frame.

The longer you are in FIRST, the more you start to realize that things like this happen too often. It seems as though FIRST things about teams perspective less and less... or maybe it is the sheer volume of stuff. :confused:

Chris is me

28-02-2010, 14:29

I'm sure FIRST also had unspoken, legitimate reasons for outright refusing to take submissions from teams who had problems with the TIMS. Problems and essays made available to them before the deadline.

The short rollout ticks me off a little, but I'd be willing to live with it if they were more flexible with submissions that didn't work in their own broken system. That one of the most inspiring students to me in FRC isn't able to be nominated for this award because of a computer glitch and FIRST's apparent stubbornness is something I'm much more angry about.

Akash Rastogi

28-02-2010, 14:42

However, FIRST not going the extra mile to help teams who contacted them for help runs in the face of every experience I've ever had with FIRST HQ. And that's a little bit upsetting, especially when this is much more closer to FIRST's mission than building a robot. :(

It would have been nice of HQ to take a page from Autodesk's book, who helped teams submit their animations and inventor submissions as long as a request for help or a problem was reported before the deadline time. They were extremely helpful.

Also, my last post seems a bit angry because Chris and I are talking about the same person who didn't get to submit.

RoboMom

08-06-2010, 11:56

Just checking Bill's Blog and saw this:

>>Did you (or someone on your team) submit an essay for the Dean’s List Award this year? We didn’t ask for the email or home address of the nominee then, but we need it now. We want to make sure every participant receives acknowledgment that they were nominated and Dean wants to include the nominees in some upcoming discussions. If someone on your team was nominated for the Dean’s List Award, please have them send their personal email and home address to DeansList@usfirst.org <<