Scholarships for Winning Teams (WVROX)
 

I noticed in the WVROX thread that West Virginia University offered a full academic scholarship to one student from each of the winning alliance teams. This is a BIG12 school offering a full academic ride, WOW (and WOW). This sparked much internal thought about that very topic, so I thought I would pose some questions.

What are your thoughts on combining winning the robot competition with receiving a scholarship?

What process is/should the team who received the scholarship using/use to choose a student to receive it?

How did the WVROX organizers secure something so valuable?

Re: Scholarships for Winning Teams (WVROX)
 

Well, it is a bit of a silly decision to associate the scholarship with one of the members from the winning alliance. First of all, the person most suited for the scholarship might not be on the winning team! They could be on the lowest ranked team! If we want to be a fair, a method of doing such might be writing a one page application or so (one member of each team at the competition would get to write one, they would be selected based off of a team vote similar to the Deans List award). However, having the scholarship for a member of the winning alliance can be a nice reward and I would say that it doesn't hurt to do it this way. Just a bit of extra initiative.

I personally think that the recipient of the scholarship on the winning alliance should be chosen from a cohesive mentor vote based on season contribution and skill.

WVROX most likely got this from a sponsor, although I am not sure. It would be best to ask someone involved with WVROX.

Re: Scholarships for Winning Teams (WVROX)
 

In this case the scholarship was an award for someone on the winning team... therefore the person "most suited" for the scholarship is someone on the on the winning team.

The person "who needs it the most" might not be, but different organizations offer scholarships for different things or prizes for competition all the time.

Re: Scholarships for Winning Teams (WVROX)
 

Oklahoma State also did something like this at the Oklahoma Regional (if I remember correctly) for the Engineering Inspiration winner, although not that big. I think theirs was 10 $500 scholarships.

Re: Scholarships for Winning Teams (WVROX)
 

Well, it could be argued that the most suited is based off of an individual, not a team. Although one team collaboratively might be better, one individual may be better than the other individuals on that team.

Re: Scholarships for Winning Teams (WVROX)
 

But that's not what he's trying to say. The scholarship isn't rewarded to 'the student who best embodies the ideals of FIRST'; that's not criteria for it at all. The criteria for it is winning.

Re: Scholarships for Winning Teams (WVROX)
 

I understand that, I was just suggesting an idea for how it could have been awarded based on my opinion regarding if the winners should recieve the winning title and the scholarship.

Re: Scholarships for Winning Teams (WVROX)
 

Fair enough; I was slightly confused by some wording, but yeah, it should be up to thte team to decide who ti goes to

Re: Scholarships for Winning Teams (WVROX)
 

It should be noted that FIRST awards a scholarship to a member of the Chairman's award team:

Re: Scholarships for Winning Teams (WVROX)
 

Speaking on behalf of WVU (I am also the Associate Vice President for Research and Economic Development at WVU), the goal of the scholarships was to attract high quality students to WVU. There were 4 scholarships given out. These are academic scholarships and the threshold criteria are pretty stiff (3.8 GPA, 30 on the ACT or 1340 on the SAT) and so it really is an academic scholarship - and it is a full scholarship (worth $4,000 to an in-state student and over $10,000 to an out of state student). Each of the three winning teams has one week to nominate a student who has or will try to meet those criteria (the scholarship could go to a student who isn't going to be a senior this fall). The 4th scholarship went to a team who coach won a judged award based on student entries for an outstanding coach/mentor nomination. WVU is very interested in building up our engineering program with great students and FIRST students are perfect for recruiting. FIRSTers might not know it, but in four different NASA robotics challenges this summer, WVU took first place; beating out teams from MIT and elsewhere. So were are serious about good students. I am working on finding a donor to endow these sorts of scholarships in the future (if we are crazy enough to do WVRoX again). We left it up to the teams to develop their own nomination process, just like FIRST does for the Deans List award. Any other questions about the process, just get in touch with me and I would be happy to answer them.

Re: Scholarships for Winning Teams (WVROX)
 

Earl, Thanks so much for the reply from someone close to the situation.

A sincere thanks for offering the scholarships. That is great to hear WVU is interested in getting FIRST students.

The strict academic portion answers some of my questioning thoughts I had also. Winning was only one component, and it may be the easier of the requirements.