[EricH]

Start now. I see a few tricks that might help.

1) As noted before, find out what these non-motivated students are good at, or better yet, what they like to do. Spare no effort to get them into that area, or trying it out. I don't care what that area is, once they find it, they'll work on it because they want to. Remember, FIRST is not just about the robot--there's animation, 3D design, essays to write, objects to throw, finances to balance and find, other robots to scout...

2) This works best if it's in a team handbook, but you can set a minimum number of hours to travel (the more hours you have, the farther you can travel). But, with one catch in this case: They have to be productive hours. I'll let you figure out how to track productive hours versus non-productive ones; I will however suggest that homework count as productive (though if you're smart, you'll find some ratio so that an hour of homework doesn't equal an hour of, say, making parts). This isn't study hall, but study hall can be done close to the shop as needed. The point here is that if you want to go to cool places with us, we're not going to give that trip to you, you have to earn it. (You could also do some travel-funding apportioning--the more you work, the less you have to pay to travel, or something similar.)

3) To go along with 2), another useful clause could be that non-productive members cannot expect to return the following year, without demonstrating that they can be productive, or may be subject to requests to go somewhere else and not be doing anything over there.

One note: 2) and 3) are sort of "emergency" measures if 1) does not work. I don't anticipate those ever needing to be used if you can get the people who are not getting into the project in via giving them something to do that they like to do. It might be a good idea to have them in a team handbook, though.