[Jon Stratis]

I wanted to say one more thing to counter this sentiment towards seniors... On our team, we focus on individual growth. The freshmen and rookie members get additional attention, while the veteran members get additional responsibilities. As far as that goes, it makes sense to nominate and promote younger members, as they are the future leaders of the team. You're actively showing confidence and support of those members and their ability to lead and grow the team in the next year or two. For seniors, there's nothing wrong with recognizing their contribution, but doing so doesn't help the team to grow - they're graduating in a few months! It also doesn't help that student much, as they've already applied to colleges and their future is pretty well set.

What many people are forgetting is that the Dean's List isn't the end all of recognizing students. While winning an award infront of 60 teams may be great, not everyone who is nominated can win. Last year we, as a mentor group, specifically told all of the Seniors exactly what they meant to us and to the team. We highlighted what they did that helped the team and contributed to our successful season. We told them how they helped the team grow to the next level. While I may just be a mentor (and not a student eligible for the award), I think that achieving that level of recognition and respect from the professional engineers you work with has to be greater than any award FIRST can give you. After all, winning any award comes down to how well the case was presented to the judges... not necessarily how any individual or team actually performed. If the presentation isn't written well, the student won't win, even if they did more for FIRST than anyone else has.