[MechEng83]

My team, 1741, was able to take home this award from the Queen City Regional. We weren't trying for this award specifically, but having won it, and taking a retrospective look at the questions the judges asked our students, I figured I'd offer my thoughts on this award.

I've often heard EI referred to as "2nd place Chairman's" but I think that's a disservice to the award. While our outreach efforts to promote science and technology went a long way toward the community portion of the award, there's more to it than that. We worked with our school to integrate robotics lessons in the classroom. The swarm of judges in our pit talked to any student they could grab about our robot, our testing, our technical documentation, our training, our design selection criteria, our process documentation, etc. -- We talked the talk, but they were really seeing if we walked the walk, which I am proud to say our kids did. The kids were excited to talk about everything, and it really showed how they'd become inspired about engineering.

I do have a question for you all: Does your team target this award? We're going to re-tool our Chairman's presentation to focus on EI for World's.