[mathking]

On the student leadership side, our team has an Engineering Director, a Communications Director and for the past couple of seasons a Human Resources Director. These students are like team captains on a sports team, they help manage what is going on. There is also a Chief Mechanic, working under the Engineering Director, because that "branch" of our organization requires the most work during the build season. Both the engineering director and the chief mechanic jump in where needed (and where they have expertise) on component teams, each which has their own student leader. The HR director is new for us, and is primarily responsible for tracking down students for projects we need to do. In practice this means finding kids to do demonstrations, organizing the set up and tear down crews for our FLL tournament and the Connect A Million Minds Invitational, and in general finding people for all of our various events. The communications director handles the Chairman's Essay and presentation and helps with all of our marketing stuff. People tend to move between positions. This year's Engineering Director was last year's Communications director, for example. (Alas now she is graduating, which means I will have to do more mechanical work and math next year.)

We have a fairly democratic structure in terms of deciding on strategy and high level design. We vote on the general course for the year. As an example, this year it was mostly the newer team members who wanted a mecanum drive robot, while the veterans wanted a beefy, two speed traction wheeled design. But the mecanum side got more votes. After the season starts, we have a core group of upperclassmen and mentors, which tends to number between 6 and 10 each year. This group meets a couple of times a week to make sure we are on course, and if not to decide on what needs to change.