[Wendy Holladay]

As a mentor who has written 3 Dean's List awards and on a team that has won at the Regional Level 4 times and once, (this year) at the National level, I feel I must comment. I will leave the ceremony details to the event organizers, they understand this so much better than I ever will. Clearly in a new event there are improvements.

As to the giving of scholarships, many schools have a "blind need" policy. That means it doesn't matter how good a student is, it is based on your family's ability to pay, ie the FAFSA and CS-Profile. Every student and parent should understand this policy and how it can affect them.

Our team has always and will always nominate juniors, that made sense to us. We did it in 2010 and will keep doing it. And we always include the students non-FRC accomplishments, we think they add greatly in defining who that student is and we post all our award submissions on our website.

http://www.team1912.com/docs/dl_rholladay.html
http://www.team1912.com/docs/dl_hsorrell.html
http://www.team1912.com/docs/dl_azhou.html
http://www.team1912.com/docs/dl_ccollins.html

To give to award the National stature the founders' intended, Juniors must be the recipients. Like National Merit, by giving it to Juniors, it creates for FRC better recognition world-wide and gives those students a chance to have one more year to help promote FIRST in their region. Awards from any organization promote both the recipient and the awarding organization. All FRC awards should promote students, teams, and FIRST. If you are truly interested in changing the culture, giving this award to Juniors provides the greatest benefit to the students, the teams, and FIRST.