[OZ_341]

Back in 2000, Team 341 started out as a single sponsor team, working out of a local corporate site, with several engineers and machinists to guide the process.

The ground-level mentors were great people but the students had very limited hands-on roles, due corporate liability concerns and further transportation issues kept younger students back at school. These issues combined with very limited student access hours to the site, made the students feel uninvolved in the construction and decision making process.

In 2003, after 3 seasons we decided to build independently in a school-based environment. It was the right decision for our particular organization. In our case the school site allowed us to build our own systematic process, which more closely matched the goals of our team. It took us years to develop this system, but we felt it was worth the effort.

Building in a high school woodshop has its obvious limitations and our lack of a practice space hurts us every February. But in the end, we have figured out ways to work around the limitations and develop a process that is both satisfying and rewarding for our students.