[kmusa]

My first reaction to this thread was that I've always been frustrated by the fact that, unlike the Gracious Professionalism and Engineering Inspiration awards, the Chairman's Award has to be applied for, even though it is also a recognition award.

Luckily, I had a chance for my thoughts to percolate.

Just as FIRST uses robots to inspire students (and everyone involved), I realized that FIRST uses the Chairman's Award to inspire teams.

Many teams initially focus on the robot. In time, some (hopefully, most) of those will start wondering about the Chairman's Award. They look at the process, what other teams are doing, etc. And they start to expand beyond robot build season.

Maybe they actually make submissions. Most likely, they increase their efforts and continue to get more involved with their community.

At some point, I believe that the focus begins to shift away from the Chairman's Award itself, and toward the actual activities of and interactions by the team (and their impact).

If it does, then the original question becomes moot. As Simon and others mentioned, reporting on the state of the team is important. Submitting it is up to the team (awkward as it is, FIRST has yet to come up with a practical alternative to self-nomination). If the judges decide that a team is worthy of recognition, so be it.

I don't have a feel for the percentage of teams that become disillusioned enough to seriously ask the question. My guess is fairly small - since these teams would need to be expending serious effort to inspire the community, while keeping CA as a significant goal - it just doesn't make sense to me.

I will say that it's been my privilege to watch our team go through a significant part of this process over the last number of years - from a team where people were only willing to commit to build season and actual competition, to a team active year round.