[buildmaster5000]

I'm going to toss my two cents in here...bare in mind that I graduated HS in 2011, before the Dean's list was even an award (I'm pretty sure anyways):

Interviews: good idea. The community has hit the dead horse enough on this. An interview does a much better job of allowing the judges to see the true qualities of a person. It is easy enough for someone to seem enthusiastic on paper but be apathetic when it comes to the interview. This situation is now mitigated. Good job here.

Now, the limitation to 'not-seniors' is interesting. To me, the biggest satisfaction I got from FRC was seeing 2 students take a team that had basically disbanded, and rebuild a bigger, stronger, deeper team with more school support than I could have ever imagined. Do I think that I influenced them? I like to think so. Additionally, the award 2421 in 2010 at DC (Engineering Excellence) is a huge climax in my FRC memory. I smile whenever I walk into my room and see that trophy sitting on the shelf.
Is it right to recognize the students that contribute greatly to the FRC community? ABSOLUTELY.
However, I feel that this whole award is missing the point: often times, the greatest students are not the ones that do the most work or recruit the most students or fund raise the most, but the student who, singlehandedly, motivates and drives the entire team. The award, in my opinion, does not tend to recognize this student, even though they are, IMO the critical link in the team. If a student were to really take charge, take ownership, and drive the rest of team to do the same, then I would want to recognize them on the team level first, making sure that people knew what this student did to make the TEAM successful......

Now, back to my thermo assignment..