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Unread 30-03-2015, 22:07
Squillo Squillo is offline
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AKA: Cynthia Hannah-White
FRC #2465 (Kauaibots)
Team Role: Mentor
 
Join Date: Feb 2011
Rookie Year: 2010
Location: Kauai, Hawaii
Posts: 153
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Re: Chairman's Award -- is the bar too high now?

I may be in a minority, but I don't think every team should apply, or be urged to apply, for the Chairman's Award. Our team has applied for CA every year since 2010 (and probably before that, since we go the NASA grants from the beginning, I believe). And I think it's been mostly a waste of time and a misappropriation of resources. I hope that this (next) year, I can convince everyone that we need to devote our very limited human resources (students and mentors) to 'shoring up our own house' - focusing on our business plan, making our own team sustainable, building up what we are doing for our kids in our community (we have a lot to do!), and not spend valuable time trying to 'spin' that stuff into CA material. We're just not ready to 'reach out' and help others, when we have so far to go ourselves, and while the organization and presentation skills the kids gain in putting together the presentation are valuable, I do not think it's appropriate for teams like ours to attempt to DO the things that a team must DO to earn the CA. (In our case, it's darn near impossible at this stage of our team development. How can we do international or even out-of-state outreach, or start new FIRST teams on our little island, when (1) all our elementary schools already have FLL, (2) there is no FTC competition in the state (I don't think, not sure about that - certainly none on our island), and (3) we can only (barely) support one FRC team for ALL of our high schools together?

I think FIRST should have another award, maybe, for teams like ours - maybe it is already there - the Entrepreneurship Award, or maybe EI... or call it the "Team Sustainability" award. (Maybe a team should HAVE to win something like that BEFORE they can even be considered for CA.) It is pretty clear that the kind of things WE need to focus our resources on (if we are to survive and grow to the point that we can hope to do more CA-quality stuff) - getting more students, more mentors, more sponsors - are not what they are looking for in CA.
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