Quote:
Originally Posted by DaveL
Hi All:
I'm conflicted between a club vs a team approach to running an FRC team.
By club, I mean no tryouts, easy to join, right after school and focused on education. By team, I mean dues and build hours are required. Week night and weekend meetings. Plus the focus is on constructing a robot.
During the Fall we get a ton of students and run more like a club.
We get a low turnout on the weekends. It doesn't matter if its a general build day, a workshop or an outreach event.
In the winter we morph into more of a team and lose a large number of students, but the students that remain are more committed to attending meetings and building a robot.
Does aiming to be a team and being more restrictive from the beginning help you compete and be able to deliver a more technical student education?
I would like to learn if other teams have had these issues, how they improved and how they would rate themselves on a club / team dimension.
Dave
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First off (and this goes to anyone interested) please pm me so we can discuss further how we have done things at Becker (FRC 4607 C.I.S.).
At Becker we decided early that we wanted the best and brightest students involved in our program. When we proposed FIRST to our school in the fall of 2012, they (school administration) wanted a year to discuss it. However, when we started to work with our (now) sponsors, they demanded that this opportunity happen immediately - regardless if the school was on board. The sponsors had a few other demands - but I can provide these in better detail in a PM.
So we went ahead with the idea that we would use my space (I am an Industrial Tech teacher) for this endeavor. We never thought of this as a club or a team - but as a program that will fulfill a need that Becker did not yet have. We wanted to create a program that brought in all of these great leaders to create a "team" that had many facets - facets that you could find in a lot of other programs (NHS, 4H, DECA, SuperMileage, Debate, SKILLS USA, Knowledge Bowl) but not in one area. The things that we stressed were leadership, public speaking, marketing, strategy, web design, engineering, fabrication, etc. We sought the approval for the space usage from my principal and she obliged.
When we started FRC 4607 we realized that without leaders, we would be doomed. If we just started this endeavor with robotics kids, we would be a robotics club. This was not our intent. We wanted to be relevant in Minnesota within five years. In fact, in the other coach's office he still hangs our first year's objective: To be in the top 50% of Minnesota FRC teams in five years.
Our next obstacle was to gain funding. The school would provide the space and nothing else - we were on our own. At the time we thought this was a program killer - little did we know that this was one of the keys to our success. When we presented our idea/team to the local industry they were amazed that the school did not jump on board - so they did. When the local industry started to climb on board, they were willing to provide money and the mentors to help us.
Three years later we are more than stable - and we are still growing. We started with 12 interested students and last season we had 51 students on our FRC team. Of those 51 students, all but 7 were apart of other organizations such as Soccer, Football, Trap, NHS, Basketball, Theater, Debate, Speech, Baseball, Yearbook, Track, LaCrosse, Tennis, Student Council, Band, Choir, and many others. All of these students understood that FRC is just a program - but one that can greatly influence who they are and what they can do after High School. In the last three years, we have graduated 38 students and all but three are now in a four year university studying a degree in the STEM spectrum. In fact, a handful started the Bison Robotics club at NDSU and are a part of the Ri3d team 'Greenhorns'.
I think that Becker has a great model for others to follow - allow your student leaders in the school to be a part of the FRC team while at the same time allow them to compete and/or be an integral part of other programs in their school. What they gain from both entities will strengthen their identity and make your team that much stronger.
Others can judge on where FRC 4607 is/has been in terms of team placement in Minnesota... but from what I have seen my students do in the last three years, I know we are a great success.