[AndrewPospeshil]

Originally Posted by Red2486

I think that a lot of this comes from EI and CA genuinely having a lot of overlap. EI focuses on strength of partnership within the team, school, and community. Sustainability and measurable reach are the primary components of EI, but they are also components of the Chairman's Award. A good CA team will most likely be a good EI team as well.

As far as competing at the Championship, I believe the teams that best embody each award should win the award. Maybe these teams, who don't win EI at the their qualifying events, win at the Championship because they are the best EI teams, but were awarded the Chairman's Award because they were also the best at that, and that award is more prestigious.

As far as judging goes, I think EI teams are actually at an advantage. Chairman's Award teams have an extremely limited time with the judges and their interactions are very restricted. Judged awards give teams more time with the judges and the ability to talk about their work with multiple panels of judges.

All fantastic points. I think this is what the perceived nature of the two Awards boils down to: they have very similar aims. They both reward teams who can most effectively change (and convey how they change) the culture of their team and community. The overlap in winners is due to strong programs, not necessarily Judges favoring winners with a certain record. It's kind of a "correlation over causation" thing to me.

Originally Posted by Alan Anderson

There is no presentation for the Engineering Inspiration award.

There is at DCMPs. This is a new rule as of last year*, because of how teams qualify to compete with this award. Teams might win a DEI but not have enough District Points to qualify with their robot. The team does a dedicated presentation at this point for the DCEI. To maintain a fair level of competition, all DEI winning teams will present at the DCMP, regardless of whether or not their robot qualified. At Regionals, every team qualifies, meaning there are no presentations.

*I assume it was last year. As a 2014 CA presenter, I don't remember our team doing any presentation for EI at MICMP, even though we had won a DEI that year. 2016 was my team's next DEI win - we did have a DCEI presentation this year. I assume the rule change had come some time in between - maybe it's new this year.

Originally Posted by BigBen

Except, a team does not give a presentation for EI, only for the RCA/DCA.

The EI is judged by a different set of judges that talk to the teams in the pits. Of course the process of submitting for the RCA/DCA does likely improve the focus of that message, as it means a team is at least practicing how they present delivering their message to the judges. Now I am not saying that the RCA/DCA judges do not provide input or insight for the EI discussion, because of course they do. But the entire group of judges must agree in deciding who gets the (other than RCA/DCA) team awards and the robot awards.

It is NOT a given that a team is considered for EI or RCA/DCA because they have won the other earlier in the season or for EI specifically because they submitted for the RCA/DCA. While the same students that present for RCA/DCA may talk to both groups of judges, the flow of the conversation is very different. Often it is different students that did not present for RCA/DCA in the pits talking to the team judges. Different groups of judges talking to different students from a team that get similar strong engineering inspiration message from that team is what greatly improves the likelihood of getting a team award. The same thing can be said about being impressed by the robot design and engineering for the robot awards.

As has been mentioned before, if a team wins both in a year, that is because they have a strong program. Heck, it doesn't even matter if they have a good robot. FIRST is about more than robots, right? A team that wins either RCA/DCA or EI have inspired students, that do a good job of conveying that inspiration, the why and how they were inspired, and in turn how they inspire those around their team.

It is those students that inspire the judges to give them the awards.

As I read your post, each of the statements I've bolded made me pause and think about how I think differently about the awards. I've heard that (many) CA judges are quarantined for almost all of the competition, I don't know any team that has a different set of kids for presentation and CA/EI pit talks, and I can name almost no programs that don't have consistently strong robots alongside CA/EI wins my own team's from 2010-2013 being one exception... I say this not to try and "call you out," but to point out how different the every team's judging experience can be. Depending on the region, team, and judges, so many factors can change. I personally think this is an interesting nuance to remind teams that these awards aren't about the awards themselves, rather than proof that the awards criteria need to be standardized and streamlined. Others may disagree.

Originally Posted by Red2486

And if we want to throw a little more fuel into the fire, I've also perpetually wondered why the Engineering Inspiration Award wins you a $5,000 check and the Chairman's Award (FIRST's so-called "highest honor") wins you a $5,000 invoice. It's a very mixed message if you ask me.

Heh, I've always kinda chuckled at this one. I'm 99% sure this is a NASA-sponsored grant. The reason why NASA sponsors EI over Chairman's isn't clear to me, but it might have to do with the fact that one award has the words "Engineering" and "Inspiration" in the title, while the other doesn't. To the uninformed ear, one sounds like a very STEM-focused community outreach award while the other sounds maybe important but very vague. If I was a NASA exec with enough money to spend on only one award, I know which one I'd probably pick.