Patrick's probably got enough going on with the fact that Cornell started two days ago
Anyhoo:
BorgWarner "sponsors" our team, but not in the monetary sense. When the team was first organized, two of the members, in the first year, were Brian and Jennifer Fornell - their father, Doug, is the head of the tool room at BorgWarnher here in Ithaca (heh... "room" is not a big enough of a word for it). He decided to volunteer to help the team and so did his wife, who managed the money and sponsorships. Since Doug's head of the tool room, he has quite a few toolmakers on call who manufacture parts for us. This year, we had 13 toolmakers on call
A new member on the team this year, Nick S., joined along with his father, who has the biggest office in R&D
My dad has been lazy and hasn't joined, but he's one of the few materials guys so he could be helpful... Our BorgWarner "sponsorship" really consists of the big guys @ BorgWarner being able to help us, and them having a lot of engineers below them to do stuff - the pres of BorgWarner, obviously, had to allow for this to happen, so to thank him, we do a demo for him personally each year right before shipping (this year, he drove the robot better than any of us could on the first try; Greg and I were freaked out). We also have a wonderful electrical engineer on our team, Mr. Brooks, from another company. The 3 engineers, Fornell, Brooks, and Simpson, are present at 99% of the meetings, so
I THANK THEM.
Yeah, so basically, BorgWarner doesn't give us any money - we just get lots of technical support, and whenever we can't machine something @ our available shops, we can always send a design there and have it expertly made. It's nice, and I couldn't ask for anything more. Roger, especially, is very motivated, and I'm sure they'll stick with the team for as long as they can, helping to build future engineers.
Amanda, I'd suggest seeing if any people in the high school have parents that work at BorgWarner, and get them onto the team... they'll have a bit more leverage when trying to ask the president for a sponsorship. You might be able to find contact info at
www.bwauto.com
As for some insight upon the genius of our engineers, here's a pic of them below that I took this year - I SEE NOTHING (Mr. Brooks), I SAY NOTHING (Mr. Fornell), I HEAR NOTHING (Mr. Simpson):