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Unread 16-03-2004, 21:55
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Post Re: College Students: How is your experience in FIRST?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Ken Leung
How is your experience in FIRST? How involved are you in FIRST? How is FIRST affecting your school work? Do you honestly think college students can handle the load of being a student, and being a team leader?
It's honestly a very daunting and incredibly challenging task. Our program at Purdue University is almost entirely college student run. Back in high school, I came from a program where the engineers did the vast majority of the design and manufacturing work, and had the students do the assembly end of it. Nevertheless, I felt extremely inspired and thought I had a really good experience. In retrospect, this couldn't be further from the truth.

When I came to Purdue I faced a rather rigorous application and interview process which allowed me to become a technical advisor. It was 461's 3rd year in existence, with very few returning undergraduates around to be mentors. I struggled as an advisor significantly due to my lack of design experience, but nevertheless came to discover that my true engineering passion didn't lie in electrical, but rather mechanical engineering. However, I quickly realized that the time commitment, the lack of appreciation by those I was working with, gave me little choice but to choose to not return the next year, which I planned on doing descretely.

But dagnubbit, somehow those high school students found out, and IM's starting pouring in:

"Matt, you can't leave!! You're such a good advisor!"
"Matt, we need your help next year, you can't leave us!"
"Matt, I know you're leaving, but I just want to say that you made a really big impact on my life."

How do you walk away from that?
The short answer is that you don't, and I've been significantly involved ever since. I wasn't "underappreciated"... high school students (myself included at that age) do really appreciate what mentors do... they just don't realize how much it means to hear it.

As for how involved I am... the answer is "perhaps is a bit too much."

Last year, we started to do a lot of differently, including:
  • Begin to use the donated CNC equipment at our high school.
  • CAD our entire robot in Inventor.
  • Take pride in machining parts correctly by using precise measuring insturments.
The CNC stuff was actually a lot of patient trial and error by a very small handful of high school students, but the CAD and precision machining was an initive that I had to start myself. While previously we had to do a lot of CNC work using Purdue's facilities, I realized that a lot more can be done by hand with proper training. While some people scoffed at the idea of high school students possibly CADing models, creating drawings, and making precision parts with the tools at the high school (which I confess has very nice facilities), it worked out rather well.

This year I worked along side some other talented college mentors including Raj Daftuar and Carl Agnew to start a lot of other initiatives, including:
  • Creating an AutoDesk Inventor Tutorial Guide to be used by both college and high school students. (That's 100% Raj, I take no credit except giving him encouragement)
  • Planning and preparing for machine shop training and certification for both college and high school students.
  • Planning a lecture on DC motors and their application in FIRST robotics for the course at Purdue, ME 497f.
  • Developing the Knowledge is Power (KIP) engineering introduction tutorials for our high school students on gear ratios, mechanics of materials, drive train design, electronics fundamentals, wiring standards. (Software written by Carl Agnew, lessons and quizzes written by myself, Caleb Fulton, Matt Auter, and Raj Daftuar.)
  • Created the Westside Boiler Invasion Approved Parts List to standardize all of our bushings, bearing, material, fasteners, gears, sprockets and chain distributors.
  • Created a comprehensize chart standarding critical engineering data (weight per foot, moment of inertia) about common material shapes (box, L, extrusion, round stock, tubing).
  • Wrote in PHP the 461 Time Clock to allow student to track and compare their hours of participation, schedule abscenses, and keep up to date about meeting times.
As for the time commitment, we're meeting at the high school twice a week during the fall, and 6 (basically 7) days a week during the build season. It's definitely a lot of time commitment. The short story is that I don't have much of a choice, there's a handful of college students who are really able to commit the amount of time needed to inspire and teach students while building a well designed, competitive robot.

As a whole at Purdue, there's a low return rate for our technical advisors. The amount of time commitment that you need to have for academic success and the amount of time that you need to dedicate to be a good FIRST advisor is about the same. Significant sleep loss occurs, and grades do take a hit.

I would not be able to commit at the level I am at right now had I not recieved a lot of college credit from advanced placement exams and the foreign language department here at Purdue. Essentially, most of the advisors and FIRST involved college students at Purdue that I know are spending at least an extra semester at Purdue, which may or may not be directly related due to their involvement in FIRST here on campus.

Being a college mentor on a college run team is a very serious commitment. Right now, we have over 40 college students committed to make this happen. We started out under the wing of another large student organization at Purdue, which is the way that I'd suggest others go about it. Starting a team on your own is very difficult. Shannon Schnepp wrote a very good paper on how Purdue started their team 5 years ago. I suggest you read it so that you'll have a good understanding of what's needed to accompish your goal sucessfully.

Matt
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Matt Adams - Engineer at Danaher Motion
Team 1525 - Warbots - Deerfield High School

Last edited by Matt Adams : 17-03-2004 at 01:54.
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