[Kevin Kolodziej]

There are just too many factors to consider when you talk about the difficulty of starting a team your freshman year. Lauren Halatek from Wildstang and I met up at Nationals in 2002 (I saw her sign that said "Help me start a team at MSOE!" She had already done a lot of work during her senior year of contacting people in the Milwaukee area to find support for a future team. Once school started in September, we contacted a whole bunch of high schools (I don't exactly recall if we contacted principles, teachers, or both). We went to those that were interested in the concept of FIRST and gave presentations. Same with the sponsors. Finally we found a fellow student at MSOE who had graduated from South Milwaukee HS, loved the concept of FIRST and did some really persuasive talking over there.

1064 was born that way - two people working together for quite a while, then some luck with a third person. That first year was expected to be rather diorganized because it was about November by the time we finally had a high school on board. With the school being 20 minutes away and only one of the people in the Milwaukee FIRST Support Organization (campus organization that was started by Lauren and myself in September), it was VERY difficult for us to get to the high school to actually meet with everyone before the build season.

There was a lot of miscommunication and misuderstandings between MSOE students, High School teachers, and sponsors, and so it was like starting over for this year. We had more students on the MSOE side, experience on the high school side, a few less sponsors, and a few more dedicated sponsors. We lost our main sponsor and had no more NASA Grant, however, and so the budget for the team was extremely restricted. The beginning of the year started out wonderfully - the high school side of things acted very independantly from MSOE (which is what the MFSO wanted - to set up new teams, show them how things work, and then cut them loose, so to speak, after a year or two, but still be around to help when need be). But the initial rush wore off rather quickly and much reorganization began. Then the student participation dropped to 4 kids and the season became very difficult.

Fortunatley, during this season, we had another high school join in on the build season a couple nights a week. They formed an engineering club at their school on their own, found out about FIRST and found us as their most local team. They helped when they could, attended the Midwest Regional, and are now pumped about a new team next year. THIS is how starting a team become much easier. The student interest is already firmly in place and well organized - all that is left to do is to work with the students to contact sponsors. Exposing people to FIRST for a year first is a much better way of doing it. They know exactly how much time is needed; how much committment, effort, money, and people are needed.

At the college level, its going to be very hard to find interest the first couple of years. of the 2000 students here at MSOE, we have 10 involved in FIRST. Only 3 of them are FIRST veterens. As the group becomes more established and more teams in the area start popping up, more and more FIRST participants are looking at MSOE as a viable college choice. We had an open house this past weekend and I talked to 2 current participants that will be here in a couple years and know of 2 more that will be here next year. DJ was supposed to come this year

From a school perspective - I am the current president of the organization on campus, am involved in several other activities, and still maintain a 3.5 or higher GPA. It did get rough during the build season, but if I cut out all the lazy time I had, there was plenty of time to get everything and still have time to relax. Freshman year wasn't nearly as bad as this year because there was less homework for me Freshman year. I am an architectural engineer, however, and cannot speak for the MEs or the CEs and SEs. Next year I am going to have to reduce my participation quite a bit because of the work load that begins with Junior year...and then Senior year and Masters year will be even worse - but by then, the MFSO will be well established, as will other support groups and teams, which will be able to help form new teams as well to take some load off of the MFSO.

Whew! Got questions? PM, e-mail, IM, call...whatever you like!

Kevin Kolodziej
Milwaukee FIRST Support Organization President (MSOE)