[Jessica Boucher]

Billfred, I dont think this will become one debate about growth or any of the other issues mentioned here because there's so many issues mentioned. I'm only going to touch on one right now.

I think Dean needs to reevaluate how he feels about the "soft skills". After all, if he tweaked his views concerning the relationship between engineers and "soft-skilled" people, we wouldn't have stuff like this happening (and I dont mean MattK posting ....I mean weak marketing campaigns).

But will this actually happen? Maybe not.....but can we work on fixing it? Absolutley. In 2003, half of students in the program went on to science & technology collegiate programs. What we need to accept as a whole is that the other half isn't trash: they have a strong, personal, greater understanding of why science & technology is cool than most kids their age, and are just as willing to spread the message as an engineering student. They should be as embraced as much as the engineering student - since it's their contact with the program that will bring about the broadening of FIRST into new areas...for those times when the tech field is tapped out.