[Andy Baker]

Originally Posted by Ryan F.

I realize there are no absolutes here, but what I have seen has appalled me. I've witnessed an engineer on a team with an obviously professionally designed robot yelling at one of his pit crew about how he was “stupid" for the way he was trying to fix something, then push him out of the way and do it himself. Witnessing things like this make me VERY thankful I am on a team with high student involvement.

Here’s the big problem. How are high schoolers supposed to compete against professionally designed and built robots? This is where the true conflict is. The teams who believe that FIRST is better when the students actually build and manage the robot get destroyed in competition. FIRST is not supposed to be a professional engineering competition. FIRST is meant to Inspire the STUDENTS. The more we allow for these professionally designed and built robots to dominate the FIRST competitions, the more it encourages student run teams to start letting the engineers design and build the robots. FIRST will start to discourage many teams from participating when they realize that the robot they spent six weeks on has no chance of success at the competition.

I don't doubt that you saw a mentor do something stupid. Surely, that was unfortuneate. For every example of a poor mentoring moment, I can think of 10 positive mentoring moments. No mentor is perfect. Don't make this one bad example outweigh the hundreds of great relationships that FIRST engineers have with students.

I definitely don't agree with your logic. In FIRST, high schoolers are supposed to partner up with professionals (engineers, skilled tradesmen, business leaders, etc.) and compete against other teams. This program is more about that partnership, and less about students being educated. This is not a science fair.

You say "FIRST is meant to Inspire the STUDENTS." You are right. However, you seem to be missing the point that these professionals are doing much inspiring. It is a two way street, in my opinion. If this was just a student robot building contest, the level of inspiration we see would not be present. Seriously... we would have no swerve drives, no shift on the fly gearboxes, no object-oriented autonomous programming, no WFA winners, no IRI, no Battlecry, no WRRF. We would not be playing in the Georgia Dome, there would be no students getting Segway riding lessons at FIRST competitions.

Originally Posted by phrontist

One of the more uncomfortable, and seemingly inevitable moments of explaining first to an outsider is the inevitable prompt, "Are all these robots student built?", to which I haven't found a good response. The honest answer would be no, but how do you justify the program in light of that?

Here is a good response: "Heck no!... these are NOT all student-built! That is not what this program is about. FIRST is about a partnership between students, engineers, teachers, and their communities. This partnership is what makes FIRST special. The fact that these professional engineers, college students and skilled tradesmen are working side by side with the students define what the 'Inspiration' is in FIRST. This is not a VICA tournament or a Science Fair. It is special. This is what is changing the educational culture in our community."

Originally Posted by phrontist

In FIRST, entirely Engineer built robots are an abomination. There is significant reason to be proud of the degree to which your robot is student designed (built is less important, I find, because real engineers may never pick up a spanner).

You are right that there is a significant reason to be proud of a student designed robot. It is great to see this. If students can design a robot, then this program is working. HOWEVER, to say that an engineer-built (and/or designed) robot is an abomination is insulting, short-sighted, and wrong, in my opinion. Students can still be inspired to SEE how something is designed and built. There have been Chairman's Award teams who have had engineers do much of the design and build of the robot. This is not a bad thing. The team celebrated their engineers, and their level of student inspiration. Your statement insults these teams.

As long as I am still involved in FIRST, I will fight to keep it to be a partnership between students and adults, working side by side to build these robots.

Andy B.