1. What role do you play as a part of FIRST?
I am the head coach/mentor for Team 1311. I also work to start teams in other counties and states by using my advanced age and life experience to meet with the educational and business decision makers in these areas.
2. How does FIRST help students for the future?
FIRST provides an opportunity for students to become engaged in STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) activities at an early age. These activities can confirm or inspire students to pursue STEM as a career option.
3. What has FIRST done for you?
Frankly, FIRST has given me several things. It is an outlet for me to mentor to interested students. It give me a testbed to experiment with educational theories on how to engage marginally interested or typically uninterested students. And it has given me the opportunity to engage professionals and educators on what is right, and what is wrong with our approach to educating and inspiring students.
4. What do you enjoy most about being a mentor?
I really enjoy working with the students. They are a hardworking bunch of kids.
5. How did you become involved?
It is a long story but I live in the Atlanta area and worked with team 388, Oz, from Virginia helping them with some logistical issues years ago. Then that led to me mentoring a team here and the rest is history. I'm an engineer, I don't teach, and I don't have any kids in the high school.
6. What encouragement would you give to new/potential mentors?
For a newbie just keep it simple. Focus on getting a good simple working robot built and don't worry about all the other stuff that many other teams do. Get some experience and work up from there. And Safety takes priority over all other issues.
7. What are some of the rewards you get as a mentor?
Impact. Watching the students, especially the girls get really excited about what they have learned and the newfound confidence to do all this neat stuff. And beating policy makers over the head.
8. How do you feel FIRST and being a mentor has affected you and your life?
It has been really rewarding to me being able to make a difference. Directly in peoples lives and indirectly with institutional policy shifts.
9. What are some skills needed to be a mentor?
Communications, project management, business planning skills are a good start. Then motivational and organizational skills, and of course engineering skills. The same stuff need to coach any type of team, football or engineering.
10. How have you used your background knowledge (profession) in being a mentor?
I think Engineer should be spelled with a capital "E" not a little "e". The capital "E" engineer has a larger view. They have to know about communications, project management, finance, marketing, etc, in addition to STEM skills.
11. What do you feel the biggest challenge of being a mentor is?
Time management. It takes a lot of time to run a team. Some of the time is with the members. Some of it is with adults, parents, educators, administrators, etc. Just like band or football. One of the things I have done is spent a lot of time meeting with the heads of other school organizations such as all the athletics. Our mutual goal is to foster cross organizational support, between say football and robotics for example. This past week this 30 second commercial ran in school as a cross football/robotics promotion.
http://www.kellrobotics.org/video/Ro...tball_0001.wmv This is one way we engage students into understanding the "relevance and importance" of engineering.
12. What do you believe is expected of you?
The answer may sound a little arrogant but I'm old and crusty and I'm setting my own expectations. It just happens that much of what I think converges with Deans's and Woodie's vision of FIRST.
13. In what way do you feel that you help the kids?
To help these kids find their life direction. Finding out you are a STEM kid is as important as finding out you are not. In both cases they win and will leave the experience a better person.
14. What is your favorite part about it?
see question 13.
15. Why should someone become a mentor?
In order for a mentor to become really effective they have to reach inside and find their own reason for participating. Look at what FIRST is trying to accomplish and see if there is an alignment of common interests. See question 16.
16. Anything you might want to add!
I would suggest to mentors that they read the criteria for the Chairman's Award 100 times. Not because that is our "FIRST pledge of allegiance". Not because we are creating a "robot advocacy society". Not because we want FIRST to be the focus of our life. But simply to really understand what FIRST is about.
There is a strong and natural tendency for FIRST enthusiasts to focus on the gadgets and that is perfectly fine. But engineers are often poor at communications. It is important that engineers, and wanna be engineers learn to communicate to the public about the importance and relevance of this profession and work to change public perceptions of engineers as tinkering gadget builders.
But since we are here, and at risk of self promotion we have some examples of relevance on our website. Women in Technology, Environmental Sustainabiliy, etc at
http://www.kellrobotics.org