[archiver]

Posted by Erik Justen.

Engineer on team none from none sponsored by The Ohio State University/looking for one.

Posted on 8/29/2000 3:44 PM MST


In Reply to: if only it were possible...(college team syndrome rant) posted by colleen on 8/28/2000 7:34 PM MST:



sorry for the length - hopefully it's worth it....

As a college member of team, I actually have to disagree with some of your comments. (and agree to some). Yes, it is extremely difficult to work as a college student and as a first 'engineer'. The hours are insane for all involved: no doubt about that. But to have to go home after first every night and spend several more hours curled up w/ the works of Maxwell isn't exactly the easiest thing. That certainly makes recruiting efforts difficult at best. We've found that no matter what our efforts are (fliers, info sessions, etc.), we only manage to recruit a handful of new (college) members each year, and of those not all produce to the level that they need to: many self-select and just stop showing up. My advice here: recruit students early, and selectively recruit. It's much harder to convince a senior/grad ME or EE that is already pulling their hair out to add 40+ hrs a week into their schedule. But.... if they start as freshman when they aren't that busy, it's easy to get them hooked into coming back year after year. OSU has a honors program for freshman engineering students, so we usually hit them twice a year, w/ the robot to demonstrate, of course. We've had pretty good success there recruiting good students. (not that the others aren't good students). The danger that I've seen is that many students that participated in HS are not able to make the transition effectively to the college level (where we act as engineers). I talked to a few students at OSU that were members of teams in HS, but none ever showed up once I explained what they would have to do. We've only had a mild success having students from our own HS that now go to OSU come back and help. Some have, and have done quite well. Others simply could not handle the transition, even from a team like ours where the HS students do quite a bit. Many expect the experience to be the same: it isn't....

As far as year round efforts, my former team (128) did a most excellent job at year round events, though in truth is was really school-year round. We did some things in the summer, but not many. The key to getting things together in the fall (to run some labs or a project or something, as we did) is two-fold: 1) communication and 2) a strong leader. I've found that if one or two people pick up responsibility for the fall activities, it actually gets done. Sure, they can divide tasks, but it's doable. Most of us college students have summer internships, so we can keep in touch w/ email. And.... many don't have something that keeps them busy (if they are away from home/friends), so it isn't always a big request for them to pick up writing a lab or playing w/ some electronics. So, is it easy to get fall activities rolling? No. Is it possible? Yes. If you need any info, let me know. I'll be happy to had out the things we've done. (complete lab manuals, etc. -- most is available at the link below).

As far as sponsorship goes, I can't help you much there. Everyone is in the same boat. But... colleges have the unique position to have alumni that are always willing to donate money to something. They could be personal donations, or through the companies they work for. I believe this is how the Purdue team was able to go to nationals this year. There should be college office that can help you with this. Of course, it's nice to have a mind or too attached to the money, but that's not always possible....

Out of curiosity... how many other college teams are out there? Do you all suffer the similar problems? If so, why don't you post them, or better yet, e-mail them too me. (justen.4@osu.edu - it seems they remove HTML tags from these posts.....)

-Erik