[Andy Baker]

There are many thought spinning in my head at this time. I will try to communicate them clearly.

I will pose observations from 2 points of view:
1. as an engineering mentor on a well funded, high resource team
2. as a volunteer inspector at FRC events since 2001

1. I've witnessed FIRST since 1992. I can honestly say that there is a higher percentage of student involvement in the design and building of these robots now than there was in the beginnings of FIRST. FIRST was not started as a high school robotics design competition. It was (and still is) a competition for teams of mentors and students to work together, using a robotics competition as a tool to change the culture. Back in 1994, the XCats won the Chairman's Award for explaining how their team empowered the students by mandating that the adults and students worked together on each task (instead of just adults). 10 years ago, it was unique to see a student-empowered team. Now, it is commonplace. Students are doing more... but they are still being mentored by technical professionals. Mentors are getting better at inspiring by empowering while still inspiring by doing.

I recall my second year as a full-time mentor on team 45, when I was amazed by the student leadership shown by Daniel Lehrbaum on team 192. He was doing things that inspired me as a young engineer. This taught me to empower kids on my team more, letting them do more and show their skills. Now, the students on team 45 run the show... doing things that we would not have imagined they could do 10 years ago. But still, we mentors are involved, doing our best to inspire.

2. The second viewpoint is from that of a volunteer robot inspector at FRC events. I've probably done this role 16-20 times since 2001. I greatly enjoy the interaction I get with the students. These days, it is commonplace for students to be the only ones to converse with the inspectors as we go through the technical aspects of the robot. Most of the time, the students know all of the ins and outs of the robots. Actually, it gets very clear, very quickly, regarding who the lead students are in this case.

In years past, back in 01, 02, 03, students performed worse during inspections. Back then, a higher percentage of students seemed to know less about their robot. Now, there are some teams who still struggle at this, and mentors need to help get them through inspections, but this is a rarity (and it also shows us inspectors that the team had minimal student empowerment).

So... from these two perspectives, I can attest that things have changed in FIRST. While mentors are still involved, more students are doing more technical work on a higher percentage of teams.

While it is frustrating to many to see only adults working on a robot, it seems to happen less and less, in my opinion. Adults are still there, mentoring, while the students are right along side them, as the XCats told us how to do it back in 94. While I don't think it is bad for mentors to be working on a robot, I think it is better for them to include a student in the process.

Often, I walk into our robotics shop and challenge myself... "what are you going to do to inspire today?" Maybe it will be designing... maybe it will be teaching... maybe it will be only listening to a teammate's story. I love the fact that there are no restrictions on what a mentor can do for a FIRST team (well, except drive the robot). Yes, we do need reminders once in a while.

While I don't agree with Dan's original post that it is non-gracious for engineers to do so much, it is good to have this discussion publicly. We all learn.

Andy B.