Posted by soap108 at 04/29/2001 11:29 PM EST
Engineer on team #108, SigmaC@T, from Dillard & Taravella HS and Motorola.
In Reply to: question for teams created among multiple high schools
Posted by Scott England on 04/29/2001 2:44 AM EST:
108:
Motorola is centrally located, 20 min due south of Taravella HS and 20 min due west of Dillard HS. All team meetings there. Sometimes Marketing, PM, and SOAP meet off-site. Its easier for us to not be behind a firewall.
Animation meets on Saturday, but they don't stay long. Most of that work gets done at DHS or a student's house.
~All robot fabrication done onsite...large machine shop. There's too much liability stuff with Mot allowing students to operate most machinery, but they do get to assemble the bot and work on it in the Pit. We've been very fortunate to get factory floor space (~30'x40') for the playing field each year. 3 major sectors of Mot have manufacturing lines and it always happened that one of the factories has some temp space that we can use from Jan-April. Each year we talk to the respective GM's about permanent space year-round but no dice...yet.
Students from the two schools get along very well, although they usually don't hang out together beyond the events. The teachers work well tegether too. One even "interned" at motorola last summer and should be back again in June. Each year anywhere from 3-7 students will land internships largely due to their performance on the team (in 1997 about 15 made it in!). I believe each of the Val's from DHS since 97 have interned upon graduation. This year the Sal interned during his Sr year (OJT) and the Val was on the team last year.
Broward's school board is well aware of our partnership and supports us to a degree. The schools' principals and other staff members go to Nationals and like to here reports from our regional affairs.
Some bugs this year were in travel and hotel. The schools booked seperately and some confusion arose. Just one those miscommunications most teams have anyway. But to their credit the schools do video conference each other during Oct-Dec timeframe to do some planning for the upcoming season. In the past DHS and Motorola tried out the video conferencing and that went okay, but its better to have the kids and teachers in person.
Hope this helps,
KA ;~)
: ok all, we're evaluating how our team should be structured next year, and I have my opinion on this subject, but I'm honestly really curious how other teams deal with it.
: For all the teams out there, that have students from several high schools, I'm wondering where the team is physically based (like where meetings occur, and the robot is built). If at one of the multiple high schools involved, or at a seperate shop/space provided by a sponsor or university, or anywhere else I can't imagine. Thanks, there's lots of evaluating left to do trying to figure out how to become one of the big name teams (Chief Delphi, HOT, Huski-Brigade, Buzz, etc the teams that you recognize just from a short name) that really seem to have their ducks in a row.