[archiver]

Posted by Scott England at 05/08/2001 12:37 AM EST


College Student on team #401, The Hokie G.U.A.R.D, from Virginia Tech/MCPS and Virginia Tech/VBEP.


In Reply to: College-sponsored teams
Posted by Patrick Dingle on 05/07/2001 3:50 PM EST:



Ok, at first I wrote a huge book of a reply, but I doubt you would really have wanted to hear all that, so here is a concise version.
The Hokie GUARD doesn't get a huge amount of financial support from Tech, our biggest asset is the faculty support. Key to getting more support from the college I believe is getting some key faculty members to support you. We brought a professor from the electrical and computer engineering department with us to Nationals at the end of first year. This year (our second) we have the support of the Co-Dean of the electrical and Computer engineering department, as well as that ECPE professor who now leads the team. The several adults on the VT faculty on the team have managed to get us great amounts of support from the community(but then there is not much up here in the Appalachians except for cows and Virginia Tech). On the student scale. I don't know if it works this way at Cornell. But all student clubs can go before a budget board meeting and ask for money. Also there is the SEC (student engineering counsel) with a 30,000 budget that will hand some money out to almost any student engineering project (there are lots at Tech) that comes and makes a presentation, and though it wasn't planned this way, it's probably convenient now that two members of the robotics team are now on the counsel. Best of luck to getting more support. I hope everyone gets something out of this. I'd like to see a FIRST team at every university in several years.
~Scott
GO HOKIES (and check out those dashing young men with the technicolor hair in the gallery)


: Have any college teams out there (besides 190) actually been successful in getting a significant amount of funding from their college? If so, from what department(s)? I have been meeting with people non stop for the last year... I've been through every department, and whenever funding comes up, it's just a referral to someone else I should contact. Today, I am referred right back by the admissions office to the very first person I talked to at the beginning of the year. They claim (even though they get $30000 per year per 16000 students, not to mention that is only a small fraction of the money they get from alumni) they could only give us about two or three HUNDRED dollars... Oh, but they would be more than happy for us to put their name on our team and go to the competitions and recruit students.

: I'm sure some of the other people who have tried to start teams have had similar trouble... Anyone have any suggestions, keeping in mind there are no potential corporate sponsors in the area?