[David Brinza]

Originally Posted by JaneYoung

Excellence rises and can be seen/experienced by everyone.

I agree, and I didn't mean to infer that a consensus approach wouldn't work. I applaud your team's approach. I would be proud of the student's efforts as well.

There are some factors here that cannot be ignored. All of our team members would stand behind our nominees. Given the time constraints (for our team, one evening), selecting nominees and developing collaborative essays (which is what the award call required), would have been asking too much. We selected the two workhorse team leaders, then wrote from the mentor's perspective. Is that the best or correct approach? No, it's just what we could do under the constraints. I think things will be much better next year after FIRST sorts out the implementation.