[ebarker]

Anytime there is a change in top leadership there is often an accompanying delay in continuing support of programs like this, and many other things.

The new leader is usually assessing all the places that money leaves the building and is performing due diligence in the re-evaluation. Ditto for everything else that happens in the company.

A request - all BAE teams should let Ms. Hudson know how important the sponsorship is to you, your school, your country. Send her a personal thank you note.

A few months ago a delegation from our team went to Washington and gave a Congressional Briefing on the importance of FIRST type things to national security and other things.

Yesterday a news article hit the AP about the relationship between the education system and military recruiting. And about the failure of NCLB to improve ASVAB scores.

This morning NY Times columnist, (and Pulitzer Prize winning author) Thomas Friedman was being interviewed on the Imus in the Morning Show. He was talking about a new book he is writing. In the discussion he said that the hottest beat a new journalist could cover in Washington during the 1980's was the State Department / Foreign Affairs.

Agree with him or not, he asserts that today the hottest beat in Washington is covering Education. It is because of the critical necessity in providing a great education to students so that we can remain competitive economically, militarily, and otherwise in in a global economy.

In the upcoming 112th Congress there will be a move to re-examine the Federal Budget. Two things that were identified was 200+ job re-education programs and 100+ STEM education initiative programs. Questioning this is perfectly valid. Why so many programs, and which ones are providing value to the country ?

Make sure that your politicians and your sponsors know that FIRST and VEX type programs are valuable to this country.