Engineering Honors Robot design courses

[joe_balint]

Teams-
Congratulations to everyone on a very successful year! Since the team I worked with this year didn't make it to Nationals, I took a road trip and stopped by Nationals on Saturday morning to see how everything was going. I was very impressed with the number of teams actually in the mix this year. Very nice! Next year, I hope we have more success with a camera system! Now that was frustrating! But so it goes...
I wanted to let everyone know about the Freshman Engineering Honors program in the College of Engineering at The Ohio State University. http://feh.eng.ohio-state.edu I participated in this program during my freshman year at OSU in 1995-96, (graduated with a BS EE in Apr2000) and it was the probably the most intensive and fun undergraduate project I've ever been involved with (that includes FIRST and FLL)
Any student currently involved in FIRST would really love this sequence! The focus is an autonomous robot design project. It's a smaller team, 4 members and you spend the school year working up to the project, taking engineering classes, math, and programming (C) in the first 2 quarters. (details on the web) The design project is in the 3rd quarter and the robots are completely autonomous an dit is a head to head competition against your classmates' teams! The nice thing is that the students in all these FEH courses are FEH students! The reason this is so great is that you are taking classes wiht like minded people and you consequently develop relationships that will last your entire time in school (and beyond! 2 of my (JS)^2 teammates are still my best friends today! I even work with one of them at my current job!) This truly is a great experience and in an accredited engineering program, earning credits towards an accredited degree in a university that consistently ranks in the top 20 Engineering Universities in the US: The Ohio State University's College of Engineering (US News and World report as ranked by recruiters and other universities)
To see the video of our robot we put together for our final presentation back in the day (1996) go to http://www.JoeBalint.com/ and you'll see the link. The format will certainly look familiar to all FIRSTers.
Whatever you do and whereever you go, do your best and put everything you've got into it... that's how you'll get the most out of it. Enjoy! -Joe
P.S. And for all those of you going on to College, make sure you find a student project to join; future truck, solar car, FIRST, whatever! That's where you get to apply everything you are learning in the classroom. And then some! -Joe

[mathking]

As the faculty advisor for a FIRST team mentored by OSU engineering students, I would like to back up what Joe said. The mentors on our team almost all talk about what a good experience the FEH program was. It has definitely made them good not only at robotics engineering, but at modelling good teamwork for the high school students. Many high schooler may not believe it, but how well you work in groups is as important to your career advancement as how smart you are and how much knowledge you have. (And the students we have sent from Dublin Robotics to OSU also cite FEH as one of the great things about OSU.)