College/Areial Robotics Info

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Originally Posted by Nica F.

The FIRST for Life Conference last year in Atlanta was a conference intended to inform high school students and current college mentors/faculty members on how to start a FIRST College program aimed at mentoring local high school FRC,FTC,FLL teams, hosting regionals, and/or having a credited FIRST college course. This conference also gave structural examples of colleges that currently have them (ex. Purdue, WPI, and Clarkson). Dean Kamen was not a guest speaker at this conference session and this conference didn't have any direct correlation to a college level FIRST competition.

Though I was too busy volunteering to attend any conferences or meetings last year, I believe that the "meeting" that has been mentioned was separate from (or at least a special part of) the FIRST for Life Conference. All I heard about it ahead of time was on the day of there was a word-of-mouth announcement for all current college students who were volunteering to attend some special meeting at a certain time and a certain place (I was told that I "had to be there".

I got the short version afterward, and it apparently had people from FIRST, several universities and a few companies who were in the aerial robotics field to discuss some possibilities for the future. After that, the college students took some ideas and ran with it, separate from FIRST and then later worked to get integrated into the event last weekend.