Does robotics attract the right students?

[smurfgirl]

I think each team bears the responsibility of bringing in and engaging a variety of students who will benefit FIRST. In my experience, I can say that FIRST is attracting people who benefit from the program - I have seen this from my own FIRST experience and from working with others. Engineering, for the most part, is not visible as a career option to most young people. FIRST makes it visible and attractive to both students who entered the program with and without prior interest in math and science.

When I joined my school's team, I was interested in math and science, but had never heard of engineering and had certainly never considered it as a career option. Robotics sounded cool, but I wasn't sure if I was knowledgeable enough to be able to actually contribute. There were wonderful mentors on the team who pushed me to get involved in hands-on work and actually building things, whereas I might have been too shy and unsure of myself to jump into those things myself. Meetings were right after one of my dance classes, and my dad will still tell you that he was initially surprised to see me come home dressed as a ballerina but covered in grease, talking about how I got to help build a transmission. It didn't take long for me to get hooked on FIRST, or to discover that engineering was actually really awesome and exactly what I wanted to apply my interest in math and science to. I am a FIRST success story. Without FIRST, I likely never would have discovered an interest in engineering or applied to schools to study engineering. Now, I will be graduating from MIT this spring with a BS in Materials Science and Engineering, and I will be going to work for Pratt & Whitney as an engineer.

I have seen similar stories among my peers on my team and others, in those who came before me and were my mentors, and in those who see me as a mentor figure. FIRST cultivates new types of interest in and understanding of STEM fields and inspires people to pursue these fields. In addition to the technical skills and hands-on experience FIRST gives to its participants, it also develops self-confidence, leadership, teamwork, and technical skills in those students. This applies both to people who had some prior interest in STEM, and many other who may have joined for non-technical aspects of the team, or just because their friends were doing it. So yes, I think FIRST is effective in reaching new groups and inspiring people to pursue the STEM fields.