Woody Flowers Essay

[Caliostro]

Off and on, I keep hearing about a Woodie Flowers Essay Competition. It's listed under the deadlines, but nowhere else. Can anyone enlighten me as to the nature of this mysterious contest?

[Ken Leung]

The correct name for that award is the Woodie Flowers Award.

"This award will be given each year to an engineer or teacher identified and described by students as the one person who has given them the best understanding of the challenges, opportunities, and satisfaction involved in the discipline of engineering and design. The judges, led by Professor Flowers, will select the recipient based on recommendations made by those students submitting a one page essay describing the engineer or teacher and his or her specific contributions."

If you go to history in the FIRST webpage, and look up 2001 competition documents, you can get the Awards pdf file, while explains about the different awards of the 2001 competition, and the Woodie Flowers Award is NC3.

There are several Woodie Flowers Award winners who post in here from time to time, so I am sure they can do a better job of explaining it.

But basically, each team submit a really good essay about one engineer or teacher who've done a great job in "communicating" with you about engineering and different challenges, and taught you a great deal about different ways to face those challenges... etc. So, in order to win this award, not only does the teacher/engineer you recommended have to do a good job talking/teaching/explaining... to the students, the students also have to work hard to come up with a really good essay that demonstrates they understand the importance of clear communication.