NASA 2013 FRC grants announced

[dlavery]

NASA grant awards for 2013 FIRST Robotics Competition have been announced. See the list here:

http://robotics.nasa.gov/events/2013_sponsorship.php

Congratulations to all the teams that have been awarded grants for this upcoming competition season! The competition for the grants was particularly tight this year. With well over 500 applications submitted, NASA was able to award nearly 200 grants to teams to cover FRC registration costs.

In addition to these grants NASA will continue to support teams that win the Engineering Inspiration Award at U.S. regional competitions this year, by covering their registration costs for the 2013 FRC Championship.

-dave



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[Rosiebotboss]

Dave,

As a previous NASA Rookie Grant winner waaaaay back in 2002, and on behalf of the teams that recieve them, I want to publically thank you and the NASA team that works on these grants and to let you know that because of these grants, many many many kids have opportunities that may never have been if it weren't for your efforts and NASA.

NASA ROCKS!!!! On Mars, on the moon, in low earth orbit and here on earth.

[wilsonmw04]

Quick question:
Is this list complete? For some reason I thought there were 10 slots for NC and FL.

[JohnBoucher]

Nice to see that 71 Hammond got funding.

[Mark McLeod]

Thank you for the support you provide year after year.

Here's a map of the teams:
http://batchgeo.com/map/d601ffd8a91869abfd85e2470e3c7faf

[Billfred]

As a NASA Grant alum, thank you for continuing this program year after year!

[z_beeblebrox]

Yay!!! Thank you, NASA!

[ksafin]

As Team Captain of 3992 and receiving the NASA grant for a second year, I can't even begin to say how critical it has been for our continued success.

We owe our all to the NASA sponsorship, and could not be more grateful. We'll do our best to deliver on our promises of extending STEM, FIRST, and Engineering to more and more students and the community!

[waialua359]

Originally Posted by JohnBoucher

Nice to see that 71 Hammond got funding.

I would assume that with their main sponsorship lost of years past, that they were able to get a hardship grant.

Congrats to all who received the support!

[F22Rapture]

Originally Posted by wilsonmw04

Quick question:
Is this list complete? For some reason I thought there were 10 slots for NC and FL.

I'd like to know this as well, even though (it appears) that our team was accepted!

Which is great news, because otherwise we'd be needing to raise $3,800 in 10 days. That would be nerve-racking.

Thanks to all of the wonderful people involved at NASA and at FIRST that made this possible. Our team and many others thank you!

[Richard Wallace]

Originally Posted by Mark McLeod

Thank you for the support you provide year after year.

Here's a map of the teams:
http://batchgeo.com/map/d601ffd8a91869abfd85e2470e3c7faf

NASA remains all mankind's coolest engine for advancing knowledge.

Mark, somehow a rookie team from CT has been teleported to St. Peter's, Missouri. Previewing some really advanced technology from NASA, or just some transposed digits?

[Mark McLeod]

It was a slap-dash effort.
There are a couple of placement errors.
I'll review and fix what I find tomorrow.

P.S.
It appears to be caused by the free tool I used to generate the map.
The coordinates are correct, but the map placement is off for several teams.

I tried plotting by coordinates separated into lat/lon and CT seemed to move back to where it belonged, but oddly enough I can't look at the map from work, so I can't verify it until I get home tonight.

[amesmich]

Hello All,

I am a long time lurker first time poster. I am the mentor for rookie team 4638 http://northwestrobotics.org and we applied for the NASA grant but unfortunatly were not winners. My question, is there a way to find out why your team was not selected? Is there somethign we did wrong? Forgive me if I missed this somewhere but I did not find any inofrmation for possible reasons for not being selected. I only ask so we can better ourselves and adapt or adjust for next year. I am sure $6500 is a big chunk of change in anyones budget... well at least most. It certainly hurt us.

Thanks for any comments of feedback.

[ksafin]

Originally Posted by amesmich

Hello All,

I am a long time lurker first time poster. I am the mentor for rookie team 4638 http://northwestrobotics.org and we applied for the NASA grant but unfortunatly were not winners. My question, is there a way to find out why your team was not selected? Is there somethign we did wrong? Forgive me if I missed this somewhere but I did not find any inofrmation for possible reasons for not being selected. I only ask so we can better ourselves and adapt or adjust for next year. I am sure $6500 is a big chunk of change in anyones budget... well at least most. It certainly hurt us.

Thanks for any comments of feedback.

To the best of my knowledge, NASA has never released any information concerning why a team wasn't selected. I could be wrong, but that's the most I know.

Every year there are many teams that are turned down that are surely qualified to receive funding, and it's a shame they don't. But there's only so much money to go around, and some teams unfortunately fall short.

I'm sure the folks over at NASA would like to fund your efforts as much as the next person - but they had a very limited number of grants to give out, and it just didn't work out.

As the coach of a team who received a NASA rookie grant last year and a second-year team grant this year, I can say that in our application last year we stressed the fact that our school had no STEM program (or any engineering core, class or anything period) and that we wanted to fill the void. This year we re-applied saying that our team has more than doubled in number and we're reaching more and more students thanks to NASA funding.

I'm inclined to think many big-name sponsorships for FRC teams are inclined to promote FIRST in communities where it's little or absent, and in schools where STEM or engineering don't take a front-and-center stage.

I could be wrong, but just my $0.02.

I wish you best of luck in acquiring funding and having a successful season - it's always unfortunate to see teams with financial problems :/

Let us know if you need anything at www.eaglesrobotics.org though!

[Gary Dillard]

It can't hurt to request a de-brief from the email address (ARC-FRC-Reqs@mail.nasa.gov) - not sure if they will or not. We had applied for the house team grant from MSFC in September and they offered to provide us feedback on our proposal when we weren't selected.