Corporate Campus Sponsored Teams.

[xitaqua]

Carol,

I am thinking in encouraging the teams I mentor to have a picnic.... I like this idea, do you have info on how it is organized, like who cooks the burgers and get the food, is it something the parents lead, the students, the mentors or the coach ?

Originally Posted by Carol

This is important. You HAVE to make sure that your sponsor sees the value of the team, sees the importance of what you do. Out of sight, out of mind, and the company may then look at their donations as a good place to cut back. We always invite our sponsors to our end of the year picnic, and do demos at the end of the year at corporates site(s), emphasizing the benefits to the students (how many scholarships won, stories of students who have graduated college and gone in engineering, etc.)

[rachelholladay]

So I'm not sure if this counts as working on a corporate campus (because it is corporate but its not a campus, its one building) but FRC 1912 Combustion works in the upstairs loft of QinetiQ North American, one of our most loyal sponsors. There really is no place at our school that would be a good work area (we had to go that route for a few years and it was not awesome). It is nice not to have to be constrained by school hours although we still do have to be respectful of when we work because we have to ask our sponsor to open up and lock down behind us. Our mentors really stress with us the importance of always keeping the work area clean because we would hate for our sponsor to walk up there and see a huge mess. As alluded to early we have had some volatility in our build space and nothing is a guarantee. However (I'd like to think) we have a solid relationship with our sponsor and we are very grateful to them for lending us the space. There are two unique points to note about our situation though. We do not use any of our sponsor's tool/workshop areas (everyone is told not to touch anything that is not our), none of mentors (as of currently, this was not true last season) are employees at the company. Also, since we work in the upstairs, absolutely everything we use must go up and down the stairs. I can't tell you how many times we've carried robots, pits, red tool chests, parts boxes, etc. up that staircase. (I guess on one hand, it keeps us in shape..)