Why even bother submitting a Chairman's Award if we're not gonna win?

[alex.lew]

Outreach has really become a key identity for us. It builds us as a team, with everyone able to speak enthusiastically about FIRST and the robots. After a few demos, any student can easily explain to the public how a particular robot operates. Plus, its always fun to bring the robots themselves to offseason events after competition is over.

[Tom Ore]

[My posts are usually quite short, but out of character for me, here is a rather long post]

In the past, around this point in the season, I would think “Wow, we had a great group of kids on the team this year!” Now, in my 5th year on the team, I finally figured out what our other mentors already knew: we get an amazing group of students on the team every year.

As soon as I realized this, I began looking ahead – looking forward to working with our returning students and getting to know new students. What can we do to help these students, what off-season projects can we do, maybe we can collaborate with another team on some project, maybe can we run a summer camp, how do we encourage more students, how can we better inform students at our various outreach events, how do we reach more students and introduce them to STEM. The outreach events we do have taken on a bit more meaning to me.

We have many mentors who have stayed with the team long after their own kids have graduated. (My youngest went off to college last year – and I plan on staying involved until they kick me out.) These mentors don’t stay to build robots – they stay because they are passionate about the mission of FIRST.

Our team has been applying for Chairman’s since 2008. We’ve been doing outreach events and adding a bit more every year but I didn’t think we had the resources needed to rise to the level of the teams that are RCA winners. It was quite an emotional moment this past Saturday at 10,000 Lakes when they announced us as the winner of our very first Regional Chairman’s Award!

[jacobythegreat]

Some people may forget the experience that a team gets from submitting for Chairman's. FIRST is an organization that provides an education in STEM. What many forget is the marketing and business part of it. I myself look forward to the future with business at the forefront of expertise. This past weekend at Troy, two other students and I from Team 4130 presented our final Chairman's submission which included dressing formally (complete suits ,) speaking knowledgeably of our team without the use of our judges binder or documentation, and the referral of poster boards that showcased different figures and statistics for the judges to see our team's growth and development in only one year. Working on spreading out our team, managing our team's finances (thanks to a business plan that won Entrepreneurship,) and also working on presentations such as this and for corporate businesses has been providing me with a lot of experience that is helping me to learn and prepare for the future. I've received a lot of work in time management and obviously how to form a presentation. Quite frankly, I'm proud of how our team did business wise at Troy. We're only a second year team and a team of that age winning Entrepreneurship is unheard of. That's a big reason why I think more teams should try for the award. Yes, your not going to win it in your first year of presenting (our business mentor even said if we were to win the award, it wouldn't "sit well" with every single other person that was at the competition,) but it provides your team with a greater chance to win other awards and it does take time to win Chairman's. My hope is to win the Chairman's award within the next two years before I graduate (I am a sophomore,) and Entrepreneurship was a big step forward. 4130 has started out doing a lot of work in business at a young age and we plan on developing along with other aspects of the team like mechanical and programming. This success is what illustrates to students the product of hard work and determination as well as gracious professionalism and working to create a greater future and world. That is the main reason why there is a Chairman's award, to encourage development and success of the human species.

[dcarr]

Originally Posted by jacobythegreat

That is the main reason why there is a Chairman's award, to encourage development and success of the human species.

Wow, this is getting really deep

Congrats on your hard work and success.

[Bill_B]

FIRST is an organization that provides an education in STEM.

FIRST does not provide education, STEM or otherwise. FIRST's mission is to inspire those who would not otherwise consider STEM careers by showing them what is involved with STEM activity in a realistic setting. Of course, the actual mission statement, with which everyone should have more than a passing acquaintance, is much more elegant. See it at usfirst.org The Chairman's report is a record of your team's efforts toward that goal. If you haven't been doing anything related to the FIRST mission, your report will tell you about it and point out that you may need a course correction.

[dcarr]

Originally Posted by Bill_B

FIRST does not provide education, STEM or otherwise.

Education is often a useful byproduct of the process of inspiration that FIRST provides. Saying that FIRST does not provide education is in fact inaccurate in many cases; rather, it's not the primary goal.

[jacobythegreat]

That is true. It's not completely about STEM but it is a major part of the program as it is where the majority of alumni go into.

[DonRotolo]

We can quibble over the definition of "education", but the FIRST program creates an environment for it (in all its many forms).

[ebarker]

Originally Posted by DonRotolo

We can quibble over the definition of "education", but the FIRST program creates an environment for it (in all its many forms).

go here http://www.mitfirst.org/

look at the third video - "Woodie Flowers"

watch a couple of minutes starting at 6:30, and you will get another definition of 'education'

[cadandcookies]

Originally Posted by MrBydlon

Finally, Chairman's Award connected us with teams and people that we never would have connected with otherwise. FRC Team 2220 from Eagan, MN also submitted Chairman's this year and we worked closely with them throughout the process. Our team now considers them genuine friends. It also connected us with Renee Becker, the wonderful MN FIRST Senior Mentor. Through her we met tons of other teams. It's like a tree. From that Chairman's root, our connections and outreach and goals and team pride and focus have all grown.

So to answer the question "Why even bother submitting a Chairman's Award if we're not gonna win?", my response would be another question "Why even bother building a robot if we're not gonna win?". The answer to both? To learn and grow.

It was great working with you guys too! I have to agree particularly with this last part-- I know for myself, working on my team's Chairman's submission was one of the most exhausting and rewarding experiences I've ever had on my team. Hopefully we can work together in the future!

As for objectives four and five--
Speaking from personal experience, my team has several reasons that we've kept submitting, even in spite of our rather tumultuous history with the award. On our rather large team, many people have different reasons for wanting to submit-- many of our build team members want to submit because they want our team to be competitive in everything we do, a reason that I find slightly off-putting but completely valid. Many of our members don't just want to build robots, they want to be excellent. Another section would be many of our mentors who have been with the team for so long-- they can remember the first time we submitted, in 2008, and want to "finish what we started." They can remember "losing" year after year to other incredibly inspirational programs, such at 2169 and 1816. Of course, there are also some of us that just want the validation that what we've been doing hasn't been for nothing-- students like me that have poured their hearts into our submission, outreach, and FIRST in general. For us, it's about the outreach and the experience.

For me, the entire exercise has been so intrinsically rewarding-- it helps everyone consider what exactly our priorities as a team are. It gives us, as Mr. Bydlon so accurately pointed our, a way of connecting with others in our community. If my team hadn't decided to pursue Chairman's, I wouldn't have had the opportunity to meet Renee Becker, Danny Blau, My Bydlon, Evan Hochenstein, and many of the students on teams 3313 Mechatronics, 2470 Blitz Team, and 3184 Blaze Robotics. As a student, my experience with the Chairman's Award has been eye-opening. In my opinion, if submitting Chairman's has given, or will give any other student a similarly marvelous experience to the one I've had, it's something worth doing. If I was waist deep in FIRST before Chairman's, I'm practically six feet under now.

To address objective one, I think that the Chairman's Award-- the submission, video, presentation, and outreach activities related are incredibly important for any FIRST team-- they're an outlet for both the people that are interested but can't get their heads around the concept of a wrench and the people that fell in love with FIRST and want to give back to their team.

Hopefully this didn't come off as too much a disjointed rant-- I tried my best to keep it pointed.

[Mr MOE]

Carolyn.

Thanks for initiating this discussion! There have been some great comments here and, as expected, different perspectives.

As someone who has been involved in my team's Chairman's Award submissions from the start and someone who talks with teams every season about the Chairman's Award (Philly regional kickoff and "Chairman's Chat at the Championship"), I agree that your main question "why bother submitting if we're not gonna win?" is what many teams are saying.

Whether we admit it or not, we all make decisions based on getting something out of it. It could be recognition or fame or the satisfaction of helping others or whatever. So, your question translates to "what is our team going to get out of submitting a Chairman's Award?"

Here is my list of what a team gets out of it. It has many similarities to others who have responded:

1. A measure of how your team meets FIRST's goals of changing the culture and inspiring others,
2. A document/record of what your team has done,
3. Training for team members in non-robot build areas like marketing, public speaking, presentation skills, graphic design, video editing, documentary development, planning and organization, etc,
4. A roadmap to guide you on the journey of the development of your team,
5. Another reason to engage in and increase your team outreach,
6. Organized data about your team that will help you secure more sponsors,
7. The satisfaction of doing something larger than yourself,
8. Another way to build a true team,
9. A reason more judges will come to talk with you during competitions
10. A reason to make a cool team video

I know much discussion has focused on the judging process. I'm not too excited to talk about that side of it. I want to focus on what your team can get out of going through the submission process, which really forces your team to operate differently just to get content for the submission process.

So, is the view worth the climb? I absolutely think so. However, you need to understand your team, their focus, circumstances,and resources before you decide to submit. I think it is a missed opportunity, if you don't.

[ebarker]

Why even bother submitting a Chairman's Award if we're not gonna win?

At a minimum it forces the team to sit down and ask

"what have we done to promote the mission and vision of FIRST ? "

"are we heading in the right direction ?, are we supporting our students right ?"

and so on. It is a way to stop and think about what we are doing as a team.

You don't pursue the Chairman's Award. You arrive at the Chairman's Award.


Over time, this self examination, reflection, and adjustments to the team efforts and work results in a culture that is very positive and gets some results.

A story - the students on our team have been running around trying to help others as best they can. They really haven't thought about awards or anything. It was just a lot of fun helping others. The team went to the Peachtree. During the closing ceremony they called out our team for the J&J GP award. We all kinda looked at each other with surprise and said "well ok, let's go on down". It really caught us off guard.

Submitting for the RCA, properly done can help focus the team on what needs to be done. It can change the culture of the team and make the team much better. Doing the right thing has rewards all by itself and the plastic trophies are ok too! Everyone should submit for the RCA.

[ebarker]

Here is a great reason to submit for the Chairman's:

It will cause you to go down "The Road Not Taken"

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I marked the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Robert Frost

[Grim Tuesday]

There is actually one step that doesn't have to be done that everyone mentions. The OP's question is "Why both submitting for Chairman's"

Don't, if you don't want to.

But you should prepare a submission, as if you were going to submit.


We prepared a submission this year and missed the deadline by 30 minutes (AM/PM confusion). It didn't degrade any of our accomplishments and writing the essay helped us realize that we actually do a lot of things we didn't realize before. It sucks that we're not eligible for the award but the Chairman's award is about an award or a reason to do good things, it's a reward for teams that do those things.

[Nuttyman54]

Originally Posted by ebarker

Why even bother submitting a Chairman's Award if we're not gonna win?

At a minimum it forces the team to sit down and ask

"what have we done to promote the mission and vision of FIRST ? "

"are we heading in the right direction ?, are we supporting our students right ?"

and so on. It is a way to stop and think about what we are doing as a team.

You don't pursue the Chairman's Award. You arrive at the Chairman's Award.

Great points.

2006, my senior year in high school, was my second year in FRC. I was the president of Team 971, Spartan Robotics. We were not the team we are today, we had few mentors, little industry support and very little design experience to go around.

I decided that year that we would submit for RCA and WFFA, two awards the team had never submitted for. I told the team that we did not expect to win these awards, but we submit anyways because continuity and history is important. It would provide a benchmark for the team. "Here's what we did last year, this year we need to do more/better".

We have prepared submissions for these awards every year since. A few times they did not make the submission deadline, but the effort and preparation was there. The process of documenting our team, our history and our impact was there. We have this information readily available, at our disposal, for presentations to the school board, administrators, PTA and anyone else who asks about what we do.

The mentor we first submitted for WFFA in 2006, Michael Schuh, was recognized in 2011. We're still chasing the RCA.

As others have mentioned, the preparation of the submission and presenting to the judges is the most valuable part of the process. It forces teams to evaluate the impact they are having on their students and their community.

I like to think of the Chairman's Award as the team's "performance review": An evaluation of what the team is doing to achieve FIRST's stated goals of inspiration and culture change. The judges select one team at each regional, recognizing their outstanding efforts (like the "employee of the month"), but this in no way discredits the efforts of all the other teams who did not receive the RCA.