Female Captains and Girls on FRC Teams

[Michael Corsetto]

Originally Posted by Jon Stratis

But we can't fix the problem (generally speaking) in FRC. It's too late at that point.

I get where you are coming from Jon, but I'm not sure I agree. What I've witnessed on 1678 is a strong partnership of male and female leaders in every subteam, with many female team members citing female leadership as the inspiration that encouraged them to take on larger roles as well. While I understand you threw in a "generally speaking", I don't believe our situation has to be the norm, and FRC teams shouldn't throw their hands in the air if they have little female involvement/leadership.

To answer your questions:

We have strong female membership. By the numbers, I think we are about 33% female in membership. However, on every suubteam (technical and non-technical) I can point out a male and a female who are leaders in the subteam. Funny anecdotal note: We just recently acquired one mill and one lathe, and during the build season our most competent students operated those machines. Henry runs the mill, and Nikki runs the lathe. They have been nicknamed "Mill Man and Lathe Lady"

Our Team Captain is female, and she was our Co-Captain last year. Our Captain last year was female as well. Both of them were on the drive team last year (Captain was the coach) when we seeded first in our division and went to Einstein. Looking forward, I expect the Captain for at least the next few years to be female. Not because they are female, but because they possess the dynamic combination of technical competency, confidence, communication skills and leadership abilities that are required of the Team Captain position.

I wish we had more female mentors! I witness little female mentorship in FRC, and even fewer female mentors in the pits with the technical subteams. I hope this changes, and I'd be ecstatic if some female technical mentors came on board. We'll see what recruiting we can do from the university (UC Davis is in our backyard). Seeing as many female members on our team have cited seeing other females in leadership as an inspiration, this is important for us.

We hope to host a WISTEM (Women in STEM) conference this spring. Some of our students are putting it together and getting female leaders in various tech and education industries to speak at the conference.

A few months ago, a local regional RPC was debating hosting all female driver/operator/human player/coach exhibition matches between quals and elims at the event. We ran this idea by our team, and the female membership had two qualms with the idea. First, they didn't want to risk breaking the robot in a match that didn't count. But more importantly, they wanted to find other ways that in their minds would encourage WISTEM better than an all-female drive team. The conference this spring is a start to that effort.

I can't take any credit for the strong presence of female leadership in both technical and non-technical areas of 1678. But I can tell you that it has been a privilege to work with the incredibly talented and driven students of 1678, both female and male.

-Mike