Scholarships for Winning Teams (WVROX)

[g_sawchuk]

Originally Posted by Steven Donow

But that's not what he's trying to say. The scholarship isn't rewarded to 'the student who best embodies the ideals of FIRST'; that's not criteria for it at all. The criteria for it is winning.

I understand that, I was just suggesting an idea for how it could have been awarded based on my opinion regarding if the winners should recieve the winning title and the scholarship.

[Steven Donow]

Originally Posted by GrifBot

I understand that, I was just suggesting an idea for how it could have been awarded based on my opinion regarding if the winners should recieve the winning title and the scholarship.

Fair enough; I was slightly confused by some wording, but yeah, it should be up to thte team to decide who ti goes to

[Joe Ross]

It should be noted that FIRST awards a scholarship to a member of the Chairman's award team:

6.4.5 The Allaire Medal - Leadership Exemplified

The Allaire Medal recognizes leadership exemplified and is awarded to an individual student on the team selected as the Chairman’s Award team.

Named in honor of Paul A. Allaire, a long-serving FIRST Chairman of the Board, the Allaire Medal is given to the student who has demonstrated outstanding leadership on his/her FIRST team, within his/her school and community and whose personal character best embodies the spirit of FIRST.

The team receiving The Chairman’s Award at the Championship will select the Allaire Medal recipient. The adult and student team members of the Chairman’s Award winning team determine the winner. The recipient must be a high school junior or senior who has been accepted into a four (4) year degree program at a college or university. The Allaire Medalist receives the Allaire medallion and up to $10,000 in total scholarship support for undergraduate tuition, room/board and fees/books at his or her intended university or college.

[escime]

Speaking on behalf of WVU (I am also the Associate Vice President for Research and Economic Development at WVU), the goal of the scholarships was to attract high quality students to WVU. There were 4 scholarships given out. These are academic scholarships and the threshold criteria are pretty stiff (3.8 GPA, 30 on the ACT or 1340 on the SAT) and so it really is an academic scholarship - and it is a full scholarship (worth $4,000 to an in-state student and over $10,000 to an out of state student). Each of the three winning teams has one week to nominate a student who has or will try to meet those criteria (the scholarship could go to a student who isn't going to be a senior this fall). The 4th scholarship went to a team who coach won a judged award based on student entries for an outstanding coach/mentor nomination. WVU is very interested in building up our engineering program with great students and FIRST students are perfect for recruiting. FIRSTers might not know it, but in four different NASA robotics challenges this summer, WVU took first place; beating out teams from MIT and elsewhere. So were are serious about good students. I am working on finding a donor to endow these sorts of scholarships in the future (if we are crazy enough to do WVRoX again). We left it up to the teams to develop their own nomination process, just like FIRST does for the Deans List award. Any other questions about the process, just get in touch with me and I would be happy to answer them.

[Mastonevich]

Earl, Thanks so much for the reply from someone close to the situation.

A sincere thanks for offering the scholarships. That is great to hear WVU is interested in getting FIRST students.

The strict academic portion answers some of my questioning thoughts I had also. Winning was only one component, and it may be the easier of the requirements.