Mentors' Advice Needed for Automotive Teacher Considering FRC

[waialua359]

Our main shop is a former automotive program that went under due to low enrollment. For the 1st 8 years of our program, we shared our program construction area with the metal/autoshop instructor. We now have the shop to ourselves.
Integrating CTE (metals/auto) with Robotics is a great fit, and students in our program can earn CTE credits towards an honors designation diploma now in either Engineering or Design Technology with a Capstone course their senior year.

If automotive is a dying program in your school, FRC is the perfect candidate for the teacher and his facilities.

[MrBasse]

Honestly, having taught automotive and having coached an FRC team I can tell you they actually don't line up all that well. Really, robotics has a lot to do with production of cars, not their maintenance. In Michigan, Vocational courses are required to align with a competition component. That can either be SkillsUSA, or MITES (Michigan Industrial Technology Education Association). They don't even consider an Electric car program to be appropriate. To have it be aligned to content it actually has to align to content. When is the last time you tuned the fuel injection system on your FRC robot? Changed the oil? Adjusted the hydraulic brakes? While I do have dreams of a small block v8 robot, I doubt I'll see it in competition anytime soon.

I'm not saying he couldn't do it as a great program for his students, but if he wants it to align to his curriculum I fear he will be left wanting. FIRST is a powerful tool for my students, but I still have to participate in another competition for my Drafting program. It also isn't accepted for a local machining class. There are a lot of things that can be linked, but it all depends on what the funding requires.

Will it benefit the program, probably. Is it a perfect fit, no. Is it better than a traditional auto repair competition, perhaps. But the most important one to me, will it teach kids more about automotive technology? I'd have to say not without a lot of work on his end.