Liberal Arts School

[Nightwing430]

My school is based upon Liberal Arts while I want to go into a STEM related career (some type of engineering). I talked to my school counselor about going into a STEM career and we have that figured out, I also told him what I do at robotics (he got to come to states for a day and watch with his kids) and he said he would not mind trying to start something robotics related at my school if he can find funds to do it with. We have a tech club at my school that doesn't really do much and he was trying to think of ideas to change it over to robotics so they would have something to do and other people might be interested to join too. It would be cool if we could start a FIRST robotics team at my school but we don't have the funds right now to do that.. I was wondering if any of you know ideas that are based around robotics that would not be that expensive to do, and easy for people to do with just meeting once a week? Thanks

[Roboshant]

FTC or VEX would be a great way to start for about 1-2k, although you can always subsidize that through fundraising and sponsors. Another option is Shell Eco-Marathon. Although it is not robotics, Shell Eco-Marathon provides for an engineering challenge of its own kind, and could be used as stepping stone to an eventual FRC team. I am the president of the SEM team at my school, and we actually managed to run our whole season on $400. SEM can be a very affordable program, as shell pays for transportation, lodging, food, and subsidize airplane tickets if needed. There are some really good SEM teams in NC, such as James B. Dudley High School (who seem to be very near to you), who would be willing to help you guys out. PM me for more details.

Edit: Believe it or not, but if you give yourself enough time a car can be built with only one meeting a week. We built our whole car in 7 days (our previous car was destroyed a week before the start of the competition so we had to build a new one).

[Nightwing430]

Originally Posted by Roboshant

FTC or VEX would be a great way to start for about 1-2k, although you can always subsidize that through fundraising and sponsors. Another option is Shell Eco-Marathon. Although it is not robotics, Shell Eco-Marathon provides for an engineering challenge of its own kind, and could be used as stepping stone to an eventual FRC team. I am the president of the SEM team at my school, and we actually managed to run our whole season in $400. SEM can be a very affordable program, as shell pays for transportation, lodging, food, and subsidize airplane tickets if needed. There are some really good SEM teams in NC, such as James B. Dudley High School (who seem to be very near to you), who would be willing to help you guys out. PM me for more details.

Edit: Believe it or not, but if you give yourself enough time a car can be built with only one meeting a week. We built our whole car in 7 days (our previous car was destroyed a week before the start of the competition so we had to build a new one).

Thank you so much! I will check into these things with my counsular and see what we can do.