pic: Histogram of # years active for teams that have dropped out

[rwodonnell]

loading photo ...

[RoboChair]

Usually graphs and data make me happy.

This one just makes me sad.

[Lil' Lavery]

Would anyone be able to see how many of the 2 year teams were NASA grant recipients?

[wilsonmw04]

I think it can be safely said there are two reasons a team folds: a lack of money and/or a lack on mentors.

They money issue is touchy. It's hard to justify spending $10k (this is what I think is needed to run a team at a reasonable level every year) a relatively small number of kids when there are other pressing needs. There are other programs that fit smaller budgets. FTC can be done on $2k, for example.

The lack of staff is inexcusable. I have seen it happen locally. The teacher/mentor can't/won't do it next year and the team folds. Why would the administration allow this? if the track coach left, someone would volunteer/voluntold to take the position. Since it's not a sport, it's allowed to fade away.

Guess it's what Dean keeps telling us. We need to change the culture of our community. If STEM was a priority, these sort of things wouldn't happen.

[Chris Hibner]

That distribution looks very "Weibullian", which is what I would expect. It's always cool when that happens.

[Oblarg]

Originally Posted by wilsonmw04

The lack of staff is inexcusable. I have seen it happen locally. The teacher/mentor can't/won't do it next year and the team folds. Why would the administration allow this? if the track coach left, someone would volunteer/voluntold to take the position. Since it's not a sport, it's allowed to fade away.

Many teams, even those in schools, effectively operate without any school support at all. 449 pays around $6000 per year to use a classroom on weekends during build season. We've never been unable to find a teacher sponsor, luckily, but if we found ourselves without one next year the onus would be on us to convince someone else to do it.

Also, lack of mentorship extends beyond requirements like having a teacher sponsor - if you lose a lot of your technical mentorship as a 1- or 2-year team, there's little chance the team will be left with enough institutional knowledge to build robots reliably or educate new members. Moreover, team administration requires a group of people to share the burden, or else one extremely dedicated person with a lot of devotion and spare time. Even if you have a teacher sponsor, that alone is not enough - the amount of human resources required to keep an FRC team functional are quite massive.

[rwodonnell]

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery

Would anyone be able to see how many of the 2 year teams were NASA grant recipients?

I created this chart from the data posted in a google sheet on this thread. If you add the column I suggest in my reply post that includes this chart, and then search the teams that dropped out after two years, and then find some data source for NASA grants ... Whew, sounds like too much work right now for me.

[Jon Stratis]

Originally Posted by wilsonmw04

I think it can be safely said there are two reasons a team folds: a lack of money and/or a lack on mentors.

They money issue is touchy. It's hard to justify spending $10k (this is what I think is needed to run a team at a reasonable level every year) a relatively small number of kids when there are other pressing needs. There are other programs that fit smaller budgets. FTC can be done on $2k, for example.

The lack of staff is inexcusable. I have seen it happen locally. The teacher/mentor can't/won't do it next year and the team folds. Why would the administration allow this? if the track coach left, someone would volunteer/voluntold to take the position. Since it's not a sport, it's allowed to fade away.

Guess it's what Dean keeps telling us. We need to change the culture of our community. If STEM was a priority, these sort of things wouldn't happen.

You're right on both counts. Many teams get started with funding from a single source, and aren't prepared if that source goes away (thus Lil' Lavery's question about the NASA grants for first and second year teams).

As for lack of staff, I don't think we can entirely blame the schools. It takes a lot to run a team, and if a school has enjoyed support from engineering mentors outside of the school, losing those mentors can be devastating - I could easily see the teacher in that situation look around and say "I can't do this by myself!".

Part of the problem with retaining teacher/mentor participation is the time commitment. When I started with my team, we had a good, large group of mentors and we said "the team will meet twice a week plus Saturdays, if each of us just come to 1-2 of them we should be fine". HAHA, yeah right. The meeting times increased a little, but every mentor basically was there for every meeting. After our first season, we restructured and increased the time commitment significantly for our second year. Then after our second year we increased the time commitment again with an intensive offseason program, and all of the mentors nearly burned out. We've since backed off on the offseason a bit, and things are more manageable so we aren't risking burning anyone out at this point. But I could easily see a team going through the same startup process we did and just getting burned out and folding.

Then you have the case where a key mentor/teacher leaves. You know you need to replace them, but it's hard. Sure, when the team is first starting up it's not that difficult - you pitch it as a few nights a week, they're part of a team of mentors, and you'll be fine. Once you have that team structure in place, and you've started to up the time commitment, though, you can't recruit like that. You go to the people you're trying to recruit and have to say "you'll barely see your family for 6 weeks, but it's worth it, trust me!" It becomes much harder to recruit that replacement than it is to recruit the initial teacher/mentor.

When it comes to working with the school to replace the faculty adviser... the key isn't what you do when the old one leaves. It's how you've built that relationship with the school over the previous years! Many teams run themselves as a little separate from the school. They may build off-site, or have their own 501c3 to collect funding. Their money comes from corporations instead of the school board (which is where all of the other school activities get their funding). Setting ourselves up as separate like that means the school is going to treat us differently. It's something we need to do to get started, as going to a school and saying "please sir, can I have $10k?" is generally a non-starter, but something that we should all work towards changing every year. I can tell you that my team is finally in a place where we're treated like all of the other activities at the school - we fall under the activities director (formerly athletic director, we were a large part of the reason they changed the title), instead of raising money ourselves, we help the office at the school raise money for us, we've managed to get a build space within the school, and we've convinced the school that having a "faculty adviser" on the team is critical to our success, just like coaches for other sports. So I encourage everyone to work towards that sort of relationship - having the school behind you like that will help you get through all sorts of difficulties!

[cbale2000]

*SNIP*

Nevermind, Mods feel free to delete this post. -_-'

[SenorZ]

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery

Would anyone be able to see how many of the 2 year teams were NASA grant recipients?

My first team, 3677, was a NASA grant team. The team dropped after year two due to financial issues... and I left the team for another school.

[GeeTwo]

Originally Posted by Chris Hibner

That distribution looks very "Weibullian", which is what I would expect. It's always cool when that happens.

Yes. Based on the (invalid) assumption that teams don't revive, the "mortality rate" between years 1 and 2 is 13-14%. (I used the data posted in the sustainability thread.) A bit of curve fitting indicates that the mortality rate declines by about 15% of its value each year. After year 9 there's a lot of scatter in the data, but the trend still looks good.

[cbale2000]

Originally Posted by GeeTwo

Yes. Based on the (invalid) assumption that teams don't revive, the "mortality rate" between years 1 and 2 is 13-14%. (I used the data posted in the sustainability thread.) A bit of curve fitting indicates that the mortality rate declines by about 15% of its value each year. After year 9 there's a lot of scatter in the data, but the trend still looks good.

The results I got were similar, though the averages take into account older teams which plays with the values some.
The overall trend looks about like what you're describing though:

[jgerstein]

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery

Would anyone be able to see how many of the 2 year teams were NASA grant recipients?

It's hard to be certain of a team's sponsors, but working under the assumption that NASA grant recipients would generally be good about making sure to credit NASA, I took a look at how many of the 2 year teams had NASA in their official team name.

I ignored teams founded in 2015 and 2016, which left me with 484 2 year teams. Of those teams, 105 - just under 22% - listed NASA in their team name. I can't think of any good way to identify teams that got the NASA grant for a single year, competed for one year without it, and then folded.

[Chief Hedgehog]

It would be great to see this graph overlap one that showcases lead/founding mentor attrition rate.

I know that after my first three seasons I was greatly fatigued. It wasn't until the team found a co-coach that I had more of a wind to complete this season. Not to say that I am completely fatigued following this season - I am on CD following the gauntlet run that is known as the MSHSL State Tournament!

[GeeTwo]

Originally Posted by cbale2000

The results I got were similar, though the averages take into account older teams which plays with the values some.

Quite. I began by dropping all of the teams founded prior to 2000. There are many teams which no longer exist which do not show up in TBA at all. Maize Craze was reportedly played by 28 teams, but there are only 8 teams listed as having been founded in 1992, seven of which still compete. The survival rate of 1992 teams is therefore more like 25% than 87%. Dropping 1992-1999 was a bit arbitrary, but looking at your curve, I probably should have dropped a couple more years.