Top 50 Engineering Schools Involvement

[TedP]

The Ohio State University currently mentors three teams and plans to expand next year to at least one more.

We additionally mentor a number of smaller LEGO league teams. The first LEGO league team we mentored won the state championship that year.

Take a look at:

http://www.osufirst.org/

for a little bit more information. Our three teams are 677, 1014, and 1317. 677 is a private all-girls school. 1014 is a public school. 1317 is a group of home-school students.

We also started team 128 in 1996. We left 128 in 2000; they have been working on their own ever since.

From what I understand, we were one of the first universities to get involved.

Using our 60+ OSU mentors, 75+ high school students, some of the methods inspired by some of the graduate-level controls classes here at OSU as well as the machinery available on campus, we were able to win the Team Spirit Award (677), the Engineering Inspiration Award (1014), and the Rookie Inspiration Award (1317). In the most recent past, we've won the Rookie All-Star Award (1014) and the Kleiner-Perkins-Claufield Entrepreneurship <sp!!> Award (677).

Our Dublin students also have a web page available for their team (team 1014):

http://www.dublinrobotics.com/

They have been involved for 2 years. Next year they're getting their industrial design class involved to bid on and build a crate for the robot that year. It is a partnership currently between two schools, but very soon a third school in the district will be started. It is not decided whether the partnership will continue or if another team will start. While the school provides no monetary resources to the team, they provide space and some machinery.

Team 677 was startedin 2000 and team 1317 started this year.

OSU provides mentors, more advanced machining capabilities, some money when available, and often space and lots of time.

[TedP]

Oh! And OSU does offer engineering scholarships to high school students who have been involved in FIRST (not just with OSU teams, but with any FIRST team). Information about this scholarship is available on FIRST's website.

Additionally, OSU's first-year engineering honors program:

http://feh.eng.ohio-state.edu/

involves a three quarter sequence that builds up to building small completely autonomous 9" x 9" x 12" robots that complete some task. These students are given $130 in budget and a microcontroller and otherwise build the whole robot from scratch. There is a great deal of engineering that goes on here, involving plenty of report writing and presentation giving. It all ends with a large competition to see whose robot does best. The robots are built in 4 person teams. There are 57 teams this year involved with this program.

There is also an additional honors design project that involves (this year) building a raquet-ball shooter that aims to score through basketball hoops consistently. Last year a frisbee thrower was built. The year before that an air-powered vehicle was built.

Note that these two projects are not simply engineering related. Throughout all three quarters, every week the engineering, physics, and math instructional staff as well as the engineering advisors sit down to discuss the previous week's events and plan for collaboration during the next week. It is an integrated program aimed to optimize the entire first-year engineering experience.

For students who do not take the honors option, a small roller coaster is built. Students have more options for math and physics if they elect to take this option, but thus there is less collaboration between groups.

This first-year program not only provides a great deal of publicity for FIRST and is a great place for recruitment, but most of the FIRST leadership currently aids in the instruction of the first-year engineering program.

[Matt Leese]

The University of Rochester is not particularly involved with FIRST. They did give some amount of money (a relatively small amount) to team 340 one year but I think that's the extent of their involvement.

Matt

[ErikJ]

To further what Ted mentioned...

Ohio State also hosts/sponsors a fall seminar series in conjunction with the local Columbus teams (on the order of 10, though only 5-7 are typically active at functions like this). The local mentors meet and divide up a series of workshops (things like controls, electrical basics, mechanical basics, animation, design philosophy, etc.), then present them over the course of 2 Saturdays to all the teams in the area.

Additionally OSU also hosts/sponsors a FIRST-sanctioned local kickoff, complete with a course and the chance for teams to pick up their kits.

On a slightly different note..........

If your end aim is to try to convince a school to participate in FIRST, a thread like this will be a big help. While trying to drum up support at the college level for our activities, I brought in a similar list I made by just scanning through a program and the scholarship list. OSU, like many schools, have identified so called "peer" institutions - schools we think we compare well with in terms of size, research dollars, industry/academic reputation, things like that. I listed how those schools were involved (a la teams, regionals, and scholarships) and listed what (fairly little) support we were getting from the university at the time. The one dean made my point for me when she rightly pointed out - "so all these schools give scholarships and we don't". Something like that can be a pretty powerful tool - colleges are just as competitive as businesses.

[ngreen]

Originally Posted by ErikJ

If your end aim is to try to convince a school to participate in FIRST, a thread like this will be a big help. While trying to drum up support at the college level for our activities, I brought in a similar list I made by just scanning through a program and the scholarship list. OSU, like many schools, have identified so called "peer" institutions - schools we think we compare well with in terms of size, research dollars, industry/academic reputation, things like that. I listed how those schools were involved (a la teams, regionals, and scholarships) and listed what (fairly little) support we were getting from the university at the time. The one dean made my point for me when she rightly pointed out - "so all these schools give scholarships and we don't". Something like that can be a pretty powerful tool - colleges are just as competitive as businesses.

Especially if the schools are rival state schools you can put a lot of pressure. That what our team did to the state schools and now there are going to be 3 new scholarships.

I'm a little dissapointed my college (K-State) didn't make the top 50. It is definitely in the top ten for value and the college overall for non-engineers is amazing. Most truman, goldwater, rhodes scholars from a public university, at least something like that. And a decent football team, not going to fight with the osu fans. Had to put my plug in. I want all the FIRST kid I can get so I can get help in possibly starting a team next year.

As for the university. They began offering a 12,000 dollar scholarship (3000 for 4 year) this year. I am setting up a FIRST booth for Open House and hopefully I'll get some interest.

KC is having a regional next year so that will cut cost for all us midwestern teams.

EDIT: OH I see! This list is more the best graduate school type list. K-State has one of the best undergraduate engineering programs in the country. We just go everywhere else to get our PhD's.

Look here to see what they are ranked on: http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/gra...rank_brief.php

[Stephen Kowski]

i didn't view it as the best graduate programs....that is not what it indicated to me....im not trying to leave any school out or discredit someone, I just wanted to get some information together some that I have more material to kind of put pressure on my school (USF) to do more....

[ngreen]

Originally Posted by Stephen Kowski

i didn't view it as the best graduate programs....that is not what it indicated to me....im not trying to leave any school out or discredit someone, I just wanted to get some information together some that I have more material to kind of put pressure on my school (USF) to do more....

Yeah I realize this. I just thought K-State would make the top 50 for undergraduate engineering programs so I had to look. I think there is an undergraduate list but they make you pay to get more than the top 3.