Top 50 Engineering Schools Involvement

[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.