Judging of Woodie Flowers Award

[Andy Baker]

It was an honor to be involved in the judging process for this year's Woodie Flowers Finalist Awards and the Woodie Flowers Award. It was an eye opening experience . The committee is a group of amazing people. We all got along fabulously and became friends in the process.

Here are some interesting facts from this past year:

1. Only 21% of FIRST teams nominated a candidate.
2. Some regionals had as many as 13 candidates.
3. One regional had only 3 candidates and a few others had only 4.
4. Nominators need to learn how to spell Woodie's name correctly.
5. Nominators need to stick to an essay format.
6. Nominators should target 600 words. Some were 300 words, some were 800. Short essays equated with weak efforts and long essays were a distraction to the judges.
7. Some nominators did a good job of profiling their mentor, but gave no information about their communication skills (for example: "our mentor stays at the shop later than anyone else, that is why they deserve the WFA"). It is not unique to have a mentor stay late.
8. Student nominators can and should get help from the other mentors on the teams. While the rules require the students to write and facilitate the entry, they can have as many adults proof their essay as they wish.
9. Student nominators should not procrastinate. The entry deadline is there for a reason, so the nominator can include the experience of the entire build season to profile their mentor.
10. Students should choose whom to nominate and not listen to certain mentors who say "don't nominate me!" Sadly, this happens too often. Certain mentors need to just accept the praise from their team's students.
11. Students should use this essay as an award to their mentor, even if their chosen candidate does not win at a Regional. Surprisingly, 700 teams missed a chance to give something back to one mentor on their team.
12. Longevity was a consideration. Being a stellar mentor for 10 years is different than being a stellar mentor for 1 year.
13. We all realized that there are MANY people who are doing great things in FIRST, and many of us don't even know their name. I was going to post an example, but there are too many.
14. Most importantly, Dr. Murphy directed the judging crew to equally grade the student nominator's writing skills with the mentoring and communication skills of the candidate. He was adamant about this, and it directed each of our decisions.

It was a difficult process. There were 8 judges involved. Each regional had 2 main judges and 1 tiebreaker judge. For some of the regionals, all of the judges had input, since many of the choices were not easy. I am not going to go into the details of which regionals had which judges or which regionals had X amount of entries.

Speaking on behalf of the WFA committee, we are open to ideas and suggestions. This was our first year doing this and we realize that not everything was perfect. We have already heard some suggestions, and we welcome more.

Thank you,
Andy Baker