FIRST and University Involvement

[cazbar171]

If you are still interested the University of Wisconsin Platteville has sponsored team 171 for many years. The person to contact is Clyde Holverson. His email is holversc@uwplatt.edu.

[Christina]

Hey. Well, RIT has become pretty involved with FIRST. We've supported Edison Tech (team 73) since '94 (I think...but I'm not positive). While we haven't integrated FIRST into our college curriculum, FIRST is a student club on campus. We hold meetings every week. We have recently become involved with team 1405 (as I'm sure Joe Ross could tell you) and next year we are hosting the brand spanking new Finger Lakes Regional. Our club advisor is Bill Scarbrough and his email address is wtseme@rit.edu and another involved person is our department head Dr. Ed Hensel (who mentors another team as well), his email address is echeme@rit.edu. They should be able to answer most of your questions. If for any reason they can't or don't get back to you, I can answer questions too. My email address is cla2115@rit.edu. Hope this helps.

[patrickrd]

Cornell is also involved with FIRST, but it has nothing to do with the curriculum. FIRST at Cornell is centered around what has evolved over 4 years to be a student club, receiving funding from the university each year. The Cornell FIRST Robotics club then takes that money, and uses it to help promote FIRST in the community. Four years ago, we started our first high school team. Last year, we began a lego team. Next year, we plan to get multiple lego league teams going. We are also planning to start a new high school team in the area each of the next two years. The purpose of the Cornell FIRST Robotics Club is no longer to sponsor and mentor a single team, but rather to promote FIRST throughout the surrounding communities, help them get teams started, and help them become self-sustaining.

We decided this was the best approach for our organization, given the time and resources that busy college students have. During the build season, we do not have time to mentor high school students daily, but rather once or twice per week. Given that engineers can be found in the community that can help out daily, we find that college students do not make the an ideal mentor. Further, college students have less knowledge and technical experience than engineering mentors. Although having college students as mentors can certainly be better than nothing, we have found that our time and energy can better help FIRST (and correspondingly, reach out to more students) by spreading FIRST around the community, using our University as a resource for achieving this goal.

[Andrew Schuetze]

Those of you out there with insight and information on vehicles to connect universities/colleges/ jr. colleges to FIRST teams keep on posting. I am the lead sponsor for our team of 4 years and have struggled to find the means to develop such a partnership. It is not for the lack of trying or interested faculty.

Post away with your unique spin on how to make these partnerships work

APS

[Eugenia Gabrielov]

"Those of you out there with insight and information on vehicles to connect universities/colleges/ jr. colleges to FIRST teams keep on posting. I am the lead sponsor for our team of 4 years and have struggled to find the means to develop such a partnership. It is not for the lack of trying or interested faculty. "

I think one of the key concepts to make such a relationship work is to take advantage of resources and interactions at every level. For example, throughout the year high school students are given opportunities to tour Purdue (other teams show interest, so we kind of tag along). It is not forced on us like it might be on the average everyday pedestrian, so we enjoy the concept of having the university nearby. Also, college advisors help highschool students make decisions about colleges and school and life in general.
Another example is that it helps with regionals. For example, we are hosting a regional here at Purdue next year, but it would not be possible without that partnership and the effort that is being made towards it by the engineering office. Making a relationship with a university work is based on compromise: you have to give back and show them what they've turned the program into and that it is thriving and students enjoy it. Everything else is just icing on the cake.

[Vince]

Updated FIRST & Universities Paper

The completed "brochure" that was written from the input provided by this forum is now posted in the White Papers forum (technical section). Woodie distributed this handout to over 2,000 engineering educators as the Plenary Speaker for the American Society for Engineering Education at their annual meeting on June 21, 2004.

Many thanks to those who helped with assembling this document. FIRST and ASME have been provided with the document as well to post on thier sites.

Eventually we will crack the university nut with regards to FIRST.

Cheers - Vince