nationals

[DUCKIE]

Thanx Bear Feat!

[I know It's a lot of reading ~sorry~]

I am the co-captain of the Miracle Workerz -team 365 /MOE- And function as a Chairmans Award rep. / Pit Crew member.

John (adult mentor -one of the two volunteers of the year from the Philly regional. The other was from the Wissahickon team. -Yeah Wissahickon!!!-), Brian (chassie driver), and I; are the chairmans award reps for MOE.

This is the basic MOE info....
----------------------------
Our team is based in Wilmington, DE. And is made-up of 30 students from 8 highschools and 1 homeschool student. We travel in from three states... Pa., Del., and Maryland.

Our homeschool student tried to get on another team but he was denied because he was not a student at their highschool, so he went to FIRST where he was hooked-up with our team. He also has one of the longest commutes on the team, having to drive two hours to attend meetings.
----------
Our team has helped boost FIRST in the tri-state area, helping other local teams and touring with the robot. Some typical stops for MOE durring the year are...

Take your Daughter to Work day (@ DuPont)
Trips to each of the highschools that students on the team attend
Tech Summit (mandatory trip for 9th graders in DE)
Science Day on the Hill (Washington D.C.)
Various Engineering functions... (for example the annual Del. Eng. Banquet)
Engineering Your Tomorrow (introducing girls to engineering)
YMCA summer camp
------------
This year, MOE helped start two FLL teams, with three or our more in the wings for next year. MOE students helped mentor the two teams... "Dr. MOE and the Dominators" and "MOE Knows". They even set-up and acted as judges at a local FLL tournament. With one of our adult engineers acting as eemce.
------------
Along with the 31 student members, our team has around ten engineers and the "MOE boosters" which is mainly parents and alumni of the team who help out with field construction and providing food for all of us hungry teenagers.
------------

MOE starts in the fall with MOE-University; where we go to classes which teach the basics of wireing, gearing, motors, correct tool usage, ect... From there we divide into sub-groups where we "specialize" into areas like mechanical, electrical, and animation. From that point we go into build period.

---------
MOE has been EXTREEEMLY lucky to have DuPont as our major sponsor. As part of their sponsorship, they provide a workspace and meeting area for us in one of their buildings downtown. It mainly consists of an area where we keep our workbenches and tools, a medium sized rugged are where we can run the robot, and a few cubicals for the animation and web-teams. We also have acess to a machine shop where myself and the other students cut, drill, and finish our parts under the "watchfull" [as in "take off your watch when in the machine shop"] eyes of George, a professional DuPont machinist who dedicates his time to working with us wacky highschoolers.
----------------------------------------------------------

Sorry, I guess I got a little carried away. I would keep wracking my brain but I don't want to make this much longer.

-Andrea aka. Ducky-