Will the next year of competitions bring more girls into FIRST?

[Koko Ed]

This years team was the first in my three years that leaned towards male dominant. My wife and Ms. Foos gather freshmen and sophmores to recruit and don't push for any particular demographic(we do not discrimanate against race, gender, religious standing or GPA). We would like the team to be diverse but we also would like people who are enthustic about partcipating as well so we tend to lean towards the latter.

This year, we only had one girl on our team, and she only showed up to a couple of meetings. Whenever she was there, she worked a lot though. I think it's probably because she was a senior, they generally have odd schedule at our school. Our team is also not very ethnically diverse, so we need to either branch out more, or revise our recruitment techniques.

I think we need to not use the 'tools scattered everywhere, people with grease all over their hands bending over a big hunk of metal, loud noises, geeks bent over computers" image as much.

Unfortunately, that is basically what our meetings look like.

Any ideas?


Thaine