Question of the Week!!! (9/12/04)

[Andy Grady]

Hi all,

First I just wanted to say thank you to everyone at River Rage for making it such a fun event. Now on to this week's question...

Question of the Week (9/12/04):

What techniques do you use to recruit new High School Students and/or Mentors to your team?

As always, suggestions are welcome. E-mail (skrach42@aol.com), AIM (QuietRiverRage1), or PM

Have fun!
-Andy Grady

[Jaine Perotti]

Originally Posted by Andy Grady

Question of the Week (9/12/04):

What techniques do you use to recruit new High School Students and/or Mentors to your team?

Our team doesn't exactly have a organized way of doing this ---

usually we get two new types of recruits:
1)those who already have a passion for robotics/technology/building and have wanted to be on the team since they first heard of it.
2)those who may have had little or no previous intrest in robotics but have been recruited by friends who are already on the team. Usually these people are hooked after the first meeting they go to. (I was one of these)

We are trying to improve our means of finding new recruits. For example, this year we gave a five minute presentation at our freshman orientation and have made announcements in the morning over the loudspeaker telling students how to sign up for robotics. Probably the main reason for people not signing up (in the past) is the fact that they do not know how to join, what exactly robotics is, and/or what it means to be on the team.

As for adult mentors, we aren't particularly organized in this area either.
Most are parents of students. (plus 2 teachers and 1 engineer)
Recently one of our team members wrote a letter to the local newspaper asking for adults willing to mentor our team. Other than that there hasn't been much outreach.
However, recently we recruited a new engineering advisor who is a new math teacher at our school. I only found out about him because I read in the paper (in a section highlighting the newly hired teachers in our district) that he had a degree in Aerospace engineering. So a freind of mine and I asked him to be a part of the team. Not a very organized way of finding a mentor, but it worked well enough. He was happy to be a part of our team.

I look forward to reading other posts in this thread to help me find a way to improve my own team's recruiting process!!

[KathieK]

RAGE typically has a Recruiting Committee that plans our recruiting methods during the summer months. We usually try to do a demo at the freshmen orientations, followed by announcements during the frist week or so of school, and an after school meeting. These are followed by an informational meeting for prospective students and parents/guardians at our practice facility, where team members show them around, explain the program, demonstrate the robot, etc. This is done at both of our primary high schools.

[Bcahn836]

We hold an open house where anyone interested can come and we give a presentation and demonstration on what FIRST Robotics is all about. People from the team last year tell thier friends and the teacher mentors tell their students. This usually gets around 30-35 new faces to show up the open house meeting. After that the newbies that are interested tell thier frends and so on. However we do have some that aren't interested and don't come back. we usually keep a roster of about 30 or more.

[Dorienne]

Originally Posted by Andy Grady

Question of the Week (9/12/04):

What techniques do you use to recruit new High School Students and/or Mentors to your team?

Well, we don't really use techniques. We basically have a couple of intro meetings (just in case people who wanted to join missed the first one) and lay down the rules, benefits and ideals of FIRST. It's amazing the response we get each year. It may not seem like much, but on average each year we get about 25-30 students and every person goes from FIRST a happy camper. We also are starting to advertise a lot more. Instead of just making an announcement over the intercom during morning announcements, we also are going to put posters up, possibly hand out fliers, and maybe (if we're lucky) talk to homerooms about our team. I think all these ideas are effective and will be.
--Dori

[Arefin Bari]

SigmaC@t are always up for recruiting... Since we have a a Magnet called "Emerging Computer Technology" we always recruit... recruiting starts off in January when the program coordinator goes around to middle schools and let them know what we are about... we have sections like... Robotics, Programming, Graphic Design, Multimedia, Electronics. So we make a presentation then a alumni of that middle school (most of the time we have one in our school)... gives a speech telling them thier experience at our school and on the team. we get a lot of good freshman every year and looks like after the veterans on the team graduate the juniors on the team always pick it back up... this is a great process that goes on and on in our team every year...

[Kel D]

Team 433 usually has a bunch of vets on the team walk around during the day when all the freshmen get a chance to see the clubs and teams at our school. Then we make anyone remotely interested sign up. We then set up an intro meeting and send out an email to everyone signed up and thats it. But really the most effective way to get new members is to have all your current members hound their friends to join. Most of the members on are team are also friends outside of robotics, which makes everything that much more enjoyable. Usually people only join something with a friend, no one wants to do something alone, its scary. That is what I noticed to be the most effective way to get new members and actually keep them.

[Aignam]

In my experience, there's nothing more effective or more entertaining than just demo-ing the robot, maybe giving some Freshman a go at driving one day under controlled conditions, and just showing off the absolute best your team has. Your team pretty much sells itself for you---the interested people get to see how much fun your team is having and then get to have a taste of it for themselves. What could be better?

[lilszek24]

We basically put up a bulliten board and flyers all over school as well as have already members spreading the word. Then new kids have to fill out an application which consists of you basic information and a one page essay of why you want to be on the team and what u think u wud bring to the team. and sumtimes if it gets down to the wire the teachers will do interviews. and then we start the season.
Not to mention you have to reapply if its only your second year on the team.

The whole process helps us get kids who are really interested and want to put the time in rather than they want to be able to put it on there transcript

[Joe Matt]

We promote where we know we will get people, we get technology teachers to get their kids to come. Plus it helps to have the head to technology education as the head of our team.

[Elgin Clock]

Remember back in the day when the biggest ruse you used to "trick" kids to join the team was that there was a (not quite) free trip to Disney at the end of the season..

Yeah.. Oh well...

Now it's mostly friends of current members, siblings of current members/alumni, or just people join cause they heard about us through the grapevine.
Team 237's HS only has about 300 students in it, and our team usually has about 25-30 students on it every year.

[Koko Ed]

The X-Catss have the two teachers on the team take thier 9th and 10th grade classes down to the auditorium and show them a movie from last season and open up the application process to them (we occasionally take 11th graders but never seniors). After they put in their application they are interviewed by the teahers and Xerox mentors to see if they qualify to be an X-Cat.
Adult mentors are usually asked to join by other mentors involved on the team and they apply to be on the team(we had 37 mentors last season and only 34 kids. We're not going to have that many this year). Now that Xerox has three teams (191 the X-Cats, 1126 Webster Sparx and 1450 GMAces-name likely to change. People will think GM is sponsoring them plus they're opening up the team to the rest of the school thus the GM should go anyways. I personally think they should go with the Q-Dogs, Franklin's back-up nickname to the Quakers) the mentors can choose which of the three teams they want to join( if there is an opening).

[Wayne C.]

Clubfest is Tuesday-

all the clubs and teams in the school have an expo after school. We demo robots and show videos on the team and take signups of course.

Each year we pick up 50-100 names of which a certain percentage end up sticking with the team.

We have some special movies for this year. It should be quite a time.

WC

[Jeff Rodriguez]

Don't forget FLL. After mentoring FLL for many years, my first 5th graders are now freshman.
There are so many FLL teams in town (10+) that when they get to high school, they are already interested and know basic mechanics.

[Jaine Perotti]

In addition to what I said earlier ---

I am also somewhat worried about recruiting too well and making the team grow too large. We have a small team, which makes the whole experience much more personal and relaxed. We are much like a big family. I don't want this to change.

To solve this problem, we could limit the size by making students apply to be on the team and then select who we want. I know a lot of teams do this.

However I would be concerned about doing this because it would make being on the team more competitive and less relaxed, and might eliminate some of the students (in my opinion) who could benefit the most from robotics but might not necissarily be the most appealing on an application form. These students would include those who really haven't found a direction for their lives yet, get in trouble because they have no outlet for their talents and have not found a way to make a contribution to society, or who aren't at the top of the class.

I know that robotics has "saved", so to speak, many kids who would just be sitting in front of the tv all day and not doing anything. It has been life changing to those who have needed to learn how to be gracious and professional. I would like the robotics team to continue to affect people's lives in this way, but how do you include "everyone" in the robotics experience without losing the benifits of having a small team?

If we had an application for the team, what sort of questions would we ask to determine who would truly benefit from the experience the most, and giving the kids who are less than stellar a chance to change their lives? How would we distiguish between the kids who would truly be non-beneficial to the team and the kids who would grow into the team? If you have one, what sort of questions does your team put on an application and what does your team look for in a student?