Colleges and FIRST - a little help

[ajlapp]

Michigan tech is the primary sponsor of team 857. The team is run by college students who are part of an Enterprise System. This is basically a really slick way for us to get sponsorship and run the team without extra college red tape. We more or less run the team like a company.
We are organized like a corporation and lobby sponsorship by promising research in return for money to run the FIRST Team.
The real important part for college students involved is that they get a senior design credit. This basically replaces an entire year or research with FIRST. It's quite an advantage over some other programs that you can take.
We have a machine shop that we share with other programs on campus.......but we can always get in when we need to. We have CNC capability and a water jet on campus, and if FIRST ever requires mining, we're pretty much set.
The team is also about 90% former high school FIRSTers. Our experience level is always high because everyone more or less knows what's coming down the pipe. The whole system seems to be coming together. So far this first year under the new system has gone fairly well. The organization has worked well, although we do get much more interest from the college students than from the local high schools.
The Upper Peninsula is like Mars compared to most of the country and it presents it's own unique problems. Hope this info helps. We love to answer questions too, so feel free to e-mail.

Anthony Lapp
Lead Engineer
team 221 --------> now 857