Why do teams voluntarily do FIRST without adult technical mentors?

[Joe Lambie]

You know Andy; I am still amazed by the things that come out of your brain. This one has got me stumped.

For a number of years, and to a large extent still I am very much in the boat of wanting the students to do the majority of the design and manufacture work. Mentors I believe should be providing expertise and guidance (along with travel arrangements, money management and so on). From having the experiences I had in FIRST, I personally got so much more out of “doing” things then I would ever have gotten by just watching and listening. However, it was also a great opportunity to work alongside and with engineers, and learn from their years of experience. Often this was a great asset to our team, with young, creative, and crazy-minded students providing a fresh look at how things can be done along with the voice of experience in our engineering mentors letting us know when perhaps we were just a little too crazy.

Now this is not to say that teams in which students provide less engineering and manufacture work are not as inspired. In fact, some may be inspired to ask why an engineer chooses to design and manufacture a half-inch shaft over a 3/8ths shaft, while another may be inspired to learn how to manufacture it. They did not need to be in the shop or design room to be inspired, but merely see how exciting the world of engineering and science can be, and then have the drive and initiative to go out and find the answers as well.

Who knows, maybe someday Student A from Team XX, which was student run, may work in the same company as Student B from Team XXX whose team was mostly engineer run. Both these people have very different experiences in engineering, Student A may have an insight into the manufacture of parts and a sense of what can be done to simplify the creation of parts and therefore lower cost, while Student B may have an incredible sense of design and a fantastic handle on the fundamentals of machine design. By putting the two together, you have twice as much brainpower and expertise at work on a real world problem, both able to point out specific concerns from both sides of the engineering world of design and manufacture. As a result, you could get a better design, that is simpler to make, and safer to operate, while saving money. What more could any company ask for?

Ultimately every human is different, thankfully. If we were not all different I imagine we could be sitting and staring at the wheel sitting next to the fire in awe of how great the two are. Instead, we have traveled to the moon, and someday we will travel to Mars and beyond.

I propose a different view of the issue at hand. It is not so much of how the team is run, be it by students or engineers or a combination there of, but how each student learns and is inspired. Ultimately the students are the drivers behind this competition, for without them Dean and Woody would have a great idea, but not a whole lot of progress. The students need to ask questions if they are inspired by something they see, and the mentors need to be sure to answer them to the best of their ability. Remember though, it’s always fun to get your hands dirty once in awhile too.

[KenWittlief]

Originally Posted by phrontist

I have to agree with Ryan. People are always clamoring "it's not about the competition", but frankly, for a huge number of students, and certainly to the public, it is most certainly about the competition. If we don't have a competition, we don't have any vehicle with which to inspire. If we don't have a fair competition, it will quickly degrade into a sham.

...

An unfair competition is no competition at all. The organization is larger than Dean, and if it is to survive, it must, like all organizations, change.

FIRST has grown from an initial 32 teams to over a thousand, has thrived for over a decade, and you are telling us the person who founded this program, and put his life-force behind it for all these years got it wrong?

Seriously?

If FIRST was primarilly a robot building contest, then the major funding for it would evaporate overnight. Turn FIRST into battlebots, where winning is the thing, then what is the point?

I could not possibly care less which high school or which company can build the best robot in the US, or in the world. I do care about my profession: engineering. I do want to see more students take up the challenge of completing an engineering degree and helping to do what the rest of my profession does: making peoples lives better.

If a team has to win to be successful, then at the end of each year you will have 3 successful teams and 997 losers.

[phrontist]

Originally Posted by phrontist

An unfair competition is no competition at all. The organization is larger than Dean, and if it is to survive, it must, like all organizations, change.

Originally Posted by Ken

FIRST has grown from an initial 32 teams to over a thousand, has thrived for over a decade, and you are telling us the person who founded this program, and put his life-force behind it for all these years got it wrong?

Seriously?

No, I do not believe I ever said that his origional goal was wrong, and if that was the message sent, it certainly wasn't intended. What I do believe, however, is that I disagree with certain elements of the implementation of his "change the culture" master plan. These issues are fairly minor. None the less, I think people should arrive at their own conclusions, instead of following the messiah in denim unquestioningly. Don't get me wrong, I think he's brilliant, but no one is right all the time.

Originally Posted by Ken

If FIRST was primarilly a robot building contest, then the major funding for it would evaporate overnight. Turn FIRST into battlebots, where winning is the thing, then what is the point?

I'm sorry, but yes, FIRST is a robot building contest. My team is sponsored by people who want to give young people interested in engineering a chance to do some actual engineering while still in highschool. Furthermore, we try to get other students who would not otherwise be interested involved.
[/quote]

Originally Posted by Ken

I could not possibly care less which high school or which company can build the best robot in the US, or in the world. I do care about my profession: engineering. I do want to see more students take up the challenge of completing an engineering degree and helping to do what the rest of my profession does: making peoples lives better.

If a team has to win to be successful, then at the end of each year you will have 3 successful teams and 997 losers.

No, my team does not have to win to be successful. We do, however, need to compete, and do so with integrity, which for me at least means attemting to build student designs.

Competition serves an important purpose, it serves to focus our efforts.

[Andy Baker]

Originally Posted by Ryan F.

I realize there are no absolutes here, but what I have seen has appalled me. I've witnessed an engineer on a team with an obviously professionally designed robot yelling at one of his pit crew about how he was “stupid" for the way he was trying to fix something, then push him out of the way and do it himself. Witnessing things like this make me VERY thankful I am on a team with high student involvement.

Here’s the big problem. How are high schoolers supposed to compete against professionally designed and built robots? This is where the true conflict is. The teams who believe that FIRST is better when the students actually build and manage the robot get destroyed in competition. FIRST is not supposed to be a professional engineering competition. FIRST is meant to Inspire the STUDENTS. The more we allow for these professionally designed and built robots to dominate the FIRST competitions, the more it encourages student run teams to start letting the engineers design and build the robots. FIRST will start to discourage many teams from participating when they realize that the robot they spent six weeks on has no chance of success at the competition.

I don't doubt that you saw a mentor do something stupid. Surely, that was unfortuneate. For every example of a poor mentoring moment, I can think of 10 positive mentoring moments. No mentor is perfect. Don't make this one bad example outweigh the hundreds of great relationships that FIRST engineers have with students.

I definitely don't agree with your logic. In FIRST, high schoolers are supposed to partner up with professionals (engineers, skilled tradesmen, business leaders, etc.) and compete against other teams. This program is more about that partnership, and less about students being educated. This is not a science fair.

You say "FIRST is meant to Inspire the STUDENTS." You are right. However, you seem to be missing the point that these professionals are doing much inspiring. It is a two way street, in my opinion. If this was just a student robot building contest, the level of inspiration we see would not be present. Seriously... we would have no swerve drives, no shift on the fly gearboxes, no object-oriented autonomous programming, no WFA winners, no IRI, no Battlecry, no WRRF. We would not be playing in the Georgia Dome, there would be no students getting Segway riding lessons at FIRST competitions.

Originally Posted by phrontist

One of the more uncomfortable, and seemingly inevitable moments of explaining first to an outsider is the inevitable prompt, "Are all these robots student built?", to which I haven't found a good response. The honest answer would be no, but how do you justify the program in light of that?

Here is a good response: "Heck no!... these are NOT all student-built! That is not what this program is about. FIRST is about a partnership between students, engineers, teachers, and their communities. This partnership is what makes FIRST special. The fact that these professional engineers, college students and skilled tradesmen are working side by side with the students define what the 'Inspiration' is in FIRST. This is not a VICA tournament or a Science Fair. It is special. This is what is changing the educational culture in our community."

Originally Posted by phrontist

In FIRST, entirely Engineer built robots are an abomination. There is significant reason to be proud of the degree to which your robot is student designed (built is less important, I find, because real engineers may never pick up a spanner).

You are right that there is a significant reason to be proud of a student designed robot. It is great to see this. If students can design a robot, then this program is working. HOWEVER, to say that an engineer-built (and/or designed) robot is an abomination is insulting, short-sighted, and wrong, in my opinion. Students can still be inspired to SEE how something is designed and built. There have been Chairman's Award teams who have had engineers do much of the design and build of the robot. This is not a bad thing. The team celebrated their engineers, and their level of student inspiration. Your statement insults these teams.

As long as I am still involved in FIRST, I will fight to keep it to be a partnership between students and adults, working side by side to build these robots.

Andy B.

[Carol]

Originally Posted by Ryan F.

When you see the pits of these teams at regionals, It seems like the kids are standing around when the engineers do all the work.
[/u]

I think it's very easy to misunderstand what is happening when you walk past a pit and "see" incidents like the above. Let me propose a theoretical scenario. Your students have participated in the design and building of your robot all year, working along side of and learning from the mentors. Now your team is at the Championship, and something breaks on your robot in your last match. Your next match is in 1 hour. It would take 2 hours for the students to fix it and 30 minutes for the engineers to fix it. Your best student mechanic is also the driver, and is meeting with the operating team to determine strategy for your next match. Who should fix your robot?

[KenWittlief]

Originally Posted by Carol

I think it's very easy to misunderstand what is happening when you walk past a pit and "see" incidents like the above.

I would also add, on our team we joked around alot. Whenever a student made a mistake we would look them in the eyes and say "YOUR FIRED"

and they would do the same to us - it was a game to lighten the air when someone screwed up - and the joke was: none of us were getting paid anyway.

Usually when you see mentors totally dominating the students, and even (actually) yelling at them, its their first year, and they dont 'get it' yet.

[Beth Sweet]

"FIRST will start to discourage many teams from participating when they realize that the robot they spent six weeks on has no chance of success at the competition" ~Ryan F

As much as I hate to full out disagree with you and say you're wrong, you are. My kids came to competition this year with a robot that was... um, not the most competitive at the competition. The first practice match, the entire gripper fell apart. Luckily for us, a team with more engineers and resources was able to help us out and provide us with a well designed and very functional replacement. Did this discourage my kids? Well of course they wished they could be the best, who doesn't? I mean, in any given competition, there is a best, and everyone in the given lower ranks, wants to be that best team. Here's a hint, just because you don't win doesn't mean it's not still fun.

As to the topic of balance which has been thoroughly discussed, I'm going to go devil's advocate on this one. Guess what? All of these teams that say they're 100% student built, designed etc, are not. Who do you think designed everything in the kit of parts? I can pretty much guarantee you it wasn't a high school student. So yes, you have had engineer help. Really, it's not so bad, I promise.

Why would you do it without adult technical mentors? (and btw, in this post, college kids will count as adults, even though some people say that there is still a need for real adults) Well, possibly because you have none available. I know that we looked endlessly for anyone to help mentor our team. We had 1 engineering major in our mentor team last year. The rest just knew from being on their high school teams. I understand that it's not ideal, but sometimes you just can't get adult technical mentors. We've been trying to get into GM (the closest place that would have them) for almost a year now. I'm still waiting to get ahold of anyone inside of the Lansing plant.

Why would you do it? To make things happen with what you have. Sometimes it's just not available. I've had a few people tell me that since I didn't have them that I shouldn't have started a team. I think my kids still had a great time, and want to come back again next year, so I don't see the problem. The kids learned. The mentors learned. Yes, we weren't as good as the best teams, there are only so many "best team" spots available.

Overall point to those that don't want to read the rest of this post's babble: Whether or not your team has the technical mentors, as long as your kids are still inspired by the adult technical mentors of other teams, and get the picture that we're trying to portray in this program, the best that you can to is the best you can do. Do it, and be proud of your results

[KenWittlief]

Beth, I agree with your post

the question of this thread is more geared towards asking why some student run teams actually shun professional help

if you try to get engineers on your team, but you cant find one, thats one thing

but there are teams out there that have the attitude "we dont need (or want) any engineers, we can do this all by ourselves"

[phrontist]

I see absolutely no value in an entirely engineer built robot. Is that really so insulting? I mean, if the students just watch the engineer do brilliant things, they might as well read a book about great innovators. I really do not mean to be insulting, I have immense respect for every F.I.R.S.T. mentor I've ever met, but for the purposes of arguement I'm talking about a hypothetical extreme: an entirely engineer/mentor built robot, something I consider to be indicative of a terrible state of affairs. It could probably never happen in the real world, I said it merely to illustrate the worst case scenario. The closer you get to that worst case scenario, the worse off you are. The flip side of the coin isn't good either: purposely shunning any engineer involvement is contrary to the spirit of F.I.R.S.T. It's about balance, and if you are going to be off-kilter, I think it better to be off kilter on the lack-of-engineer involvement side of things. But why be off-kilter?

Originally Posted by Andy

we would have no swerve drives, no shift on the fly gearboxes, no object-oriented autonomous programming, no WFA winners, no IRI, no Battlecry, no WRRF.

Hey now! I think students could have conceived of, designed and implemented shift on the fly gearboxes, OO-Programming and swerve drives! Most of those things are childs-play (literally) for engineers.

[JVN]

Originally Posted by phrontist

I see absolutely no value in an entirely engineer built robot. Is that really so insulting? I mean, if the students just watch the engineer do brilliant things, they might as well read a book about great innovators. I really do not mean to be insulting, I have immense respect for every F.I.R.S.T. mentor I've ever met, but for the purposes of arguement I'm talking about a hypothetical extreme: an entirely engineer/mentor built robot, something I consider to be indicative of a terrible state of affairs. It could probably never happen in the real world, I said it merely to illustrate the worst case scenario. The closer you get to that worst case scenario, the worse off you are. The flip side of the coin isn't good either: purposely shunning any engineer involvement is contrary to the spirit of F.I.R.S.T. It's about balance, and if you are going to be off-kilter, I think it better to be off kilter on the lack-of-engineer involvement side of things. But why be off-kilter?

A truly sensible philosophy.
However (as is probably true for many others), I did not distill this message from your previous posts. I am glad you've clarified for all of us, where you stand.

[Greg McCoy]

Originally Posted by phrontist

I see absolutely no value in an entirely engineer built robot.

Most who disagree with you would say there is little value in an entirely student built robot, either. You might learn a few things, but it seems like a better idea to learn from experienced people who know what they're doing than to try to reinvent the wheel.

To me, shunning help from people who have experience is silly and wasteful. We live in a world where few products come from a single person. It seems to me that to be sucessful in engineering is more to be able to work with and learn from others than to be able to say "I came up with this myself!"

Even though I consider myself a hands-on person, I'm much more inspired by watching/helping an engineer build a robot than I am by an engineer handing me a kit of parts and a machine shop and saying "have at it."

[phrontist]

Originally Posted by Greg McCoy

Even though I consider myself a hands-on person, I'm much more inspired by watching/helping an engineer build a robot than I am by an engineer handing me a kit of parts and a machine shop and saying "have at it."

Again, neither is a good situation, but I think entirely student run is the lesser of two evils.

[Lisa Perez]

I think we all concur that mentors do indeed have a key role in the 'I' of FIRST. If a team does not have the resources for whatever reason, however, the students are not necessarily not being inspired. Rather, I think that such a situation would inspire the students - simply in a different manner than would be expected. When they do research on a drive train or form of appendage or approach a corporation on their own (to name a couple of examples), they are - in my opinion - inspiring themselves to persevere, to be innovative, to recognize their own talents.

Nonetheless, we must find it integral to recognize help where help is offered. When I was a sophomore on my team, we took pride in having a 100% student-built robot (a few negatives for this have been mentioned throughout the thread) - but that is definitely not to say that we did not accept aid from our mentors. Our mentors were the ones to teach us the concepts of physics during the design process. They offered us tips on what appendages might work, all while stressing the importance of simplicity and allowing us to select what we thought would work most efficiently. Our mentors taught us how to use the machine tools. In essence, they empowered us by giving us the knowledge necessary to build a robot and have a successful team. Did they touch the robot? No. But did they inspire us? Most definitely.

I had been given the opportunity to see the contrast between the different types of teams as a student who had been on two teams. I must say that I found inspiration in both types, and while the kinds of inspiration differed, the point is that the 'I' was indeed existent.

[Andy Baker]

Originally Posted by phrontist

Hey now! I think students could have conceived of, designed and implemented shift on the fly gearboxes, OO-Programming and swerve drives! Most of those things are childs-play (literally) for engineers.

Eventually, possibly, students would have developed these things in the future. Sure, we see students designing these things now, but that is only possible because of people like Dr. Joe Johnson, Chris Hibner, Mike Soukup, Steve Kyramarios, Raul Olivera, Dan Green, Jim Zontag, Mark Rizzo, Robert Triggs, Mike Betts, Doug Hogg, Greg Mills, Anthony Lapp, Ed Sparks, Mike Ciavaglia, Jeff Burch, Glenn Thoroughman, Dave Flowerday, Tom Nader, Paul Copioli, Tony Norman, Bob Mimlitch, Travis Covington, JVN, Marc Rogers, Mark Jones, James Jones, Rob Bayer, Mark Koors, Alan Anderson, Steve Butler, Bill Beatty, Gary Dillard, PJ Baker, Scott Vierstra, Andy Bradley, Jay Tenbrink, Kenny Ardizzone, Lucien Junken, Dave Lavery, Steve Shade, Stu Bloom, Ian McKenzie, and many others have designed something to show them how.

If you don't know these people, you need to. Heck, there are many more things being developed by mentors in FIRST I don't even know about. Seek them out. Ask them what they developed or helped to develop. Learn from them. This will inspire you to new heights. Then... pass it on. Mimic these developments, improve upon them, share it with others, inspire your peers and the people who look up to you. This is what makes FIRST special.

Andy B.

[Anne Shade]

One thing that hasn't been mentioned yet is the fact that even student run teams with no engineering support may very well have received the help of engineers. There are many teams that have used the resources made available here on Chiefdelphi by some of the very engineers that Andy listed in his post above. These resources have helped many teams that don't believe they need engineering help take their robots to the next level. Imagine what you could do if you had some engineers full time?

FIRST isn't about building robots. That's just the tool used to get the message across that with some effort, these high school students can have careers in engineering and that those careers are fun!!! Working alongside these engineers or even interacting with engineers at competitions and on these boards is what achieves these goals. The closer the engineers are the more accessible it makes their job seem and the more students learn about what it really means to be an engineer.

I know how it feels to be on a team where the students get to do very little for their robot and to be on a team run fully by students. There are very few people that have been on both sides of the fence. I've learned that the engineers are a very vital part of keeping this program successful and that before you judge others, you should try to step into their shoes for a little while. Try getting a few engineers to help out and see what happens...

After some more thinking.... Andy, there is one little problem with your list above. Where are the women engineers???