Is there really inspiration in teams?

[Kims Robot]

Originally Posted by Philip W.

What is the degree of inspiration on your team? What sort of post-secondary schools are your alumni attending? Are you a student-built or engineer-built team? Are you a student-managed or mentor-managed team (i.e. who is the leadership)?...
To investigate quality in addition to quantity, I ask you the universities your alumni attend.
Another measure of quality I would like to inquire on is devotion, whether you are a student/mentor-managed team... try to mention how devoted your students are... The amount you work during the off-season says a lot about devotion as well.

I seem to be getting addicted to these long philosophical threads (eep its the end of lunch too...) but I'll keep this one short. I would LOVE to see a study done across all FIRST teams on these types of questions. But for now, here is my answers from 1511:

Degree of Inspiration: rougly 75%?? hmm hard to measure
Student/Engineer Built: 50%student/50%engineer
Management: Mentor right now: we were rookies! (hopefully transitioning to 30%mentor/70% student in this coming year)

I would say our success rate is 100%, though... here are our four alumni:
1. Computer Science (MCC/RIT) *returning as a mentor
2. Mechanical Engineering (Alfred U)
3. Business/Management (RIT) *returning as a mentor
4. Mechanical Engineering (U of Illinois)
Why did I include business? well because thats the way teams run, they dont run without the leadership and management. If you look at the real engineering/science world, its not just engineers... there are business people making sure there is money for the technology. I guess most professional careers can really be related in, and any student who pursues additional education can be a success... but thats another thread.

Devotion: this is easy, our team is VERY devoted. We meet more than twice a week over the summer, and while some students lack the initial initiative, we still had 15-20 people at our summer carwash, and get at least 10 people at each of our summer meetings... During the year its crazy, so many of them live FIRST We have mentors helping year round, and just had our mentor kickoff with 10 new mentors this week.