National Engineering Inspiration Award

[AmyPrib]

Originally Posted by MasonMM

Only one is given out at the championship event. typically it is a team in the race for national chairman's award. I can imagine its because the judges see more of these teams because of the interviews and have a better idea of what that teams does, and because the awards meet similar criteria. but these are only assumptions as the awards selection process is a secret to me.

I would not necessarily say teams in the running for chairmans are usually the EI winner (but I didn't look at past years stats). Or I should say - it's not BECAUSE they are in the running for CA. The judges for Chairmans are (or are at regionals) different than judges for all the other awards. So, if a team in the running for chairmans wins the EI, it's because they proved to the rest of the judges that talked to them in their pits that they deserve to win it based on their teams' activities.

Theoretically, only the chairmans award judges read the CA entries, so they are the only ones armed with all the extra information up front. The other judges should be gathering information directly from the teams during the event and should not have any predisposed opinion of teams, including CA candidates. Once the judges deliberate and make their decisions, I believe they'd make sure EI and CA aren't the same team.

But, due to some of the similarity and overlap of judging criteria for both, it's likely that a CA candidate is also found to be a candidate for EI. But I don't believe the judges should be using the CA entries to make that determination.