Team postions

[K.Porter]

My team is trying out a new sort of leadership this year. Previously, there has been limited student leadership, which led to some conflict two years ago. Now, in response to that, a well qualified student from each of the build teams has been invited into the leadership field with the mentors, attending additional meetings about management and overall running of the team.

There is no set student-president, just five student leaders (mechanical, electrical, programming, strategy, and team-spirit/advertising) who have close contact with the inner workings of the team, but still work as an equal part of their build teams. These ambassadors keep the high up decisions tied to the student's general desires, while not opening up too much opportunity for elitism or envy from the other student build-team members.

These student leaders were basically just picked by the mentors over time as showing initiative, or leadership within any build team. I was selected as the Electrical leader for my team without any real initiation, I simply started making suggestions and stepping forward, and I ended up invited to the meetings of mentors over the summer. Additionally, we haven't set regulations on who can be a "student leader" so anyone who really steps up to the FIRST challenge can end up a leader.