What is the biggest problem faced by FIRST teams?

[Wayne C.]

The title asks the question-

what do YOU think is the answer?


WC

[JohnBoucher]

Money. Never enough.

The perception is that this is a school program and the schools should be paying for it. We do have terrific sponsors, but it does not cover the costs.

[Jack Jones]

Global Warming

[zakk]

Originally Posted by JohnBoucher

Money. Never enough.

The perception is that this is a school program and the schools should be paying for it. We do have terrific sponsors, but it does not cover the costs.

ill second that, just the entry cost for the competitions is outragous, if we could either find a way for that to go down or the amount of money that sponsors are giving to go up, we would be set.

[falconmaster]

No matter how much money you have.... you never have enough.... human nature.

[Cooley744]

yah money...or space.

[basicxman]

i agree with money...we have an excellent sponsor (www.netmedia.com) and though we were ok but then unexpected shipping fees, tournament costs, etc....

[Billfred]

Money is a big problem, but I'm going to say lack of quality mentors. It's hard to get them (harder than getting money, in some cases), it's hard to keep them, and they're usually critical to a team's success.

[N7UJJ]

Apathy.

Do you know that only about 1% of 18-24 year olds get a degree in science, math or engineering? Thus 99% of the U.S. population rely on the 1% for maintaining our technological and scientific benefits.

In a like manner, principals, school boards, student bodies are not really familiar with the excitement and benefits of a FIRST program. They see other priorities like drop out rates, security, graduation rates, and fulfilling federal and state requirements.

Our job is to expose them to the issues and encourage them to support extracurricular academic activities (like FIRST). The money issues are just a symptom of the public apathy towards science, engineering and mathematics.

[AndyB]

Turnover.

This is the first year that I think our team has really felt it, but we only have 6 or 7 returning members with about 30-40 incoming freshmen and first year sophomores.

It must be so hard as a mentor who has worked with a team for a number of years, to get to know students really well, and develop relationships and start to depend on certain students to benefit the team, and the all of the sudden, they are gone and you start all over again.

[LightWaves1636]

I would have to say keeping the program runnning in general. It's hard to start the program at your school or whatever but I think it's harder to maintain and keep the program running because of sponsors/funding and school adminstration or whatever fighting against or for it. I say sponsors because they're putting a lot of money in and sometimes they expect results out of the team because I know some sponsors that don't feel right about funding a team that would just fail. School administration because they expect results as well. I know some teams that have to win some kind of award next season in order to have that kind of proof saying that the team is not in operation to fail but to succeed and bring back something as proof. Unfortunately for my team, two trophies(Colorado Regional and General Motors Industrial Design) didn't outweigh other reasons.

[Zyik]

Money, Students, and Mentors.

Good sponsors can help the first, the school's never paid anything for us really so we rely heavily on fund raising.

My freshman year we had a team of 18 people. The next year we had about 10. We're trying alot more recruitment now so we don't have a drop like that again.

Mentors are almost always in short supply. The local college gives us some money as a sponsor, but even though we try to get college students to come down and join/help/have fun with us they never seem to have the time. Even the ones who already were in FIRST. We also have some mentors who really needed to learn how to step back and let us do the work. They wanted to do it themselves. We also had a massive falling out with our mentors, there was a fight between two and they left the team. Thus, no more faculty member or electrical engineering mentor, as well as a couple of the mechanical mentors leaving. We almost didn't come back from that.

[technoL]

Originally Posted by AndyB

Turnover.

I agree. Money will always be an issue, but it is of no use if there aren't any students to be inspired. Every team will face a cycle where there will be a lot of graduating seniors one year, and then lots of freshmen/new members the next, or even very little new members the next year. It'll probably take a while for a team to learn their balance of members to ensure that knowledge is passed down each year. Often, many seniors go off to college with 4 years of experience without transferring their skills to someone younger, thus leaving behind an unexperienced team. In reality, many veteran teams seem to start over as "rookies" after a few years. It surely feels that way this year.

[Herodotus]

Money is our biggest problem. Though it is also due in large part a problem because of our second problem, turnover. We have about six very experienced members and two or three one year members, along with some incoming kids from all grade levels so it is tough to really get out there and present to our sponsors and potential sponsors.

[rogerlsmith]

I can't even get to where money is a problem. I'm trying to persuade our educators and administrators that this is a good thing, but they don't want to deal with anything else (so it seems). The good teachers that would likely be great help are already committed to other things like Science Olympiad or Odyssey of the Mind.

I fear we would not have adequate resources if we try to start a team without our school (like a place to work, tools, computers, etc.)

Roger