**FIRST EMAIL**/Exciting New Dean Kamen Award - Deadline Imminent - February 26, 2010

[Monty Python]

Originally Posted by JaneYoung

This IS a valuable award. Too valuable to give the teams only 3 days to draft, fine tune, and submit. Too valuable to present this glorious opportunity to exhausted teams during ship time. Too valuable not to do but where is the opportunity for teams to give their very best effort? The timing is horrible and I could just cry for all of the students and mentors who are so tired right now with this brand new opportunity making itself known to all of us - with such a very short deadline.

This is a wonderful and valuable and long overdue award.

Jane

<rant>

I agree, and an award far too important to exclude FTC students from. Why limit a significant award given to those who embody FIRST principles (not FRC principles) from such a large component of FIRST?

And on a related tangent, same issue with the Woody Flowers Award. While I certainly don't advocate having one mentor award for FRC and FTC teams, it seems ridiculous that FIRST does not bestow some specific honor recognizing the hard work FTC mentors do to help further science and technology.

<end rant>