Mentors Input

[Billfred]

Who builds robots/where?
2815 (and, this year, 1398) built their robots in USC's College of Engineering and Computing machine shop. Mentors handled the lion's share of the machining (for both training and liability purposes), then students handled most of the assembly. (Notable exceptions included building the first gearbox assembly as a reference and the final-weekend push where all of our kids were already working on things. Even my girlfriend the photographer/journalism major got in on the act then.)

Do you have dedicated space/machine shop?
We share our space in the student projects room during the season with other USC competition teams (solar boat, Formula SAE, etc.). The machine shop is used by many projects within the college.

Do you rely on corp. sponsors to build?
We receive a great deal of funding from Richland One, state agencies, and the University.

Who manages the team/students?
For the past two seasons we've been lucky to have Stephen Kowski (once of 312, then 1369, then a stint on 1902) as a graduate student and lead (tor)mentor. Donn Griffith (once of 281, then 343, then FIRST HQ) handles some of the administrative things as well on the USC end. Richland One teachers handle the relevant school issues, such as field trip paperwork.

How involved is your school?
Not as much as with other teams I've been involved with, mostly due to our setup as a district-wide team; any of Richland One's eight schools (other than W.J. Keenan High, which has had 1398 for seven years) can join us. We still value involvement of our teachers, though!

How involved are your students parents?
It varies; some work with us as full-on mentors, others come just to watch, others I wouldn't know if I saw them on the street.

What is your teams operating budget?
I don't have the figures on this one, so I'm going to pass.

How do you get compensated, besides the obvious joy of watching your students grow?
The team covers our lodging and mileage; that's fine by me.

What is your typical build season schedule?
Our rookie year, we met five nights a week (and the occasional Saturday). This year we only met three nights a week and Saturdays until the last couple of weeks where we hit panic mode. (We still weren't quite finished.)