Dean Kamen, Manual Laborers, and You

[pfreivald]

Originally Posted by Amanda Morrison

You can be the positive reinforcement to tell these students that they can do whatever they want - and that FIRST can be a springboard - even if the career is not STEM related. (Yes, I said it.)

Ironically, the mentor/sponsor who is backing away due to this has a daughter as an alum of the team who has gone into a non-STEM field (media relations) because of her experience on the team... (The others got over it quite quickly, and have pledged their continued support to our team).

And as to the rest, do you have any idea how hard it is to change the mind of a proud farmer?

Originally Posted by Amanda Morrison

The short answer is - Dean's comment really doesn't matter.

It would be nice if that were true, but in this case it most certainly does matter. It matters very directly to a tiny rural team (we might possibly be the smallest school to participate in FIRST -- though I'm not sure where I'd go to find out if that were actually true, I'm sure it's very close to true).

We are tremendously -- tremendously -- grateful for Bausch + Lomb's sponsorship, but we also depend on the assistance of businesses in our town... And our town has literally no white collar businesses.

This won't destroy our team, certainly. Indeed, with our success at FLR, we've got big plans to expand and spread. But it didn't help, and did actually hurt -- not just some people emotionally, but our team and my students, materially and through a loss of mentor support.