Limits on Team Hours

[Bob Steele]

Originally Posted by Dale

Having a cap known to all up front has an advantage in resource planning. The team won't be able to assume that a few ultra dedicated members are going to save the day by dedicating their lives and grades to the effort. If you know the cavalry isn't going to come, you teach everyone how to ride a horse and shoot a gun.

Just monitoring semester grades isn't enough. Since the build season is only six weeks, the effects of weeks of minimal sleep and sloppy homework might not be apparent until you're well into the build season. There's no mechanism at most schools to officially report grade drops over such a short period of time. It would have to be up to the teachers to feed back individual assignment results in some sort informal manner.

For our team we have a special Academics Mentor Coach... she is vital to the team as she keeps an eye on the current grade as well as any tendancies that a student is exhibiting... Is their work suffering?
Did an A student drop to an A- student or a B student...What assignments are coming?
This is a big job and before this year it was difficult to achieve...

In years past we always had a few students that would lose eligibility on the team...
This year we maintained eligibility for 100% of the team members.

This was due to this system and our team study sessions that occurred every day we had an evening meeting.

It takes diligence by both mentors/coaches and students to make sure that academics are taken care of.

I agree that having FIRST on a resume is important... however... if you don't maintain grades and keep your GPA up.... the admissions people won't even be looking at those resumes....

I think we all know that students ( or anyone for that matter) will always do things that are more interesting and stimulating to them... The trap some students fall into is that robotics is so much fun... and in many cases.... it seems more relevant....more real life....so they devote themselves to it. Unfortunately many high school classes don't seem to have the same relevance...depending on your teacher...

Nothing wrong with this... but they need to have balance...
Family, Academics and Robotics... all need that balance.

It takes a lot of work to do this... it simply can't be done by instituting a "rule" that you can't spend more than XXX hours....for some students.... 10 hours a week would be too much...
for others ... it could be more.... or less...

Everyone needs to be involved... coaches, mentors, parents AND students....
It takes a village to raise a robotics student...

Please excuse that reference to a cliched phrase... but it actually does fit...