Collegiate FIRST competition

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by CJmango

Well Chris, let me take a minute to enlighten you! Have a look at the vision and mission of FIRST found here: http://usfirst.org/aboutus/content.aspx?id=34.

Right off the bat, Dean has always been clear:
"To transform our culture by creating a world where science and technology are celebrated and where young people dream of becoming science and technology leaders." - Dean Kamen, Founder

The principle behind collegiate level first is to, in Dean's words, create the NCAA of FIRST.

The goal is to not only challenge college students at a greater level beyond what they see in typical curriculum, but to also provide inspiration to younger FIRST students in the other programs. Students play sports with dreams of becoming professional athletes. In FIRST there is much less visibility for our professionals, with the Collegiate Challenge we are building another venue through which to have a window into that world.

As it stands, a large majority of FIRST students do head off to college; this is terrific, but it takes more than just a college education to be a leader and innovator in today's world. That's where the values pervasive to FIRST provide the complimentary education necessary to excel.

I hope that helps provide a bit more insight! We will have an official release in the near future and it should paint a more broad picture of where we are headed.

I should also mention that the Collegiate level of FIRST will continue to embrace the values of community and Gracious Professionalism, and hopefully take things to an entirely new level!

Mr. Jones,

I won't pretend to know more about the goals of FIRST but, as a college senior I feel I must chime in on this topic.

Collegiate level FIRST would be competing with such things as FSAE and other engineering challenges. Based on my limited experience I have noticed that the passion for FRC diminishes greatly after high school for many students. (This is based on my observations at Kettering University and is i no way conclusive) In addition to competing for student time it would also compete for funding, I know for a fact that Formula Zero (building a fuel cell powered race car) is not cheap and has required substantial outside support and thousands of man hours to get to the point where we have an electrical system that can be used. I imagine FIRST Collegiate would be the same way. Given the state of the economy would it be proper to start a new program to take away from the existing programs that do a phenomenal job of furthering our knowledge?

From another perspective, as an organization FIRST has a finite amount of man power. I know that everyone involved in the FIRST program, from the college mentors up to to the President of FIRST has a finite amount of time they can give. Personally I would like to see that man power directed at a new generation of students rather than have more expended on me.

So, really I just question whether it is the best use of FIRST's resources or if the goals might be furthered by partnering with an existing group or admitting that by college most students have already decided what they are passionate about.

I also understand the desire to allow college students to inspire high schoolers, as a college mentor myself I personally feel great pleasure when I see students who otherwise would not have gone to college inspired to go to school. However, I am going to be completely blunt here, the vast majority of college students are not going to be good mentors yet. They are going to be, for want of a better description, college students. Now, there are exceptions, I've had the pleasure of meeting and working with some phenomenal college mentors and would like to think that I am at least a mediocre mentor (Picone, hush!) but by and large college students sometimes set some very bad examples.

Of course, I could be way off base here, the only real way to find out would be to try it and see how it works out I suppose.

-Andrew Schreiber