Sustainability In FRC Teams

[Jon Stratis]

I think everyone agrees funding is a big issue... If a team can't develop multiple independent sources of funding, when one company drops out it becomes a huge deal. Even if there are plenty of mentors and students involved with the team, if you can't come up with enough funding to get the KoP and a regional, the team is finished.

And, as others stated, leadership is also a big deal. Without good leadership, a team will fall apart. The biggest issue with this has to be finding new mentors to replace old ones. For us, two years ago our electrical mentor moved to California, and thus couldn't help with the team anymore. Ever since then, I've been filling in at the position, but I'm not an electrical engineer. I know there's so much more an EE could help the kids with... but we can't find one to work with the team.

Frankly, given the thousands of students FIRST graduates every year, I find it shocking that we don't have more of them coming back to mentor. Yes, some do... but many don't. I think the biggest problem with that is a lack of involvement with FIRST in college. Being a college mentor is hard, and making the transition from hands-on working on the robot one year to standing back and helping the next is very difficult... difficult enough to discourage people. Having the time to be a valuable part of the team while in college is incredibly hard.

FIRST has been "growing backwards" for a long time now. The focus has been on getting kids involved at younger and younger ages (FTC, FLL, Jr. FLL), and developing a program that guides them from elementary school up through high school. And it's done a great job with that... However it all pretty much just stops there. We assume that we can provide the influence to get kids into engineering in college, but we don't go on to support them once they are at an engineering school. We hand them off to professional engineering societies and let them proceed without us. They get involved with those societies and stay involved with them after they graduate.

What first really needs at this point is a college program. Something that can accommodate the students schedule with a longer, less intense build season that doesn't require 40 hours per week of work. Something that lets them be hands-on with the robot, building and shaping it, while introducing more leadership and mentoring opportunities (possibly through workshops or camps designed for the other FIRST programs). Keep those kids involved with FIRST throughout college, and we'll start seeing a lot more of them coming back to help mentor teams after they graduate. And when they do, they'll bring the thousands of companies that don't already sponsor FIRST they work for with them. It's a win-win that helps with both of our biggest issues.