Success rate of college-founded teams?

[JonA]

Very, very short story...sorry
Team 1064 of South Milwaukee High School was founded by Lauren Halatek of 111 and Kevin Kolodziej of 71 who both started at Milwaukee School of Engineering two years ago. with the intention to create the Milwaukee FIRST Support Organization (MFSO), but there were no teams in the Milwaukee area in 2002.

Note that this team was not a MSOE team and received almost no support from the college. We, the college students, are moving on to WisconsinFirst related stuff...this and the HS is getting a new building and lots of budget cuts has led to Team 1064 being on hiatus for at least this season.

The Numbers
Were we a success: Absolutely, we all learned a great deal, got hands-on experience and inspired a number of HS students...even enough for a small group of now college freshman to start their own team at another High School. We were fairly successful on the field until certain decisions were made.
Lifespan: ~2 years
Retention: Started with about 20 HS kids...after 2 years...5. Maybe this isn't what you meant by retention rate.

Other WI College based Teams:
-171 University of Wisconsin Platteville
-93 Fox Valley Technical College(kind of)

[Matt Leese]

Team 73 originally began with RIT involvement in 1996. The team has competed in 1996, 1997, 1998, 2001, 2003, and 2004. That may give you an overall idea of the success rate of college teams. However, we expect the current team to be around for quite awhile.

Matt

[Beth Sweet]

I know I know, resurrecting an old thread, but at least I searched!

Our team is a first year team out of Michigan State University. First off, I started the team with the help of a sophomore named Phil. This year was my freshman year and wow, quite the effort it was. Keeping up with classes, plus juggling this group and others made my life very interesting. This team is in its first year, however I forsee it going on. The question in my mind is how long the university will stay involved. At a university with 50,000 people, it is very hard to get much attention. I am going into journalism so I've managed to access the media outlets at the school, however we still have no funding from them. It's quite an adventure, is the best way I know how to describe it. Quite an adventure...

[mathking]

As the faculty advisor for 1014, I have found Ohio State's support of FIRST to be excellent. I think it is harder for colleges to support teams because there generally is not a lot of funding available. This is a disadvantage compared to a corporate sponsored team. But our mentors have established good relationships with the high school students. This has served our team well. Our Engineering Inspiration Award in 2004 was directly attributable to quality of the mentoring OSU provides our team.

As I see it, one of the strengths a college can draw upon is new blood. The make-up of the squad of mentors changes from year to year as new students come into the OSUFIRST program and older students graduate. This means we can generally draw upon a group which has a mix of experience and skills.

Colleges can also provide a good number of mentors. OSU sponsors three teams. I am not sure how many mentors are on the other two teams (677 and 1317) but we have had about a dozen for the past three years. This helps me, because I try to get as many kids involved in FIRST as possible. More mentors makes this easier.

So I don't know about other universities, but OSU has helpd to start four teams (and still mentors three) which are still running and have a combined total of 19 years of FIRST experience.

[jzampier]

Following up on Leese's post... getting some money from the college
really wasn't very hard. Getting enough for a team to travel is just about impossible... but then again RIT just put up a lot of funny $ (ie donations in kind) for a regional.

I find programs that bring RIT more fame in the college community have greater support. IE: Darpa Grand Challenge, Formula One, Baja.
Try getting machine shop time at RIT... Formula pretty much owns the place.

Now in support of RIT... when proper backing exists (Read major corporations
and a lot of $) they are all about going ahead full tilt. Which is basically how the
regional happened. (Thanks Xerox, B&L, D&C, Kodak, Gleason, we love you!)

[Yan Wang]

639 was founded in 2000 by Patrick Dingle, then a Cornell freshmen who had been on 190. The team has been getting stronger ever since.

History of our team can be found at www.team639.org