How does your team pick presidents/ captains?

Our team votes fairly early into the year and we select a Captain, Mechanical Lead, Electrical Lead and Software Lead. Although these people are the leaders on paper, other people step up and play leaders also. Its one of those symbolical things like in England where the King (or Queen) is the symbolical leader, but the Prime Minister gets the job done. Well our leaders are like the Kings (or Queens) and the other elder members of the team and the leaders play "Prime Minister" so to speak..

[Jonathan M.]

We vote on Head Student Team leader (or Captain) and Assistant team leader. Captain is usually a senior or anyone qualified, and watches over. Asstiant does more of the paper work then the Captain though. The candidates are nominated by other people, and no one can nominate them self. There are other leaders: Captain, Assistant Captain, Head of Mechanics, Head of Electrical, Head of Programing, Webmaster, Spirit leader, and Head of Graphics and or Animation. I'm head of Graphics and Animation (Of corse that doesn't stop me from doing Mechanics and Electrical ). No one else wanted the job, but no one else is as qualified. XP The Captain also holds the student only meetings and is usually a speaker at every other meeting.

In November or December we have a big night where new members can join and old members vote on new leaders. (New members are always welcome any time, this night is just to get a lot to gether/ vote.)

[Josh Hambright]

We vote on 2 student representatives that help with administrative stuff and to voice student concerns during administrative meetings. Other then that our captians have traditionaly been seniors and drivers...and have just stepped up into the role. Its not an official position, its just sort of an unspoken thing that everyone knows each year.

[WernerNYK]

http://users.wpi.edu/~first/dyn.cgi?node=org

We hold elections for the top positions (Directors) at the end of this years season (ie, right now). The next tier elections are held at the beginning of the new school year, and the third tier are held at the start of the season. There are a number of positions under each Mechanical and Electrical leaders which are hidden from non-team members.

All the voting is done online, with people nominating themselves for positions.

[Chris Nowak]

we have team leaders, but none of them are elected. Basically, whoever does the most work. I think that voting especially at our school is bad because we have so many members who float in and out of robotics and arent really firmly committed. Our school has a big lack of people who are firmly committed to Robotics though. We dont have a solid overall team leader either.

[Aaron Lussier]

We dont really have voting, Whoever the Captain and Co-Captain are at the time, they just choose who is best qualified and in there opinion the best replacement for themselves.

[Courtney]

My team is so small that we dont vote for positions. Its basically whoever shows up and does work. This year there were really only two students that showed up on a regular basis. Probably the max number of students we ever had at a build meeting was about 4 or 5. So this year the two seniors were Captain and Co-Captain (me), but those were really only titles. Our team doesnt really follow strict rules or anything like that. I think that if we had a larger team we would have had to vote, but with so few people it wasnt necessary.

[Brant Bowen]

All the decisions for team captain are made by our mentors. This year they tried to have an administrative council type thing where there was a captain and five people under him, but that didn't really last too long. We don't have any permanant jobs that we do, but there are people that will step up and take lead roles in the team and subteams. Basically all you have to do on our team is step up and work hard and you become a "leader." The only basic differences between captain and other people on the team is that he has to do a lot of PR type of talking stuff for the team and he drives the robot.

[Kyle]

Our whole team voted on the team captian. one vote per student and adult.

We've never exactly had elections. Our coach (the adult one, not the one for field team) just decides. This year she asked us to give her input if we had any and she decided. THe people she picked were the ones who were there most of the time, so I think that was how she did it. THey basically emerged as leaders before she even 'appointed' them. Except whenever someone referred to our captain as "captain" he'd be like.."what?! our team doesn't have a captain!"

[Marygrace]

I realized that i didn't say how our team did it. For awhile people just took over but now that our team is gettin' bigger there are to many people trying to take over so we voted for the 2004 season. I think it was the first time the person put in charge was chosen fairly.

[Caleb Fulton]

In our rookie year, our leaders were appointed by the teacher. Those who could not/would not accept and effectively carry out those roles just kind of disappeared...

[Arrowsmith]

we've never chosen team captains, because it's just now that the members of the original team 382 are graduating, but i suppose the people who've been on the team the longest will be captains.

[Pin Man]

After the season we still have team meetings and get togethers... What happens is in one of our meetings (usually the one right after nationals) the team nominates... Then two weeks later the nominees bring their speeches... We listen to them and then vote...

[Gadget470]

I can only assume it was the same in years previous..

After the season, 470's members all fill out a 'wrap-up' sheet. A personal definition of the teams strong points, weak points, things we should do again, shouldn't do, etc. At the end of this was a "Vote For a Student Leader" question.

I don't have it in front of me, but the general consensus is:

Who do you feel would make a good student leader for next year and why? (Keep in mind, Seniors this year ___, ___, ___, and ___ can not be selected as they will either not be with the team or will be mentors).

We each wrote out our opinions and reasons, then a few days later a "mentor only" meeting (to remove personal bias of team members) was held to discuss those whom had been nominated. The mentors chose from the nominees a final selection, and that person will become 470's new student leader.