FIRST and University Involvement

[Vince]

ASME Guide on FIRST & Universities
I am updating the paper “FIRST and Universities” and would like to feature some universities that are making an impact with FIRST.

The paper will be written for university educators to introduce them to FIRST and garner their support.

I would appreciate any leads on schools that could be featured in the paper because of their successful integration of FIRST in the university environment. If you could provide the contact information of the university faculty member from such a team, it would be most appreciated.

In addition to hearing about the university’s success with FIRST on all levels (eng. outreach, recruiting, scholarships, regional host, summer camps, …) I have an additional interest (i.e. a 2nd paper in the works) in learning how participating universities integrate FIRST into their curriculum. Any additional leads on the topic of students getting college credit for their FIRST work are welcome as well.

Thanks for any help you can provide - Vince

[TedP]

Originally Posted by Vince

I would appreciate any leads on schools that could be featured in the paper because of their successful integration of FIRST in the university environment. If you could provide the contact information of the university faculty member from such a team, it would be most appreciated.

Vince, I believe you know Professor Staab (staab.1@osu.edu) at The Ohio State University, so perhaps you're familiar with our OSU FIRST team, which has been in existence since 1996. We have a web page with a little information on the effort at:

http://www.osufirst.org/

We actually have three FRC teams, and we expect to take on a fourth FRC team next year. Additionally, we have a number of Lego League teams.

We've won a number of regional awards on each of the different teams over the last few years. This year, one of our teams (1014) won the Engineering Inspiration award at the Pittsburgh regional. This was partly because we incorporated a strong controls curriculum into our program this year that involved giving the students basic knowledge of PI(I)D control and the applied math behind it and partly because so many of our students expressed a desire to continue into engineering.

Professor Staab can give more details.

Originally Posted by Vince

In addition to hearing about the university’s success with FIRST on all levels (eng. outreach, recruiting, scholarships, regional host, summer camps, …) I have an additional interest (i.e. a 2nd paper in the works) in learning how participating universities integrate FIRST into their curriculum. Any additional leads on the topic of students getting college credit for their FIRST work are welcome as well.

We've always had a FIRST course available to help FIRST mentors receive credit for their work. We additionally hold fall seminars for all of the central Ohio teams to come and help bring every member of the team up to speed on particular topics of their choice.

However, we're trying to formalize things a bit more. Now we're adding a course in the fall that meets regularly to discuss FIRST planning and adding a little more continuity between the teams. We'll then be requiring more for our winter FIRST course as well.

Again, Professor Staab can give plenty of info on this. The only other thing I might add is that we're trying to use FIRST as a testbed for some of our other labs here at OSU. For example, the foundations of the controls work we did this year on team 1014 came out of a graduate level robotics class a few of the mentors took. We used some principles, curricula, and overall lesson plan and problem approach to help us develop controllers for the 1014 robot, which not only included drive train speed control but position control of a two-jointed articulated arm 8 feet long that could not only pick up balls but place hooks onto the bar to lift the robot up. There are videos of this arm available on the FIRST website given above.

Let me (pavlic.3@osu.edu) or Professor Staab (staab.1@osu.edu) know if you need any other information. I'll send him a note about your message as well.

[Vince]

Thanks Ted - This is exactly the type of detail that is needed. The OSU story is certainly a great case study to share with others and have them emulate. Again, I appreciate the update and detailed information.

[JVN]

Vince,
You might consider looking at Clarkson University.

The school supports a FIRST team (229) through it's award winning SPEED (student projects for engineering experience and design) program, which is designed to emphasize cooperative, hands-on, project based, group learning.

Clarkson also allows students to participate on the FIRST team for course credit, in a variety of different forms.

Clarkson supports the FIRST program in general, by giving out a whole pile of FIRST scholarships to HS FIRST participants.

Here is out faculty roster:
http://www.team229.org/about/roster/
You should consider contacting either Fred Stone (the director of SPEED) or Dr. James Carroll (our faculty advisor, CU EE prof.).

If they are both busy, I would be more than willing to help you out.
Please mention I referred you to them.

Other Useful Links:
http://www.clarkson.edu
http://www.team229.org
http://www.clarkson.edu/speed/


Good Luck,
JVN

[Andrew]

UALR and Hendrix College sponsor/engineer Team 356.

We've published our exploits at ASEE recently.

Links to papers:

http://theduchy.ualr.edu/papers/0109.pdf

http://theduchy.ualr.edu/papers/1236.pdf

http://theduchy.ualr.edu/papers/1604.pdf

I can provide more details if desired (abwright@ualr.edu).

[sburro]

The contact person at UML is Robert_Giles@uml.edu.
He will be able to answer any and all questions about 663 and U-mass Lowell for you.

[Eugenia Gabrielov]

461 is primarily sponsored by Purdue University Engineering, and the majority of our advisors (90% maybe) our college students. I think this makes for a terrific mix because I see the advisors as not just mentors but friends and relate to them on a very very personal level and it's awesome. Please feel free to visit our website www.boilerinvasion.org and check around because I can't think of any specific sponsors.

[Chris Fultz]

IUPUI (Indiana & Purdue at Indianapolis) is an extension campus in Indy and has a robotics group. IUPUI sponsors a remote kickoff (video link) for Indy area teams. Contact Michael Long (1024) or David Kelly and they should be able to get more details of IUPUIs involvement.

[Vince]

Thanks for the great leads on this - I've contacted / researched all but the last 2 leads presented.

If you have email adresses / phone numbers for contacts that would be most helpful ( or if you could relay my email address or phone number to them vw@alum.mit.edu 860-444-8678 ). I have found that it is important to speak directly with the unversity contacts for this project as the web pages do not contain the level of detail needed for the paper.

Again, thanks to all for the help & I welcome additional leads as well - Vince

[cazbar171]

If you are still interested the University of Wisconsin Platteville has sponsored team 171 for many years. The person to contact is Clyde Holverson. His email is holversc@uwplatt.edu.

[Christina]

Hey. Well, RIT has become pretty involved with FIRST. We've supported Edison Tech (team 73) since '94 (I think...but I'm not positive). While we haven't integrated FIRST into our college curriculum, FIRST is a student club on campus. We hold meetings every week. We have recently become involved with team 1405 (as I'm sure Joe Ross could tell you) and next year we are hosting the brand spanking new Finger Lakes Regional. Our club advisor is Bill Scarbrough and his email address is wtseme@rit.edu and another involved person is our department head Dr. Ed Hensel (who mentors another team as well), his email address is echeme@rit.edu. They should be able to answer most of your questions. If for any reason they can't or don't get back to you, I can answer questions too. My email address is cla2115@rit.edu. Hope this helps.

[patrickrd]

Cornell is also involved with FIRST, but it has nothing to do with the curriculum. FIRST at Cornell is centered around what has evolved over 4 years to be a student club, receiving funding from the university each year. The Cornell FIRST Robotics club then takes that money, and uses it to help promote FIRST in the community. Four years ago, we started our first high school team. Last year, we began a lego team. Next year, we plan to get multiple lego league teams going. We are also planning to start a new high school team in the area each of the next two years. The purpose of the Cornell FIRST Robotics Club is no longer to sponsor and mentor a single team, but rather to promote FIRST throughout the surrounding communities, help them get teams started, and help them become self-sustaining.

We decided this was the best approach for our organization, given the time and resources that busy college students have. During the build season, we do not have time to mentor high school students daily, but rather once or twice per week. Given that engineers can be found in the community that can help out daily, we find that college students do not make the an ideal mentor. Further, college students have less knowledge and technical experience than engineering mentors. Although having college students as mentors can certainly be better than nothing, we have found that our time and energy can better help FIRST (and correspondingly, reach out to more students) by spreading FIRST around the community, using our University as a resource for achieving this goal.

[Andrew Schuetze]

Those of you out there with insight and information on vehicles to connect universities/colleges/ jr. colleges to FIRST teams keep on posting. I am the lead sponsor for our team of 4 years and have struggled to find the means to develop such a partnership. It is not for the lack of trying or interested faculty.

Post away with your unique spin on how to make these partnerships work

APS

[Eugenia Gabrielov]

"Those of you out there with insight and information on vehicles to connect universities/colleges/ jr. colleges to FIRST teams keep on posting. I am the lead sponsor for our team of 4 years and have struggled to find the means to develop such a partnership. It is not for the lack of trying or interested faculty. "

I think one of the key concepts to make such a relationship work is to take advantage of resources and interactions at every level. For example, throughout the year high school students are given opportunities to tour Purdue (other teams show interest, so we kind of tag along). It is not forced on us like it might be on the average everyday pedestrian, so we enjoy the concept of having the university nearby. Also, college advisors help highschool students make decisions about colleges and school and life in general.
Another example is that it helps with regionals. For example, we are hosting a regional here at Purdue next year, but it would not be possible without that partnership and the effort that is being made towards it by the engineering office. Making a relationship with a university work is based on compromise: you have to give back and show them what they've turned the program into and that it is thriving and students enjoy it. Everything else is just icing on the cake.

[Vince]

Updated FIRST & Universities Paper

The completed "brochure" that was written from the input provided by this forum is now posted in the White Papers forum (technical section). Woodie distributed this handout to over 2,000 engineering educators as the Plenary Speaker for the American Society for Engineering Education at their annual meeting on June 21, 2004.

Many thanks to those who helped with assembling this document. FIRST and ASME have been provided with the document as well to post on thier sites.

Eventually we will crack the university nut with regards to FIRST.

Cheers - Vince