I need a little help. Can anyone provide what the topic is for the Chairmans Award essay? How is it any different from the 7 previous questions that we had to answer?
The theme is why your team is the perfect role model for rookie teams. Basically, all you really need to do is provide reasons as to that topic. Look in the white papers for some sample Chairman’s Award essays.
I didn’t realize that was the theme. I thought it was something else altogether. Just out of curiousity, where was that information found? That way I can know for future reference.
In order to write your chairman’s award essay, focus on the questions highlighted in the manual in the awards section, portions 9.2, pages 3 to 5 as designated in the index or 6 through 8 in adobe. Basically, you are explaining why exactly your team is a role model for others to follow. The following topics should be clearly documented in your entry:
- What is the impact that FIRST has had on the learning experience of the students, school curriculum, engineers, and/or community involved with your team?
- How has your team explained/demonstrated why/how it should be a role model for other FIRST teams to emulate?
- How well has your team communicated its excitement and impact within the entire school, community, and beyond (state/nation) through participation in FIRST?
- Has your team developed and maintained an innovative way to spread the FIRST message?
- How strong of a year-round team partnership (includes students, advisors, mentors, sponsors, community, school, etc) effort does your team demonstrate?
- How does your team exemplify the true meaning of FIRST?
Make sure that you explain each of these areas in detail. It may be a nice idea to include a uniting “theme” of some sort derived from the connections made through all these topics and how strongly they represent your team, but that is for your team to figure out during the process of writing your entry. Hope this helps! Massive luck!
Thanks! That’s what I thought I had read. 
Yay for Chairman’s.
And remember this year, there is a 10,000 character limit in the essay (including spaces!)
Mostly for Eugenia,
I created a Excel template that has all the questions for the chairman’s award as well as a built-in counter to count the number of characters. It is located HERE for you to use with your team to draft your responses.
Remember that the offical entry must be done via www.firstawards.org web site.
I am still confused! We answered those same questions in the Executive Summary. Is the essay just those answers fused together? It just seems repetitive
since the exec summary is limited to 500 characters you are limited on what you can say. the essay is a way for you to go into more detail and also add on to what you said in the summary. The exec summary is used by the judges to get a good idea of what they are going to be seeing in the essay. The essay is those answers fused together but with more or less detail in some areas that your team would like to have.
Kyle is definitely correct in his explanation. The executive summary is meant to do exactly as its name suggests, serve as a summary of your Chairman’s Award and thus a summary of your team’s efforts and endeavors. Your executive summary will provide the judges with a quickly accessible format of the information in your CA entry, though in more general terms. You need to make sure that your Chairman’s Award entry further builds upon your executive summary, taking the information you have there and expanding, broadening, and supplementing it with more details and new information not incorporated into the executive summary. Good luck!
The Executive Summary has seven areas for you to complete, with a limit of 500 characters for each of your answers, not total.
• Briefly describe the impact of the FIRST program on team participants (500 characters allowed)
• Examples of role model characteristics for other teams to emulate (500 characters allowed)
• Describe the impact of the FIRST program on your team and community (500 characters allowed)
• Team’s innovative methods to spread the FIRST message (500 characters allowed)
• Describe the strength of your partnership (500 characters allowed)
• Team’s communication methods and results (500 characters allowed)
• Other matters of interest to the FIRST judges, if any (500 characters allowed)
500 words is not a lot. I’d say maybe 2 snack-sized paragraphs? Nothing too extreme.
I like to think of the essay as a way to highlight the immensely unique methods your team uses and its specific impacts, quotes, etc. However, the summary is more general information that the judges could probably get by asking any one preson on your team to summarize while in the pits or something. Simple, concise answers are the focus of this process.
Note it is 500 CHARACTERS for each summary and 10,000 CHARACTERS for the essay. Which includes spaces. As a guide, this whole post is 225 characters long. (I find the character count by using the properties field in MSWORD).
In regards to all the concern with the word limit per each section, a valuable thing to note would be that the firstawards submission site actually provides you with the ability to take a character count as you beginning adding your test to the online submission (see link after each entry box titled check character count). This will definitely aid in the process of making sure your keeping in line with the 500 character limit.
I keep trying to make everyone’s life EASY. DON’T count by hand…
Just get this template HERE and start typing…
It will calculate the character count as you type. Then e-mail it to other teammates to get CONSENSUS.
Lastly, just “cut & paste” into the online C.A. submission spaces on www.firstawards.org
Does the essay include pictures with text? If yes, how many?
Thanks in advance.
You upload your pictures separately from the essay. Just follow the instructions at www.firstawards.org
I’ve seen previous essays from other teams and there were pictures on it,have it changed this year?
by the way i can’t upload anything at the site even being logged in, i am able to upload only in the deadline?
thanks again
last year we submitted Chairman’s Award applications as Word documents. They had photos embedded within the document. They could be made to look very fancy by using backgrounds, different fonts, etc.
This year the process is different. You go online to enter your text submission into a text box. You are allowed to upload 4 photos or charts or graphic files totaling no more than 1MB of space.
All images must be of jpeg file type. Mac users should add a ‘.jpg’ extension to their files, if they will not upload.
Images may be resized to either 800 pixels wide or 800 pixels tall, keeping its aspect-ratio.
Fitting in that 10,000 character limit is TOUGH. I’m hacking down my 6000 word outline/1st rough draft. Cutting down the Chairman’s application feels like drilling holes in an overweight robot.