Later today im planning on talking to SMC (Santa Monica College) its junior college out here near Los Angeles and im attempting to get the Relevant Clubs on campus (Engineering, Computer Clubs ) to organize and provide direct help to the local high school teams and using the talents and interest in robotics of the college students to provide help to any teams that need it
Has anyone done this before? making a group or club or getting people from pre - existing clubs to help out local teams or your own team?
The Indiana Academy had a ‘robotics club’ that had heard of FIRST but wasn’t interested. They dissolved shortly before the starting of our team.
I know that Rose-Hulman has a robotics club that does projects like arial robotics and such. Some students are planning on hopefully pointing them in the direction of FIRST and combining efforts.
A lot of times there are people with similar interests, but not enough ‘umph’ to get things going.
a sad truth, but point taken…
Look into organizations such as SHPE, SWE, IEEE, and all the other major groups on campus. I was informed by the president of SHPE on my campus that these organizations are very “community outreach” oriented, and they should be willing to help. On the flip side, see if there are any events at your campus that the high schoolers can help out with. For example, one of the high school teams will be bringing a robot (or two?) over to Science Day to show elementary school students what can be done. In this manner, both groups are able to gain something from this pairing.
indieFan
P.S.- As I keep saying, get to know your professors. They will be informed of ways the college is already helping local schools or ways in which it can be accomplished that may not be known to students.
RIT has somewhat of a similiar but reverse position. There is an inter-disciplinary robotics club on campus. However, this club came into existence after the FIRST club did. The President of the inter-disciplinary robotics club also ended up joining the team last year. So far, we only do a bit of recruiting out of the inter-disciplinary robotics club. We haven’t tried to merge the regular team with the inter-disciplinary robotics club yet (and I don’t think we will).
Matt
At Cornell, the way things now work is that there is a “Cornell FIRST Robotics Club.” The point of the club is to promote FIRST be sponsoring and mentoring the local team (639), and starting new FIRST and FLL teams in the area. Our funding comes directly from Cornell, and presently about 95% of it is used to sponser 639. This year starting a lego league team is in the works. I was pushing for a second FIRST team, but that’s not likely to happen this year. This is the last year we are guaranteed funding so I hope that our team can pick up corporate sponsors, otherwise it might be the last year 
Patrick