Here’s an email I sent out to all FRC teams in Eastern PA and DE and I copied HQ as well. It includes the way in which Team 1712 is approaching the assignment. I dare you, take a precious few moments away from robot zaniness NOW and make a HUGE difference. Do you REALLY have FIRST’s mission in your heart? I guess we’ll find out soon.
Greetings Teams,
I know you’re already neck deep in robot brainstorming and strategy, but I’d like you all to consider completing Dean’s Homework Assignment of contacting your governor and federal senators and reps to invite them to the Philadelphia Regional and to the Championship in Atlanta very soon.
Here’s one model you can copy from Team 1712 if you’d like. All of team 1712’s student members and mentors are going to be emailing at least one senator, rep, or the governor with the following information:
They will be telling them they are involved in a program for HS students called FIRST that is exciting to participate in and important to the future of our culture because it is cultivating tomorrow’s engineers, scientists, technologists, and leaders in a time of critical shortage. To learn more about FIRST, please visit www.usfirst.org
They will be informing them that both RI and HI legislators have committed to ensuring that all high schools in these respective states have at least one team involved in a FIRST program and these efforts are well underway. We’d like our state to make a similar commitment.
Then they will invite these folks to the FIRST Philadelphia Regional at Drexel University on March 30 and 31 (www.philadelphiafirst.org) and the Championship event at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta, GA on April 13 and 14. so that they can come find out why this is such an important program.
Ask them to contact FIRST Senior Mentor Rich Kressly at [email protected] to arrange for a VIP event invitation and to ask questions. (anyone from PA or DE can gladly use me as the point person).
Don’t forget to copy the email to FIRST HQ
How you encourage your team members to get this critical homework done is ENTIRELY up to you. You can even write it for them and have them send it if you wish. Since I’m also the main contact for Team 1712, I chose to encouage my team this way, “After initial brainstorming, no adult or student on Team 1712 will work on the robot or any related award entry until Dean’s homework is done.”
Choose to do this any way you want, but I do hope you choose to do it. It can make a HUGE difference if we all work together. Please let me know how I can help your team through build season and thank you again for your commitment to the future!
I find it humorous that Deans homework was this. Reaching out to your senators and governors and congress reps, because we started doing this as soon as our school semester started this year. We thought that it would be a good way of getting FIRST more recognized and the more influential figures to support us. WE got in touch with Jennifer Granholm (Michigan’s Governor) about a month ago, and our head Public Relations student had a conversation with her about coming to GLR.
I think this is a good way of team to get their states to have more support from the people that can do something about how FIRST is represented and so that there will be no room for politicians not to know that FIRST is here and that it is a good program for students and will create successful adults in the future.
Does anyone know where we could find a recently updated list of email of the senators and house reps in our states, Michigan would be most helpful. It would be useful for completing our “homework”.
There is also a paper in the resource section of the NEMO website titled “Contact Your Elected Officials.” http://www.firstnemo.org/resources.htm on how to find out contact information, including local and Washington contacts, searchable by zip code. We are updating this information and will try to post by 1/11/07. (This paper has been on the site since last summer).
Quick hints: in the email subject line or on a fax, write: “ATTN: Scheduler.” Do NOT send by mail.
Here in Maryland, there will be an email going out to all the teams from Mildred Porter, the regional director. Mildred worked on “the hill” for many years. We will be trying to coordinate communications from the teams here because the regional committee was already in the process and working on the plan for inviting elected officials and VIP’s to the Chesapeake Regional. Teams will be asked to write their own individual message, but we do want to get on the same page with some of the important messages, statistics, and logistics.
The NEMO paper will also include information on “Congressional Record Inserts.” How teams can write 1-2 paragraphs about their team to go into the congressional record.
To find contact info for senators and reps in any state, trying searching on google for your state name and “senate” or “house” (e.g. “Michigan Senate”).
The congress websites usually let you search for your senators and reps by zip code.
I would hold off on sending anything to [email protected]
This will probably be the address, but give FIRST a couple of days to send out an email blast. Marketing is working on it.
Although FIRST chose not include the section on the Congressional Record in the official “Dean’s Homework Forum-Contacting Your Government Officials”, I would still encourage teams to look at the above resource paper on NEMO which describes this.
(Gov. Schwarzenegger being a robot i mean!!)