Hello!
My team (3512) is trying to put more of a focus on Engineering Inspiration during this season. However, as I’m sure many people have noticed, there isn’t much information available about the award. I was hoping that I could find information here about it from people whose teams have won or put effort into winning the award in the past. I was hoping for more specific things than the general information listed on the FIRST website. If you have anything that you think would be helpful please share!
Thank you.
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Ahhh… EI. Some people call it 2nd Place Impact Award, I call it a lot of money 
. My team has only won it once which was during my senior year. We found that teams that would win it either mentored or founded other teams and constantly keep up with it. Some teams run different FIRST Qualifiers and competitions. Or you might find teams who devote into making a pipeline from FLL Discover all the way down to FRC. We happened to do all three when we had won it. We want to be able to have students become curious outside of their classroom. Have a central message or mission for your team and stick with it. If you need more clarifications lmk!
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We won it in 2022, part of it was the overlaps in trying to promote STEM and the bid for the Chairmans Award (now Impact). In regards to the guidlines here in order: Awards Based on Team Attributes | FIRST
- Some of the things I can pull from memory for recruiting are STEM related programs which serve to generate interest in the team and also double as outreach. That is combined with other outreaches and standard recruitment.
- As I said before, doing STEM related programs, camps and other things are great outreach, and incorporate the engineering aspect depending on how you setup the outreach.
- A commitment to science and technology essentially boils down to teaching the community and your own team about science and technology
- This also comes down in part to teaching in my interpretation. If you can teach your students to be engineering and STEM leaders, and be able to demonstrate that by having them take initiative at competitions, such as offering help all around. Additionally having the students being excited or interested in pursuing STEM helps. The communication outside will boil down to how you can present your teams efforts to judges.
In short, having engineering related outreaches serve as outreach and recruitment in some cases. Be sure to teach your team and your community about science and technology, could do outreaches to achieve this. And get students interested. These are all my opinions and do not reflect those of my team.
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My team won in 2023 at a week 5 event and after being on the presentation team on '22 and '23, I’ve learned quite a bit about engineering inspiration and how you can implement simple changes to elevate your awards.
- Give a frame of reference. You can say you do lots of amazing things but if the judges don’t know how big or small your community is, those amazing things don’t have the same impact.
- Use statistics. Numbers really help to create a clearer picture since it gives them concrete details instead of abstract details.
- My team likes to create a theme that we base our entire essay and presentation around so all our little projects are connected, no matter how different they are.
- If you do the same STEM projects each year, explaining how you plan to grow those projects to reach more people is a huge highlight to the judges. The judges are looking for how you grow and expand your projects to reach more people, not how many times you’ve done the same things each year.
- Lastly, show how your team uses their STEM skills for things unrelated to FIRST. My team has built wheelchair ramps, garden beds for various schools in our school district, and even a prosthetic before. We also do projects that aren’t STEM based but having a healthy balance in supporting your FIRST community along with your local community makes for a very compelling presentation.
I hope this helps!
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We won a regional EI in 2022, and we were the EI winner on Milstein Field at Worlds in 2023. Here are some of observations from my team of presenters:
• We found that a lot of EI is about successfully communicating the mission and vision of your team. It is very important to give context for your outreach. We are a small team (less than 30), located in a rural area. So the scale of our impact and outreach is going to look very different than large teams located in urban areas, but providing the judges our context shows that smaller numbers does not mean smaller impact.
• Every initiative is tied to our strategic plan that shows how we are accomplishing our mission and vision in regards to STEM outreach and growth, and we communicate that mission and vision through a focus phrase that EVERYONE on the team knows. All students in the pit know to tie all information back to our mission and vision. Tying initiatives to a plan is huge to the judges. It shows planning, foresight, and makes it easy to show growth.
• Your pit presenters need to energetic and compelling in the way they share and tell the story of your team’s outreach. We have two pit liaisons (who are also our Impact presenters) who tag team when judges come. They keep a checklist handy as they are talking to judges to ensure that the essential information is communicated. We have a slim booklet that we share with the judges. We call it our storybook because it tells the story of our team’s outreach.
• Our pit display integrates with the total design of our pit, but overall, it is very low tech. No large banners, no digital displays. Just pictures and key facts that represent the focus phrase of our mission and vision.
These are just a few observations that my team made. Hope this is helpful. Let us know if we can be of further assistance.
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My team has been trying to implement some of the same things into our pit structure. Do you have photos of your pit so I can compare it to my team’s? I’ve been struggling to see what other teams do to showcase awards in the pit.
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