FRC Zones and Centers of Excellence

FIRST General Forum
1

We’ve been studying FRC incubator or collaboration zones and are interested in what the community experience is about the topic. If you know of, or are part of a FRC site that serves or houses multiple teams, consider sharing thoughts or experiences.

For example:

  1. What are the missions and goals.
  2. What are growth plans or natural limitations.
  3. Is the site considered a permanent home for the teams, or a place to start.
  4. What planned unique successes have been realized…and what surprises changed plans.
  5. …any other outcomes of interest you want to highlight…

If you are willing to share location, name and/or website for details beyond a thread post, that would be great!

2

Georgia First has been working on this concept since 2012 originally under the name of Destination Einstein. The name has been shortened to DE for a variety of reasons. They currently have 4 fields operating under slightly different models. The web site is Here. Mark Bassett is the coordinator.

3

The MEZ in Detroit is a good example of a single location that helps many teams.

4

This seems cool, but I have a lot of questions:

Does this work as a place just for competitions?

Is this for practicing whenever a team feels like it?

Do the teams use this as their primary build space?

5

I think the Katy ISD STEM center in Texas is a good example of what you are talking about.

6

**

  1. What are the missions and goals.**

Here is the official “Vision” for the center:

The Robert R. Shaw Center for STEAM is designed to provide students across grade levels with space to bring ideas from conception through design to production. It’s about young people collaborating with professional mentors and volunteers representing STEAM-related occupations on authentic activities and with authentic applications. Projects at the Shaw Center are developed around interdisciplinary learning with an emphasis on inspiring students to be innovators in the areas of science, technology, engineering, the arts and mathematics.

We have 5 FRC Teams at the building. 624, 2882, 4639, 5427, and 6488.
Each team has their own Bay, which has a backroom with tools such as drill presses, bandsaws, etc.

The middle of the building has a shared full field for practice. On one side there are two multipurpose classrooms with Smart boards inside. On the other side there is a shared tool shop with a Plasma cutter and other big tools.

2. What are growth plans or natural limitations.

Not aware of any set growth plans, but we’re working to get a FRC Team at the 3 other high schools in our district, and those teams will be in the building as well. The building I believe was designed to handle a team in each of the 8 bays. Maybe it’s too early to tell if there are any natural limitations yet.

3. Is the site considered a permanent home for the teams, or a place to start.

Permanent home.

4. What planned unique successes have been realized…and what surprises changed plans.

The level of team competitiveness has risen significantly. All the teams at the RSC are forces to be dealt with. Also, the building I believe has served as a catalyst for Chairman’s activites, as we now have a building that has resources to do events there. Speaking for 624, we’ve held FLL tournament practices, field trips for groups, Socials, sponsor presentations, etc.
We’ve had teachers/principals (especially during Houston Champs) come to the building to get ideas for a similar project for their district.

5. …any other outcomes of interest you want to highlight…

While robotics is a huge part of the building, the building does much much more. Every day there are field trips to the building for STEM related activities. Forensics does activities there often, and there are activities like DI there as well. For example, when I was in 8th grade I came with the rest of my grade to the building for a field trip where we did fun STEM activities. On this field trip we also got to watch FRC matches and the building’s staff showed us some of the robotics stuff, which I think played an important role in getting people to join robotics once they came to High school.

Specific to FRC, I think with any center/shared location its important to form relations with others who share the center. We’ve done socials together which have been a ton of fun and brought the teams closer together. To that point, I think doing more workshops/activites between the 5 (currently) FRC Teams there would help make these bonds better.

If you are willing to share location, name and/or website for details beyond a thread post, that would be great!

Name: Robert R. Shaw Center for Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics
Location: 1730 Katyland Drive
Katy, TX 77493

Website: http://www.katyisd.org/dept/rsc/Pages/default.aspx

Pictures: Here is a link to our pictures from build season: Build Season 2018 - team624

If you go into our main gallery, you can find pictures of every event we’ve ever done, so you can get an idea of how the center feels like.

Feel free to ask questions!

7

Well, you know about ours right down the road from you in Charlotte but I can provide some details you might not see on the outside.

  1. Our mission is to develop k-12 students using FIRST Robotics as the engine in STEM fields. We do this through the FIRST programs and other IT training programs such as code.org

  2. Growth is scary when you are paying your own bills. Growing and scaling in a sustainable manor is one of the largest challenges with such an expensive endeavor but we are managing well going into our 4th year. It is a full time job for Lia to keep the Charlotte FIRST Zone running but we are always trying to spread the work among the mentors of the teams at the Zone and we get it done.

3)Our Zone is a permanent home that can fit up to 4 FRC teams, 4 FTC teams, and a multitude of FLL teams because we use the space flexibly for the different seasons of FIRST. During FLL, we will have tables on the FRC field!

  1. Similar to how other spaces have been described, the competitive level of our teams has risen to new heights with the addition of the Zone in late 2015.
    Our first competition year in 2016, every team that visited the zone (11 teams from NC and SC!) won a blue banner. For many it was their first blue banner. For 4290 I think their turnaround from a team that was on the brink of collapse to a competitive and recognizable team shows this picture perfect. The kickstart of our rookie team using the Zone all season for 2018 provided a crash course in how to robot that many rookies will never get by working beside all the veterans every single meeting. We planned that it would make our teams better but the impact has been beyond measure which has taken us happily by surprise. We intend to scale this as we gather support from companies and community.

  2. Outcomes… well both 1533 and 3506 won states together in 2016 - obvious outcome that we 100% attribute to the Zone and the ability to practice and fail quickly on the field. That was the first year we had the zone open and what a way to blow the doors off this thing! 4290 won their first title ever and I believe 1533 could say the same. 4935 won a district as well because of the practice. 2815 won a regional by cracking their wheels on the defenses in Charlotte and changing it before competition (and ended up flying on Frank’s blog). Practice and collaboration are some of the most impactful performance enhancers for FRC and despite having many teams under one roof, our robot designs are 100% different between all the teams that use it and that is magic in itself to see all these teams meet and grow together but keep their identities.

If you want more info feel free to PM me I am open to a call or meeting since you are close to us.

QCRA site:http://queencityrobotics.org/who-we-are/mission-vision/

8

Thank you for the insights…any others?

9

Da Vinci Science High School in El Segundo, California had what you might classify as an FRC zone last season.

Besides the schools’ team, 4201, team 330 also shares the build space. We also had a full AndyMark field and had dozens of local (and not so local) teams come and use it.

To answer your prompts:

  1. What are the missions and goals.
    4201 opened it’s build space to 330 and other local teams to share our resources and bond with local teams. It was also an inspiration for our students as they watched other teams practice and build at our school.
  2. What are growth plans or natural limitations.
    Currently, we’re working it out with the district on using the space that we had the field last season. If we’re able to obtain the space again, we hope to have more teams visit and use our field.
  3. Is the site considered a permanent home for the teams, or a place to start.
    The school is a permanent home for 4201 and a home for 330 as long as they want to it to be. 4201 hopes to make our field available every year, but it’s subject to district approval each season.
  4. What planned unique successes have been realized…and what surprises changed plans.
    4201 knew that we were getting an AndyMark field before the 2017 season ended, and we thought we’d be able to set it up during the preseason and have everything ready a couple weeks in build. Unfortunately, our new school building wasn’t done until right after Veteran’s day of the 2018 preseason. The entire school moved in a four day weekend and it was quite a bit of chaos with our machines and other materials to re-setup. This also meant 330 moved in a little later than intended and had to trickle their stuff in as well. We also found we couldn’t set up the field until second semester, so the field went up a little later than intended. In the end, it all worked out and we always had several teams come every day we opened.
  5. …any other outcomes of interest you want to highlight…
    Our Chairman’s video highlights our interactions with other teams best: https://youtu.be/7KAqWwqJ5WQ