After eighteen years a head coach of FRC1540, the Flaming Chickens in Portland, Oregon I’ve decided to step away as head coach/mentor and Engineering Program Director at Catlin Gabel School. I’ll still be associated with the team but it’s time for someone to take the program forward full time. We are looking for my successor.
Running the extracurricular Engineering program at Catlin is a full-time paid faculty position. You’ll be the head coach and mentor of the FRC team but also coordinate Community Engineering projects the students take part in. This is currently a grade 8-12 program, but we’d like it to extend other activities further down in the grades of our preK-12 private school.
It’s unusual for a FRC program to have a full-time paid coach/mentor but we do so because Catlin is a commuter school with students coming from up to 45 minutes in every direction. Having them meet at night when other mentors are available isn’t an option so the lab needs to be staffed every day after school by someone who can cover all the bases. It’s also an asynchronous program with kids coming and going at random times after school as their schedules permit. The mentor is the glue that keeps the train on the tracks. I’m the only adult there most days. My replacement would ideally be a Jack/Jill of all trades, a little mechanical, a little software, some electronics, marketing, etc. Mechanical and management is the most important, though.
The team is proud of our moto that “Adults don’t touch the robot or the keyboard.” The robot is 100% student designed and built. I give advice and teach skills, of course, but this is the student’s creation. It’s organized like a small company with student managers in charge of various departments. Since there is only one of me, those student managers are essential to the team’s operation.
1540 has done well over the years qualifying for world championships the last 12 out of 13 years. We’ve also won over $60K for community engineering projects like Source America Design Challenge, Lexus EcoChallenge, MIT Inventeam, etc. This is a flagship program at our school with around 10% of the upper school students taking part. This year we are over 50% non-male.
We’ve qualified for the PNW District Championships again this year so we’ll see if this will be our 13th world championship.
Anyway, if you are an adult technical leader of a team that advances to championships more often than not and would like to chat about this opportunity, drop me a line at yocumd@catlin.edu. If you happen to be going to PNW championships next week, let’s meet up.