I am working with a FRC team (not my own) that is struggling to recruit members. This is pretty much a universal issue among FIRST teams, but their situation is somewhat unique. The FRC team is on probation by their school because they haven’t been able to recruit enough members (less than 10 in each of the previous 2 seasons).
Their school is hugely VEX based with VEX curriculum in their classrooms and VEX competition teams. They are one of the VEX strongholds in Minnesota. I think that’s all great as many students are being inspired to pursue STEM careers which, of course, is the end goal for FIRST and VEX.
My issue stems from the fact that the leader of VEX Robotics in the area has lied in order to hurt the FIRST team (in an effort to force the FIRST team to fold). The unnamed individual has stated that “FIRST in Minnesota is dying so we should focus our efforts on VEX” to the local school board. This is a blatant lie as Minnesota has over 200 teams and has a strong partnership with the Minnesota State High School League (MSHSL).
I’m also helping this team by running a recruitment camp at their school this summer. This camp has been scheduled for a few months and is listed in the community education brochure. I was just notified by the head coach of this team that the leader for VEX in the area has recently scheduled a VEX camp for the week before our FIRST camp. We know the camp was set up after the date for our FIRST camp was released, so I think it’s pretty clear that this scheduling was intentionally done to try to draw people away from the FIRST camp to the VEX camp. This is made even more clear by the fact that they are charging $20 less for the camp, and their camp structure essentially mimics ours.
So my question is, how do you deal with somebody who will lie in order to push their agenda? I want to make it clear that I think VEX and FIRST are both amazing programs that impact students in incredible ways. There is more than enough interest in robotics to go around at this school for both programs to exist, and be successful. Many schools successfully run VEX and FRC teams to the benefit of both teams. The liar that we’re dealing with clearly wants FIRST out of the picture and doesn’t share my belief that both programs can coexist.
Any advice for how to deal with this situation would be greatly appreciated!
I am not an expert on these things, but if I were you, I would talk to this person. I would be honest, but try to assume for the time being that they are not lying, and just don’t know the truth, or have been mislead. Ask them if they feel that FIRST and Vex can coexist in you school. You might find that you have no choice but to compete for members, but you might find this person is just trying to help their Vex team, and went a little too far.
From what it sounds like to me…someone is making a more affordable program more widely available at a competitive price and will let market forces work with them.
Are you sure this person is as malevolent and malicious as you’re making your post sound? Or are they literally just a person trying to spread STEAM programs and making them more accessible to more students?
Have you actively engaged this person in conversation prior to posting on CD?
Maybe the VEX program is more viable for the school in question?
For what it’s worth, this original post sounds too biased to me for it to criticize someone for being biased towards a program.
You need to out-recruit, out-event, and out-perform them on every level. Oh, you could go complain to someone, but it wouldn’t do anything to move the team forward and might gain you a reputation as a whiner.
Schedule 3 camps. Find a way to make them free. Get more students. Use those students to pull more parents in. Make your team explode. Pull in more money through more fund raising efforts and utilize more parents to pull in money from their companies. In short - beat their pants off.
Hmmm. I have literally never dealt with a scenario like this before. Even still, here’s some of my thoughts after reading your post:
Rarely do individual humans push agendas or lie just for the fun of it. I’m willing to bet there’s some underlying reasons why the individual is interested in the survival of VEX over FIRST programs in your area. Loaded statements such as “FIRST is dying in our area” carry far more meaning than they ought to - it would be interesting to clarify exactly what was meant, and why it was said in the context it was. All this presumes you are able/comfortable to talk with said individual.
If not, a secondary option could be to attempt to expose the lies - not in a malicious way, but spread the info about how FIRST is doing in the area - not just number of teams, but what growth is seen, what value & impact it has, how it provides unique experiences from Vex. Presuming your information is factual and the other person’s is not, it should at least start a conversation with the school board to determine the truth… presuming of course the school board members are interested in having that discussion. If not, you’ll have to first convince them why they should be interested.
Again presuming the school board has not already made up their minds about Vex being superior to FIRST, you might also be able to bring up your concerns about the camp schedule. I’d be really careful not to imply anything about your suspicions of the scheduling reasons. However, if the school board still deems both VEX and FIRST as important, it would be legitimately concerning that the timing/cost might detract from your event. Again, this could be used to help start a conversation to make sure the school board is properly aligned on priorities.
All this being said, VEX does have certain advantages over FIRST programs - classroom integration being one of them (as far as I know). If the school district isn’t actually able to support both, there is a legitimate conversation to be had as to where to put priorities. It would be worthwhile to ensure the coexistance you reference is actually feasible (financially, student interest, etc). Remember all these programs are targeted at making students successful, they do not stand on their own.
As I re-read this post, I realize how much presuming is going on. Please take my advice with a giant grain of salt
Why should the school board be involved with scheduling of competing camps? They’re both STEM related, and it’s not like the schedules overlap so there is no real conflict.
Instead of just showing statistics around growth, you should display statistics around team sustainability and costs teams are burdened by. And hey, if you want, throw in the possibility of district models decreasing those costs and providing more matches in the potential future (Then again, I’m not sure if MN is moving towards this).
As gerthworm stated, rarely do people have an agenda like what OP is suggesting. You have the same goals, figure out how to align yourselves better with VEX. If not, don’t complain about a little bit of necessary competition.
Also, the recruitment issue honestly makes VEX more viable. An FRC team needs many cogs to function properly as a machine, VEX does not need as many resources. Take the blinders off and really look into what is best for the students in that school. If they’re already on probation, at least a more manageable program in place such as FTC or VEX is better than no program at all.
PS - Kudos on the Click Baity thread title, I’m a fan of making those myself
This is easy enough to refute, put up some statistics with team growth, list off EVERY SINGLE AWARD a MN team has won in the past year, # of teams at championship, event growth, etc.
Even better if you can get it is alumni data. People love that stuff. Amount of scholarship $$ claimed, percentage that went to college, etc.
For everything else, I agree with everyone else so far in that you should try and talk to them.
Again, team growth is not the most important KPI here.
Sustainability is what most existing teams need to see. No existing team really cares about growth.
A struggling team needs resources to be sustainable, help them build that, not more stats about how many new FRC teams the area is producing and how the sponsors/grant resources are being saturated and depleted.
There’s no reason that organizations with analogous goals should have to “out compete” and rely on “market forces” to sort it out. STEM education is not a zero sum game. Even if they do not engage in full on collaborations or integrations, there are middle grounds before the war of attrition that some are proposing. To steal a FIRST buzzword, “Coopertition” is very applicable here. Find ways to help BOTH programs grow, rather than engaging in a cutthroat competition for the same resources. That requires a certain willingness from all parties to cooperate (or at least coexist).
“FIRST in Minnesota is dying so we should focus our efforts on VEX”
. A blatant lie that can and will be refuted with statistics.
2. Based on the interactions that I’ve witnessed, and the people that I’ve talked to that have interacted with this individual, I do believe malice is intended (now obviously that’s just the opinion I’ve formed based on mostly second hand information). I would think that if this person’s objective were to increase access to STEM programs, they wouldn’t be making an effort to end a STEM program. It is also my understanding that this individual has a financial interest in VEX succeeding which is all well and good, but that doesn’t justify dishonesty in promoting their program.
3. I have not actively engaged with this person prior to posting, but I’m speaking on behalf of somebody who does on a regular basis. The person I’m speaking on behalf of doesn’t want to risk any negative backlash on their team by speaking out. Plus anonymous accounts are frowned upon.
4. VEX is doing very well at the school in question which is awesome! But the success of VEX and FIRST at a school doesn’t need to be mutually exclusive.
In general this is awesome advice and exactly what I would do in most situations. It is my understanding that the person I’m speaking on behalf of has talked to this individual on many different occasions with no luck.
This is exactly the approach that we will end up taking. Great advice, thanks Tom!
This is an awesome idea for a backup plan, but FIRST’s relationship with the MSHSL that I mentioned in my original post complicates things. The MSHSL runs all of the high school events in Minnesota. Partnership with a school isn’t a requirement by any means, but it’s really nice for a FRC team to directly tied in with a school.
Why start a thread if nobody is going to look at it
Thank you Sean. In this case, there is willingness to work together and collaborate on one side, but not the other. How does one most effectively approach a situation like this?
If you think all people in both these programs have no agenda and would never tell lies to push what they want, all I have to say is what does that sand taste like?
I have seen such behavior from both sides of the isle, even in high levels.
The only way to fight such a thing is just do better and work harder than the other guy. Outperform and people will see the truth.
Difficult to say without knowing the details of the scenario, and more importantly the individuals involved.
I can offer up the sort of collaborative relationship 1712 has formed within our school system between FIRST and other STEM programs. Along with the school’s TSA chapter, Dawgma falls under the umbrella of our school’s “Technology and Education Club.” At present, Dawgma functions without a direct teacher sponsor, but rather with two mentors functioning as coaches in the Athletics and Activities department. In the past, we’ve also had FIRST Vex Challenge and Vex Robotics Competition teams under the T&E club banner.
MN, since crossing the 50 team barrier (look, I had to pick a year to start counting, 50 teams seemed reasonable and it was 2008) averaged ~98% retention of teams between 2008 and 2015 (I hadn’t integrated 2016 or 2017 data in yet, I’m working with what I had)
Here retention is defined the set of teams in a given year differenced with the set of teams the previous year. Basically, for each team number did they exist the following year. Source and Data available (GitHub - schreiaj/frc-attrition)
I want to point out something interesting, MN has the best retention rate for teams for states with over 50 teams over the period of time I studied (2005 - 2015).
Cooperation has to start somewhere. Pick an event, and invite this guy and his program. Is there any reason the two summer camps have to be run separate? Is there any way that joining them together could help both programs? Look for a way for the two programs to work together on something, anything, and use that as a step towards further collaboration. It could be these camps, it could be creating a T-shirt cannon for the school to use, it could be a tour of a local manufacturing plant. Find something that would help his group towards their ultimate goals, and invite them along.
It’s not about figuring out how to deal with a liar… it’s about figuring out how to get the two groups working together so they are personally invested in each others success. That’s how FRC does it at competition - We all compete against each other, just like these two programs do, but we all have to work together at times too. That helps us see past the competition in order to help each other out at the event and in the off-season.
You can just drive your Frc robot over their vex robots. That aughta help with recruitment.
In all reality my suggestion is similar to that. Show students an Frc robot and a vex robot next to each other and ask which one they’d rather build. A even decently well made Frc robot is way cooler than a vex bot.
This is a pretty good idea. We had (2017 season) about 25 active members in a highs school of 3500 students. We organized a live demonstration in our school during lunches. We drove our robot around and had it climb, etc. People thought it was really cool, and many were interested in joining. So just showing people the robot in a setting like that is great to raise awareness.
Of the 247 teams MN has had since FIRST started, 207 of them were active in 2017. Of the 40 teams that are no longer active, 12 of them lasted only 1 or 2 years (I’ve heard, but have no data myself to support, that many teams are lost after 2 years due to the expiration of rookie grants and inability to find additional funding).
Unfortunately, as we continue to try to grow the program here, our retention rate is probably going to get worse. We’re pretty well saturated in the metro area schools and the larger schools across the state, which means growth has to come from progressively smaller rural schools, which are incredibly hard to keep running year after year, due to limited availability for local funding, the smaller number of students involved, and the difficulty in finding local area mentors to replace those that retire from the program.
As you can see from the attached image (generate from data I maintain, and believe to be accurate), the number of new teams added each year is declining, while the number of teams retiring has increased, resulting in the total number of active teams starting to level off. Retention in 2016 and 2017 was closer to 95%, with 9 teams retiring each of those years.
