My school now officially awards a letter for participation on the FRC team if the student fulfills all the necessary stipulations. As far as I know, our school is the first in Idaho to do this. Does your school have a Robotics letter, and if so, what are the guidelines that must be followed to earn it? And if you know of other schools that award a letter, let me know.
Hearsay tells me Barstow (forgot team number) awards letters. We’ve been pressuring our school to do so as well, but they basically told us to go away, but a bit more curtly.
Search the forums, I think there’s at least a couple other topics about this.
If I remember correctly, when I was on team 386 one of the high schools would give out letters (I got a letter when on the team) but I don’t think the others did at the time (the team is/was comprised of multiple schools). I’m not sure if they still do or if the other schools have started to give out letters, though.
Team 302, the Lake Orion Dragons from Lake Orion high school arr rewarded a lettermans jacket letter after 1 yr in the service. Our school has a different program called gap and any school club or activity that has a varsity team can give letters. Its pretty cool.
My letter:
The requirement for my team is: Junior or Senior with two or more years of experience on the team and must have made a significant impact on the team. I got it last year.
To follow up on my previous post, these three topics might be of interest.
1986 also does varsity letters.
This past year we got our high school (Northshore High in Slidell, Louisiana) to grant letters. We gave it to people who have been on the team at least one year and met their hours requirement, so basically all our members. It was our first year of doing it and we didn’t set very high standards. We may change that for this year. The cool part is that the little patch is our team’s logo (its my account picture if you are interested). And our teacher sponsor got specialty patches that say Regional Chairman’s Winner 2011 Bayou Regional. I like that the patch is in the same style as the State Champion patches for the sports.
My school, Poudre High, in Fort Collins, CO, does letters. It is at the discretion of our teacher, and most students don’t earn them until junior year if they get one. We’ve been doing it for quite a while!
Last year (rookie season) we gave all 24 team members an academic letter. Our original criteria for the letter was putting in at least 100 hours, but people on the team put in anywhere from 140 to 200 hours. Since there were only 24 people building a scoring robot with minibot, as rookies, almost all of the hours put in were working hours.
We havn’t yet thought out this year’s criteria, but it will probably have something to do with how much you contributed to the team rather than hours put in due to the number of team members we now have.
By the way, we are in the central coast area of California. I don’t know if us lettering in robotics sets a precedent in the state, but I doubt it.
Our school counts FIRST as a varsity “activity,” therefore we all receive a letter at the end of our first year. I believe our district requires a certain amount of time dedicated to the team, which our members fulfill in one year. 
Oh, I supposed I should mention that we are located in Michigan, if anyone is curious.
Here are our lettering requirements (we set them up after our second year):
- Participate in 12 hours per week of scheduled team sessions during the build season. (out of ~16 build hours per week)
- Participate for two years on the team.
- Attend team competitions.
a. Two FRC competitions (3 days each) OR
b. One FRC competition and two mini competitions (1 day each)- Meet all expectations on the student list. (Outlined on pg. 6 of handbook)
- Full attendance at all mandatory meetings.
a. Challenge Kickoff
b. Open House
c. Fall recruiting information meeting
d. Team service project- Distinguish yourself as a leader.
a. Captain(s)
b. Sub-team Captain
c. Secretary
d. Drive Team
e. Website Coordinator
f. Animation Director
g. Main Photographer / Video-photographer
h. AutoCAD Specialist- Participate in 1 from each section below:
a. Publicity Projects
[INDENT]• Participate in ‘spreading the word’ event (i.e. State Fair, STEM Day, SMM Science Day, Mentoring, News and Radio programs)
• Participate in a fund raising event.
b. Meeting Oriented Projects
• Attend summer meetings
• Complete special mentor directed project.
• Attend fall meetings.[/INDENT]
The basic idea behind this is that we want to see dedication from the team members, and effort to help the team improve year over year. As a mentor, it’s usually pretty obvious who should get letters and who shouldn’t at the end of each season. There have only been a few students we’ve had to look at the rules to figure out if they actually earned a letter.
Yes, we do. The minimum standard is something along these lines:
Attend 2 out of 3 of the following:
- Cowtown Throwdown
- KC Regional
- Whatever our away regional is (this year Oklahoma)
Minimum 80 hours during build season
We also have a minimum of 40 hours of build to travel with the team.
I’m glad to see so many teams awarding letters. Our yearbook staff still doesn’t recognize us as a “sport” so we are designated in the yearbook as the Robotics Club. which is lame.
It seems like most of you have an detailed list of requirements for lettering, too. i’m impressed
Us too, we have member levels of varying commitment, one of them being varsity member. varsity member and above all get letters, we have had letters for 3 years now, and our school only recognized them after we became mshsl recognized