Starting your own FIRST College Program (FIRST Conference)

Competition Championship Event
1

This year at the FIRST Championship event, Purdue FIRST Programs will be presenting a conference about starting College/University FIRST Programs.

The College/University FIRST Programs we will be presenting on aren’t for “College Level” Robotics Competitions, but rather to start a FIRST program for the University to help start teams(FRC,FTC,FLL) , support local teams in any way they can (through mentorship, sponsorship, or facilities), or hosting a regional at said university/college.

The conference is one of the many interesting topics selected for this year’s FIRST Robotics Conferences at the Championship event. This conference will begin at 9am on Thursday morning. The entire conference will begin at 8am. More info can be found here.

Here is a sneak peak of our abstract:

FIRST for Life! Starting a College FIRST Program

Are you no longer in the FRC age range or a graduating senior but still want to continue your FIRST participation? Are you a mentor or sponsor looking for more support from a local University or College? Why not find out how to start a collegiate college FIRST program at your local university or college. This workshop will introduce various types of existing college FIRST programs and will help you make the right moves towards starting the type of program that you want.

Topics include:
• Types of College FIRST Programs

  • What are the benefits of having a college program?
  • Examples of existing college programs
  • Levels of university involvement

• Getting Support

  • Finding your initial stakeholders
  • How to get university/college support

• Sustaining a College FIRST Program

  • Importance of a long-term vision
  • Membership retention
  • Stakeholder satisfaction

If this sounds like something you find interesting and valuable to yourself, team, or university, I hope you join us for this conference! Current high school students, mentors, faculty, and sponsors are all welcome!

If you have any questions about this conference, please feel free to ask them on this thread or via PM to me.

Good luck at the Championship event!
Nica Fernandez
Purdue FIRST Programs

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I’ll be there! I was sad San Francisco State declined helping my rookie team. This looks like it would be very useful! Considering 4159 is literally right next door to SFSU.

3

This is AWESOME! I won’t be able to make championships this year, but I’d be more than happy to help out with this if you need people.

It would be the best thing ever to get FIRST at a college level. Not only would it make a great experience for college students, but also push college students to mentor FRC/FTC/FLL teams. Based on the college people I’ve talked to, after High School they got out of FIRST, albeit the occasional event volunteer or rare time to mentor a team. A FIRST event at the college level will keep these students involved.

With FRC we’re trying to make robotics the “new cool” amongst high schoolers. Let’s try to make tens of thousands of people gather around a college stadium to watch robotics the same way people will travel with their alma mater’s football team to watch one of their games.

Plus, we’ve seen the benefits in High School students. Just imagine the benefits a FIRST game at a college-level will have for the engineers/NES (Non-Engineering Students) of the future.

4

Um… Andrew, I think Nica’s referring to something like Purdue FIRST or other collegiate organizations that support FRC teams. Not a college-level competition (of which there are already two, not counting the many non-FIRST-related competitions).

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I agree, having college students who were on a FIRST team mentor a local team would be amazing. Especially if there are any rookie teams, the student could mentor on behalf of the college. But a FIRST program to keep all the college students connected would be awesome. College is all about actually learning engineering on a professional scale. Having a competition on the scale of FRC would be perfect. But FIRST has a lot of support because their goal is to intrest people in engineering. At college, people are pretty much know if they want to do engineering or not.

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Any chance that this will be recorded and posted online for those of us who are stuck in classes? I’m working with a few others at Virginia Tech to get something started out here, and we’d love to get some knowledge from an experienced group.

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So this is a little unclear, but is this about setting up college competition robotics teams or setting up a group that helps mentor FRC teams? While both are important they’re different and its tough to tell from the description which one it is.

-Nick

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Thank you for asking, I have forgotten that College Level Robotics is something gaining a lot of momentum and can be confused with College mentorship programs.

EricH was right, and I have gone ahead and added onto the description.
Here is what was added:

The College/University FIRST Programs we will be presenting on aren’t for “College Level” Robotics Competitions, but rather to start a FIRST program for the University to help start teams(FRC,FTC,FLL) , support local teams in any way they can (through mentorship, sponsorship, or facilities), or hosting a regional at said university/college.

@goldenglove002

Any chance that this will be recorded and posted online for those of us who are stuck in classes? I’m working with a few others at Virginia Tech to get something started out here, and we’d love to get some knowledge from an experienced group.

I will look into getting it recorded, but if you are interested in the information and a video is not recorded, at the very least we will be updating our official webpage and will be posting the presentation that was given during the conference. I would look out for the link to it on ChiefDelphi in the near future.

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The conference website says it will be at 9am? can you clarify? I’m interested in attending, if I can get my rear out of bed that early.

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Nica, this sounds fantastic! Definitely high on my priority list of seminars to attend!

I gave a similar presentation to many of the UC Davis College of Enginering students and faculty last spring. The presentation was targeted towards the College of Engineering, so I spend quite a bit of time going over the basics of FIRST before diving into areas of potential partnership. A recorded video of the presentation can be found here:
Synergy in Education: FIRST Robotics Program

Presentation Abstract:

How might a local Davis high school Robotics competition team and the UC Davis College of Engineering (CoE) collaborate to their mutual benefit? Plus, special guests from the Davis FIRST robotics team.

The FIRST Robotics Competition involves teams of high school students from around the world, and offers a variety of technical challenges in meeting the objectives of the competition. There are a number of opportunities for the UC Davis community to interact with and support the local team, and these will be described, along with examples of existing interactions happening for other college-town teams. As host of the FIRST regional competition each year, UC Davis also has a unique opportunity to actively recruit engineering-minded high school students from across California to CoE during that competition. Following the presentation, we hope to have an interactive discussion among the audience, the speaker, and the special guests.

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Hi Kim, thank you for pointing that out, I have clarified it in the description as well. On the conference page, it says

The 2012 FIRST Robotics Conferences at the Championship will take place over two days - Wednesday, April 25th from 4 P.M. to 7 P.M. CST and Thursday, April 26 starting at 8 A.M. and ending at 8 P.M. CST.

But THIS specific conference will be from 9am-9:45. The schedule in the link I have posted is currently not available, and I’m sure will be fixed soon.

12

This sounds fantastic. We have been working on trying to get the Florida Colleges to offer an engineering elective called FIRST Robotics. I know some students at Purdue get college credit for mentoring. I need specifics on what the curicculum looks like. Will I be able to get something like that at this conference?

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We’re looking into getting something similar started at NC State. Too bad I’ll be in class during this presentation and won’t get to St. Louis til later that afternoon.

I second the request to record the presentation. Also will you be around Champs after the presentation cause if I can I would like to pick your brain to get some tips for our program.

Thanks for doing this.

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Thank you for asking, I have forgotten that College Level Robotics is something gaining a lot of momentum and can be confused with College mentorship programs.

Thanks for the clarification. The title was the most confusing part. Any way it can be re-worded? Or is it too late to change it? Just a suggestion.

-Nick

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Hi Wendy! I remember talking to you about this a couple years back. Purdue students do get 2 technical elective credits per semester for our FIRST class. A part of the seminar will be us talking about our class structure, but if there is additional information you would like, i.e. copy of our syllabus I will gladly email that to you, just PM me your contact information.

Also, here is a link to our conference page with some of our previous college FIRST program conferences:
http://www.purduefirst.org/college-conference/previous-conferences/
The outlines, notes, and presentations are all available there and could be helpful with breakdowns of other colleges’ programs as well.

@Jacob:

I second the request to record the presentation. Also will you be around Champs after the presentation cause if I can I would like to pick your brain to get some tips for our program.

It is on my to do list to try to get someone to provide a video recorder for the conference, I will try my best to make it happen! I am the organizer of this conference and have been a presenter in years past, but unfortunately I have had to last minute back out of travel for championships. If you would like to contact me regarding College FIRST Programs, PM me and I can give you my email or phone.

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The title “Starting your own FIRST College Program” or “FIRST for Life” describes the conference just fine. Every FIRST College Program is run differently and contributes to FIRST in different ways and defining it further would close out other groups and possibilities.

As for the confusion with a competitive college level FIRST competition, I would say the addition of “competition” to the title such as in “FIRST Robotics College Competition” would be the key for you distinguishing between the two.

Thanks for the suggestion, but usually right under the Title is a description that would clarify any confusion.

17

I think this is a great idea! If it helps colleges decide to work with FIRST, one of the reasons I chose RIT over a couple of other schools is that they work with FRC teams in their area. I was disappointed that I wouldn’t be able to work with my team anymore, but RIT’s FIRST program has me excited to be able to mentor a team. :smiley:

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Please, please, PLEASE record this! I’m a graduating senior and this sounds amazing, but unfortunately I have a band concert Thursday night and won’t be able to make it to CMP until Friday.

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I just want to say that Michigan Technological University has had a program supporting the local teams with mentors for about 8 years.

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If a method of recording the conference does not become available by the time we travel to the event, we will be recording the presentation afterwards back at Purdue and will be posting it as soon as we can.

As for syllabus/student handbook/additional class information, it can be found directly from our website here:

http://www.purduefirst.org/me297-course-page/

Also, if you find yourself at the Championship and are unable to attend the conference, the presenters of the conference as well as other Purdue FIRST advisers and students will be manning the Purdue University booth on Scholarship row.

And as always, I am always available to answer any questions via PM or email.