Team officers

Competition Team Organization
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At our school district, all clubs are supposed to have four elected officer positions: President, Vice President, Treasurer, and Secretary. As we’re not classified as a sports team (yet!), we elected these four positions for the 2011 season.

Looking ahead to the fall, and 2012, we decided to write a team handbook to help with rules, organization, etc. I’m currently stuck on how the descriptions should read for these four officer positions…

How does your team use these four positions? The team members I’ve discussed this with see it sort of like this:

President - (aka captain) this person is the team leader, both spiritually and organizationally. they are the mouthpiece of the team at meetings, and speak for the team with businesses, administration, etc. their main responsibility to make sure “things get done”.

Vice President - President’s right-hand person. they meet with the sub-team leads, organize data, oversees team meetings, and report back to the captain and team leadership on the status of, well, everything

Treasurer - co-signs the check cutting slips, keeps track of team financials, and helps decide what the team should purchase

Secretary - records team information, schedules team meetings, schedules presentations, corresponds with individuals outside of the team, etc.

VERY interested to see how other teams use these four elected positions. I have read a few other team handbooks looking for this information, and will continue to do so. If I remember, I’ll return to this thread and add in our final descriptions when the 2012 season handbook is complete. Thanks ya’ll!

2

We have three team leaders. Last year, they were a public relations captain, a human resources person and the Big Chief System Engineer (Big CheSE). The public relations leader did things like write grants and lead presentations, the human resources leader got people to do what they were supposed to do and the systems engineer got the robot to work.

There was an official document made to express these roles, but it’s not posted on our website, sorry.

3

I am a part of another technology club and we use those four officer positions as well as a few others. However:

President: Main organizer (as mentioned above), and often times serves as the public face of the group.

Vice-President: Works on ensuring that the membership of the group is being supported properly. This includes important logistical work that needs to be completed throughout the year.

Treasurer: Beyond what was already posted, this person oftentimes works to see what future fundraising activities can be put into practice.

Secretary: Takes minutes at EVERY officer meeting. This way the leaders can look back and have a record of what has laready been discussed/decided. Also, sharing the minutes from these meetings with the rest of the team allows everyone to stay on the same page, and understand what steps the officers took to reach the decisions that they made.

4

Our system is essentially the same duty-wise as the OP’s format, except one person is the secretary/treasurer.

5

You can see our team structure on our website at. Our constitution lays our their responsibilities (http://team1912.com/constitution.html) and our structure shows what subteams they are responsible for (http://team1912.com/team_structure.html)

Hope this helps!

6

We have two presidents and vice presidents (one each for engineering and marketing). In our charter, the official description for the President of Engineering is:

The President of Engineering is one of the two organizers and the final decision-maker of the club before decisions are presented to the Faculty Advisor. His/her job is to maintain communication between officers and divisions of the club and make sure that the officers are getting their jobs done and/or reassigning jobs to someone under them. During the build season, he/she should be familiar with every part of the robot. Familiar is hereby defined as being able to explain the part to another team member or judge, as well as having the ability to repair any part of the robot if/when it is broken. This President should also be knowledgeable of the details of the Chairman’s Award submission and/or other submissions.

Vice President of Engineering:

The Vice President of Engineering is considered the second-in-command for that department. This Vice President should have knowledge of what the Presidents are currently doing and should be able to direct the Engineering sect in the event of the Engineering President’s absence. He/she should have extensive knowledge of each part of the robot as well as some basic knowledge of all awards submissions.

Director of Fundraising/Treasurer:

The treasurer is responsible for the overall flow of monetary funds into and out of the club. This person will be working closely with those involved with fundraising, procurement, etc. to ensure that he/she is knowledgeable of where funds are and where they will be going. They will be responsible for grant writing, and finding sponsors for the team.
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Secretary:
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It is the job of the Secretary to make sure that communication channels between Parents, EC, and the faculty Advisors are kept open at all times and that any decisions made by any of those three vital parts of the club is known to all parts of the club. Duties include taking the minutes of the meetings, keeping a list of members, and doing necessary paperwork.

7

Our team spent quite a while defining the positions this year; the BTM is the vice presidential role.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2150185/OfficerRolesAndResponsibilities10-11.pdf

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WizenedEE - interesting take on leadership roles. thanks!
Rachel Newell - what you said is how I’d like our set-up to be. thanks! what’s Australia like??
Duke461 - thanks. I think we had enough people to separate the jobs.
rachelholladay - thanks for the links. I will review them with the team.
DoronS - excellent descriptions. very close to what we’re looking for.
Grim Tuesday - that’s a great document. thanks for sharing!

9

I’m not currently in Australia, but I will say that Sydney is the best city in the world :slight_smile: And Melbourne has (I believe) the highest concentration of biomedical firms in the world. So look out for the Down Under teams to really grow FIRST and STEM

10

FRC 422 Officer Structure

**Team Leader: **
●Main officer during off-season,
●Leads team meetings (not build sessions)
●Facilitating decision making process equitably to completion
●Coordination and planning with parent/faculty sponsors and mentors
●Helping Admin and Outreach with Chairman’s Award

Mechanical and Design:
●Building mechanical aspects of the robot
●Technical drawings
●Co-leading build sessions
●Resources and Bill of Materials (work with Admin and Electrical/Programming)

Electrical and Programming:
●Designing/building electronics board
●Programming the robot
●Co-leading build sessions
●Resources and Bill of Materials (work with Mechanical and Admin),

**Administrations and Communications: **
●Intra-team communications,
●Safety,
●Attendance,
●Internal school relations,
●Resources and Bill of Materials (work with Mechanical and Electrical/Programming),
●Chairman’s

**Outreach and Public Relations: **
●Maintain written communication with sponsors.
●Facilitate development of sponsorship presentations
●Inter-team communications
●Organizing team community service events
●Chairman’s

In this system, the five team captains, elected by the membership, take on a share of the listed responsibilities. Each captain is allowed to appoint any number of subteam leaders in order to accomplish all responsibilities listed in each category, and may commission subteams or focus groups for anything they see fit. It is suggested that returning members participate in a minimum of two subteams, preferably across different disciplines, while new members should participate in a minimum of one.

11

This year, we’ve had the president, vice president, electrical head, mechanical head, IT head, and business head. We do something weird with the president, where we elect someone as vice president, and the next year the vice president becomes president. In theory, this teaches the vice president what has to be done as president.

12

We have a fairly small team compared to many, and we elected two general captains this year to oversee cooperation between groups and help lead the team meetings. Inside each subgroup (programming, chassis, manipulator, electronics, etc), a group leader was appointed based on experience, and was designated to teach the other members of the group how to perform the tasks assigned to the group. We didn’t have a very strict organizational structure, and there was a lot of merging between groups to get things done, but hey, we made it to Championships! While strict organization is good in theory, we’ve discovered it to be difficult to carry out throughout the season. The best advice I’ve seen is if something isn’t working, don’t be afraid to fix it. What works on paper often doesn’t in real life.

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