Does your team have any alumni who have gone on to pursue careers in science, math, engineering or technical fields, and who are now back mentoring your team?
Yes…
Kenny Ardizone, who is widely known in the FIRST community for SOAP… has graduated from my high school, went to college and now a software engineer at Motorola.
-Arefin.
We have two that I know of…
he is Carl Agnew (Cagnew). He is an alumni of West Lafayette and he came back as a mentor my freshman year. He is now our Tech coordinator and is a Junior at Purdue.
and we also have a “consultant” for the electronics team. that would be Jtosh (aka Oneangrydwarf). He helps me and the EPPICS sub-sub-team with the ideas and problems that we have.
(EPPICS = Electronics, Pnuematics, Programming, and Integrated Control Systems)
Yes, ME! I am majoring in Mechanical Engineering at Cal Poly Pomona and I am still very actively involved in 696.
I’m amazed that college students can find the time to come back and mentor a FIRST team… that’s a large time committment…
but for this thread I’m really interested in knowing how many teams have FIRST alumni mentors working with them who have already graduated from college and are now employed in scientific, engineering or technical careers.
Yes.
One very dedicated member of our team, Steve, is currently working at the NSA (that’d be in MD). However, he came back to us (that’d be NY) for the first two weeks of this year’s build season and will be back Monday to be with us for the last two weeks.
on our team we have a couple mentors who are former highschool FIRST members, but they weren’t on our team in highschool, but they are with us now.
We have quite a few who were former students who returned to be mentors. We currently have 3 mentors and 1 teacher like this: two mentors and the teacher who were former Wildstang students and myself who was a member of team 74 in high school. There’s also at least 3 other mentors who have helped in past years that were on Wildstang in high school who weren’t able to commit to it this year for various reasons. With the exception of our returning teacher they’ve all been engineers at Motorola.
Team 188 is proud to have SlimBoJones (Shawn Lim) back on our team. Shawn went from student, to college on a FIRST scholarship then started his own business an now mentors and sponsors our team.
Team 25 has a bunch of them- and you know some of them-
Shaun McNulty- rookie in 1997
Big Mike Schroeder - rookie in 1999
Mario Azar- rookie from 1998 (now in Az.)
George Horvath- rookie from 2000
Joe Clukies- rookie from 2000
Kristina Evanouskas- rookie from 1999 ?
Kim Bochert- rookie in 2000
plus a bunch of others who drop over when they are in town.
Not all are in engineering curricula but all are valuable members of our team. We make special arrangements so they can be a part of the action with our parents and mentors.
And now we have their brothers and sisters!! (believe it- we have a Little Schroeder)
Nobody leaves our team without permission…
WC 
(BTW- team 25 has graduated 43 students as of 2004- 73% went on to technical fields across the country )
RAGE has numerous college-age alums back working with us as mentors. We have one alum mentor who is interning as an engineer, and one alum who is a project engineer who is back now. In addition one alum went on to become a tech ed teacher and is now back with the team.
Many team in FIRST are too young to have their members do this.
Shannon Schnepp founded Team 461 with Mr. Steve Florence. I consider her a member of the team no matter what highschool she went to. Though she doesn’t mentor us specifically, she’s working with the regional committee (I think) and comes back to visit. She’s a great example of a role model for a lot of us.
- Genia
Shannon was actualy a member of team 68 truck town thunder when she was in high school, went to purdue, did the 461 thing, and is now back up in michigan helping with team rush i believe.
We use to have a alumni mentor…until he got his own team. :rolleyes: (DJ) But hey, I think he know’s a thing or two about how to run a team by now…GO 1646!
Yep. We did it. My girlfriend Monica and I started a rookie team this year. Things have been wonderful. We have a very dedicated group of students. We are out of Flint, MI. She works for GM and I work for Stryker Medical.
Our team has only college mentors running the show. We have sponsors, but no engineers or highschool teachers to speak of. This is by our design.
Kettering is one of our sponsors, and part of our home. They have been generous enough to give us a place to work and access to machines.
We have picked up other FIRST alumni in A-section (Kettering: 3 months of school, 3 months of work, non stop for 5 years with alternating sections of A and B) who are also assisting the team.
It can be done! And, it can be done well! See you at the Detroit regional, and hopefully Nationals!
Good call. I remember her saying that now. ;). I tried. She’s with us in spirit.
Not at this point, but we are looking to have a few next year, ummm me. Seeing that this is my Senior year in high school and I will be going to coledge in the fall I would certainly hope I can come back to my team.
That’s why I was curious how many were out there. It would only apply to teams who are in their 6th year or older… If a student joined as a senior in high school in the team’s rookie year, completed four years of college and got a job in a science/engg/technical career, then came back to mentor this year, the team would need to be 6 years old. If someone joined the team as a freshman, then the team would need to be 9 years old this year…
(I’m not including college mentors in this thread, just curious about “professional” mentors…)
Team 1646 has a mentor who was part of the origional 461 lineup (team sherbert WHAT WHAT!) He graduated from purdue and came back to rock out with the new rookie team in town, his name is Jorge.
Team 461 also has Jerry Budd who is a former college mentor who went on to join 461 as a consultant after graduating.
Chris Noble was on team 71 in high school, 461 in college and now with the robo devil in indianapolis now that he is out in the real world.
Team 330 has two mentors who started with the team as high school students and are now working locally as technical professionals. One is CD personality Joe Ross, the other is his buddy Zac. They are also the ENTIRE Hope Chapel Academy class of 1999. I don’t know of many teams that can say they had an entire graduating class on the team let alone having them back as mentors years later. Both are making significant technical contributions to the team and we’re glad to have them back.