This is the first year my team has ever tried for the chairman’s award and I’m the one who’s heading up this task. I’m not too sure how I’m suppose to write the submission though. Is it suppose to be in first or third person? Also, what am I suppose to write about under the partnership section? Is it about our partnership with other teams or what? Also, if anyone knows where I can find an example of a chairman’s award submission, I would appreciate it very much.
Everyone does it a little bit differently. It depends on the personality of your team. If you check through the CD white pages you will find many examples of Chairmans submissions. I know Exploding Bacon posts theirs almost every year as do many other teams.
Here is ours:
There are no specific requirements on style, which means that you tailor the essay to fit your team. Just make sure it is bursting with content and tells your team’s story!
Here is a link to our team’s (Team 1511) essays: http://penfieldrobotics.com/media/awards/Chairmans.php
Don’t forget about the video portion of the submission. It’s a great way to highlight some of the key points in your presentation and paper and it’s a wonderful resource to show potential sponsors and broadcast what your team is really all about.
Here’s a link to 1902’s submission from last year.
There was a Senior Mentor hosted call on Oct. 27 featuring National Judge Advisors for FRC. I recommend a listen.
http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprograms/frc/content.aspx?id=10124
Some of the information from that call is summarized in a ppt I did for a workshop on Judging and Awards. Follow the links from the Awards section on NEMO resources here: http://www.firstnemo.org/resources.htm
Hereis our team’s submission from when we won RCA in 2009.
A search on CD Media here will get you even more examples …
Search here: http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/search/papers
for “Chairman’s” for starters
Best of luck
Chairman’s submissions are made to fit your team. You can write it in whichever point of view you want, and structure it however you want. Much like the robot itself now that I think about it. Their are some specific guidelines as to what your submission should include, but I believe that you already found those. I added the link to last year’s criteria below just in case. It usually doesn’t change, so it will be a good resource for getting started.
As far as your question about the partnerships section I would say any partnerships you guys have. For my team, this is partnerships with our sponsors, our community, partnerships with each other within the team and how we work together, with other teams in and out of our area, our school district etc… Just some food for thought.
As I said earlier, and a few other people have mentioned, make sure it fits the personality of your team. This is important because it has to mesh with your presentation that you give at your district event and helps you identify with the judges more as well.
I hope this helps!
The Chairman’s submission is meant to demonstrate how your team embodies the spirit of FIRST. It should represent what your team has done to advance the ideals of FIRST and promote science and technology in your community.
As for the format, it really does depend on the story you want to tell. Every team is unique, and has their own story and way of representing themselves. You can be as creative as you want, while still abiding by the rules of proper grammar.
I would suggest starting with a list of everything your team has done, and categorizing them. Once you have that, you can select the activities you think are most important and best represent what your team is all about.
Then make sure you emphasize the impact each has had, on your team members, school and community. FIRST is all about impact!
My advice would be to do the short essays and longer essay separately, so it doesn’t repeat too much, because a lot of the same things come up in each.
The video is also a very important part of your submission, and you want to make sure you have enough content when it comes time to actually putting it together. Take as many pictures or videos as you can, of EVERYTHING your team does. If possible, assign one person on your team the responsibility of taking pictures and videos.
As has been mentioned, search through the chiefdelphi forum- there has been a lot of great advice given in previous threads as well!
If you have any more questions or want someone to proofread, feel free to send me a PM! Best of luck!
Be creative and Have Fun!
I’m going to emphasize this statement.
Sure, a long list of events, projects, etc. is definitely something to be proud of, but it’s the creativity and passion that you put into your submission that shows the “charm” of your individual team and tells your story.
Thank you all very much for your help. I thought this was suppose to be pretty formal, so thank you for helping.
This is too late for this year, but if you make it to St Louis we will most likely again present a Robotics Conference on the Chairman’s Award. There will be a representative from (almost) every Hall of Fame team, who will each give a short presentation on how they won the award. There is also a Q&A session.
For help on this year’s submission, PA is probably too far for your team, but at the Upper Darby kickoff 341 and 365 will be giving a similar session.
If you have any other questions, this is definitely the right place to ask.
As everyone has said, there are lots of really good ways to format your answer for the essay. For the short answers, to maximize our character count last year we wrote a single sentence “zinger” that covered the main idea of our answer, and then we had bulleted lists of things we had done to support the main idea. For us, that was much more effective than writing conventional paragraphs.
I’d be more than happy to send you our submission from last year if you want to look at the formatting, just let me know and I will e-mail it to you. Team 365 has a really great model on their website too, located here: http://moe365.org/gfx07/chairmans/awardentry.pdf
It’s good to have a theme for your entire submission including materials submitted for other awards such as your website and business plan. Looking at the Championship Chairman’s teams’ websites is a good place to start, but your theme should reflect the character of your team. Good luck! 
Thank you SO much for this, Lydia! See, we are a 3rd year team, and we have submitted for the Chairman’s Award each of the last two years. We were awarded the Rookie Inspirational Award our 1st year, but fell short in our bid for the Chairman’s our second year. The judge told us that our outreach was TOO diverse and focused more on spreading the message of “science and technology” instead of “FIRST” itself. We are hoping for better results this year!
Carol,
Are the documents on “The Road To Chairman’s” all included in some sort of “Chairman’s Binder” that the judges receive at the competition?
Besides the executive summary, essay, and DVD, what should a team give to the Judges?
Thank you!
Our team presented info about the award at a local kickoff and had two helpful documents:
- Our process – how we go about writing the essay and creating the presentation; http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/papers/2440
- Character Cutting – how to cut down characters in Chairman’s/WFA/Dean’s List; http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/papers/2439
Hope these help! Feel free to message me if you have any questions =)