Chairman's Award

Hey, I'm sure all of you would like to know what this is before you read it.

So, I am part of a FIRST robotics team that is submitting this essay for a chance to win the Chairman's Award, which is the most prestigious award in the FIRST program (An international program, I might add!). This award celebrates a team's embodiment of the spirit of the FIRST program.

FIRST stands for For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology. Its goal is to inspire young minds to pursue careers in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics).

This essay is not due for a while, but I need as much feedback as possible, from people of all different backgrounds, because it's impossible to know who will be judging this essay.

[On top of this, we also have to do a ten-minute interview with judges, create a video, and a visual aid for the judges during the live presentation.]

Anyways, that was just so you knew what you were reading. I would like the most harsh feedback as possible, because it could mean the difference between us being honored in the highest way possible, or not.

By the way, sorry for any awkwardness, I have to edit out anything that might give away our location because I am paranoid. ^^"

***EDIT: FRC stands for FIRST Robotics Competition, for high school students. FLL Stands for FIRST Lego League, robotics that involves Lego robots for elementary schools. FTC is FIRST Tech Challenge, for Junior High with smaller robots than FRC. CAD: Computer Aided Design.

FIRST has implemented FRC in order to encourage teamwork, cooperation, creativity, and interest in STEM in young minds. It is also used to build bridges between individuals, the FIRST community, and the world. FIRST Team 461, Westside Boiler Invasion (WBI), has similarly utilized the FRC program, along with the other levels of FIRST, to extend our reach. This includes to our school and our fellow students, to the young students that may potentially join FIRST, to our local area, our state-wide communities and beyond. In this way, WBI has employed a new theme based on FRC, standing for Facilitating Relationships in the Community, which encourages our own team members to uphold FIRST’s goals in FRC. This acronym is reflected in our team’s efforts in communities of all types.

TEAM

Firstly, FIRST impacts our team as a community. Our team strives to maintain the reputation that our name, Westside Boiler Invasion, implies: an invasion into the community with our knowledge of science and technology, and our passion for FIRST. The word “Boiler” refers to our unique and strong bond with Purdue University and the Purdue FIRST Programs, or PFP. This program allows us to build stronger relationships within FIRST, both with fellow teams in the area and with mentors.

Through the Purdue FIRST Program, which will be discussed in more detail later, college students can mentor various subteams for credit. Educational relationships are made easier due to the small age gap between mentors and 461 members, which has a huge impact on our team. College students can relate to the high school students because of similar experiences, as many were previously a part of FIRST themselves, if not an area team. Many come into the program already knowing many of the students, making it easier to form meaningful bonds between students and mentors. These college students help with anything from manufacturing of the robot, to providing ideas for outreach, to giving advice for students, even occasionally helping with homework when schedules are tight during Build Season. This program as a whole acts as a vehicle for all of the relationships that WBI has formed.

SCHOOL

Expanding outward, 461 has an impact on our school. We have partnered with our school’s Best Buddies program, working with the special education children. Best Buddy events are held at our school and begin with the kids receiving a simple, prebuilt Lego Robot. Throughout the day, the kids create personalized attachments that they add to their robots to give them a sense of accomplishment. The day culminates with a maze, that the robots try to complete with the help of their buddies. In reflection of this newfound alliance with Best Buddies, their theme this year is titled “RoboBuddies”. Also in our high school, we have begun a dodgeball tournament, which has been held twice, where any high school student may form a team with their friends and participate. This is a charity event where all proceeds go to the Purdue Center for Cancer Research. Because of this, we can simultaneously contribute to an important cause and spread the word of our team to fellow peers.

FIRST TEAMS

Team 461 has a strong bond with the other area teams (1646, 1747, and the newly formed 4272). We keep in constant communication, compare ideas, and travel to competitions together. The older teams have joined together to mentor 4272 by providing them with parts and assisting them in building a basic drive train during the offseason so they can understand the basics of robot manufacturing and be prepared for the on-season. To continue to strengthen these bonds, these four teams get together during various events each year, aside from those sponsored by Purdue FIRST: for example, our local teams come together for an off-season bonding experience in the form of an annual Halloween party for students to get to know one another on a more personal level. This strong relationship with fellow FIRST teams would not be possible without Purdue FIRST.

PURDUE FIRST

PFP provides more than this, however. Through PFP, around forty teams are brought from across the country to the Boilermaker Regional, which PFP sponsors yearly. Purdue also holds a Kickoff event for teams all over the state. During this event, the local teams act as hosts, especially to new teams, by having a short session after the game announcement where strategy is discussed.  Another event, the Design Review, allows us to keep others updated on the ongoing activities of the team. Teams prepare presentations on every aspect of the team, including CAD models, programming and playing strategies, and outreach events. The Open House, which happens at the end of build season each year, gives us the opportunity to demonstrate our completed robots to the public. The PFP teams come together to build a portion of the field in our school’s gymnasium, showcase the robots, and also give presentations describing each element of the game and of the teams’ strategies and designs.

LOCAL COMMUNITY

In turn, our own team members can act as mentors to potential future FIRST members, thereby expanding our reach into the community. We volunteer to mentor several of the 20 local FLL teams so they can successfully progress through the FIRST program. This mentoring also allows them to get to know current WBI members. Here, they can develop their skills that will allow them to excel in FTC and FRC in the future. Similarly, our team members volunteer to assist two types of summer camps, one directed toward FLL students and one for FTC.

While WBI strives to build bonds with fellow teams and people within FIRST, we also make efforts to provide outreach specifically through our team by taking independent initiatives. This year, 461 is re-forming our collaboration with the local mall, where we can demonstrate robots of all sizes and talk about our team with mall patrons. Through giving away buttons, brochures, and even bracelets and bookmarks, we have spread our name across the community, and in turn the name of FIRST.

Those that our team strives to serve and reach also include the [our city] area. Our team has formed a partnership with our local library to have quarterly demonstrations. We talk about the basics of robotics, read robot-related books to children and demonstrate our current year’s FRC robot along with FLL and FTC robots. Near the ends of the sessions, kids are allowed to drive the large robot with the assistance of trained drivers on 461.

We have strived recently to expand from just our FIRST education in the community and instead reaching out through non-FIRST related volunteer work. Another new program that WBI is attempting to build a partnership with is the Adopt-a-Spot program. 461 has adopted a spot where team members make a pledge to volunteer to clean up trash and take care of the plant life in this location for a year.

STATE/NATIONAL COMMUNITY

To expand our influence across the state of Indiana, the team has attended the State Fair in an effort to educate others about FIRST. In past years, our own students have traveled to this event, bringing our robot and presenting it to fair participants. More recently, however, we have communicated with another team to have them attend for the first time in our stead, giving their team outreach opportunities while allowing us to focus on other events. We have traveled around the state to cities such as Gary, Indianapolis, and Valparaiso to give interactive presentations to disadvantaged children to spark an interest in science and technology despite their limited resources.

We have expanded even further than the state of Indiana to spread our love of FIRST. Through our team’s Robotics Merit Badge workshops, six hundred and fifty boy scouts have earned their merit badges since 2011. Local scouts utilize our team’s space to build robots that perform specific tasks after 461 team members give an interactive presentation on the basics of robotics to fulfill the requirements of the badge, but we have strived to make this available nationally. There is an annual Boy Scout Jamboree in Illinois where over 100 boy scouts attend each set of workshops, where their time is divided between the presentation and building robots in groups with the help of WBI team members. We have also regularly traveled to a Boy Scout camp for a similarly structured event while at camp. To meet part of our goal of becoming a model team, we have provided other FIRST teams at competitions with guides on how to perform similar workshops in their area. This information is available on our team’s website, making emulating our team even simpler.

WORLD

Our goals for spreading the message of FIRST do not stop at the national level, however, and our reach stretches even to where our own team members are unable to travel. We have sent Lego kits internationally to El Salvador, where people expressed a desire to begin a team but lacked resources. With this contribution, a new FLL team has begun there, and it has the means to continue growing.

No matter what type or size of community that our team influences, we are determined to display our passion for FIRST in everything we do. Through local demonstrations, our relationship with PFP, and our new volunteer initiatives, Team 461 has given a new meaning to FRC, by forming partnerships in communities of all sizes and locations. Through the theme of Facilitating Relationships in the Community, we have the capability of influencing a much greater area, and we will use the resources we have to continue to expand our reach.