Project Proposal:
Title of Project FIRST Tech Challenge Mentoring
Abstract of
Project My name is Andrew Keen. I am a Mechanical
Engineering student at SUU. For my project, I will be mentoring and co-coaching
a FIRST Tech Challenge team called Randomonium. My dad is the other coach, and
he will handle things like driving team members to competitions, and helping
the team with applying for grants and talking to sponsors. We will probably be meeting
in room 106 of the engineering building at SUU, or at my house, because it’s
easier to leave everything in the garage instead of cleaning up after every
meeting. It’s less disruptive, and team members can work on things whenever
they have free time, instead of whenever someone is in the engineering building
to unlock things and supervise. My jobs will include simple things like keeping
the team focused, and more engineering related things, like helping them
through the design process, or teaching them how to use Computer Aided Design
software(CAD), AKA 3D Graphics. I will be helping this team throughout the
competition season, from about August 2018 to February 2019. We will be meeting
once or twice a week, though it always seems to turn into 4-5 times a week once
the competition gets close. I will be recording when each meeting was, what we
worked on at each meeting, and what I helped with. I will also be recording the
length of the meetings to make sure I have 40 hours, although I should have
well beyond that. I won’t exactly be solving a problem or dealing with an
issue, but I will be providing help where help is needed, or at least where it
is strongly requested. I will be helping future engineers with their
engineering education, or maybe even helping them to make the decision to study
engineering in college. Hopefully I can make their experience with FIRST Tech
Challenge more enjoyable, and show them how fun engineering can be.
Larger Purpose I want to learn leadership and communication skills while using my
knowledge to help other people learn more about engineering. I also wanted to
pick something I was familiar with so that I could get straight to the project
and not spend all my time just figuring out what to do.
Project Goal For my EDGE Project, I will mentor and coach a youth robotics team, using
the engineering knowledge I have gained through my college education. I will
help this team to do the best they can in their competitions, and try to share
my knowledge with them the best I can.
1-3 Outcome(s) I learn more about engineering, leadership, and communication. The team
learns more about engineering and the design process and has a fun experience
with this program.
Community
Significance I will be helping students interested
in engineering to learn more about their interests. This is a considerable time
commitment, so coaches are hard to find. I am providing a service that many
people are not willing to dedicate time to doing, and providing these students
with a unique and fun learning opportunity. I will hopefully become a better
leader and become better at communicating ideas to other people.
Deliverable(s) I will put together a blog with pictures of me
working with the team, a record of the meetings, the length of those meetings,
and what we worked on. I will also include the team’s accomplishments: Their
finished robot, their awards, if any, the competitions attended, etc.
Differentiation I will stand out because I
will be learning about my major, engineering, while helping younger students
interested in engineering learn the same things. I will be working with a
program I am already familiar with, so I won’t have to learn too much about it,
and can instead get to helping out and actually doing my project better and faster.
It will show that I am willing to learn and help out, and that I am interested
in the success of other people, and not just myself.
Estimated Costs Nothing. All fundraising is supposed to be done by the team members, and
there are also grants available to the team. Any money I spend for driving or
lunch or anything like that will be reimbursed. As for money I could make by
working, it’s only two or three hours a week, with the exception of
competitions, and I don’t work during the school year anyway because I have too
much engineering homework. I wouldn’t be working just two hours a week, so I’m
not losing money. This is how every competition season has gone so far, and
that is how it’s supposed to work. No one has to pay money they don’t have, so
it’s accessible for everyone.
Estimated Timeline We will start meeting in
August 2018 to prepare for the challenge reveal and discuss possible ideas
beforehand. We may even start sooner. The state competition will be in February
2019. They will have to move on from a qualifier at some point in December or
January, but they have moved on three years in a row, so that shouldn’t be a
problem. There are also multiple qualifiers to attend. We will meet at least
once a week, although we might try to make things a bit less structured this
year and let people work whenever they have time, which would be more
productive. The best meeting length seems to be between 1 and 2 hours, so that
people have time to work, but don’t get too off-topic. As for getting 40 hours,
that should be easy. If there are approximately 4 weeks in a month, then we
would meet for about 8 hours a month. August to December is 5 months, and 5
times 8 is 40. There are also multiple competitions, which are about 10 hours
long. As a rough estimate, it should be about 60 hours of service, even if the
team doesn’t move on to state. If they do that means more meetings and longer
meetings, as well as another competition.
Challenge video:
(please watch this first to get an idea of what the team was working on)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rR4gR4l2XA8
(skip to 2:05, you don't want to see the beginning)
Meetings:
This is a list of the team meetings that I participated in, and the approximate amount of time I was there. I recorded a quick summary of the events of each meeting, mostly focusing on the team's progress on the robot. I did not help with programming, so that was not recorded. There are small jumps in the team's progress, because I did not record meetings I didn't participate in.https://andrewkeenedgeproject.blogspot.com/p/meetings.html
Images:
https://andrewkeenedgeproject.blogspot.com/p/images.htmlPictures taken at events and meetings starting at the kickoff all the way up to the state competition.
Results:
We made it to the finalist alliance at the state competition, which is basically second place. We didn't get any design awards because our engineering notebook was almost nonexistent, but we did get a few control awards for programming. Getting the team to do the notebook is really difficult.
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