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Chairman's Award
The Chairman's Award is the FIRST Robotics Competition's most prestigious award. The award honors the team that best represents a model for other FRC teams to emulate and best embodies the purpose and goals of FIRST. The Chairman's Award helps keep the central focus of the FIRST Robotics Competition on the goal of inspiring greater levels of respect and honor for science and technology. Transforming culture, reshaping old ideas, and inspiring innovation require time, enormous effort, solid collaboration, and a vision. Gatorbotics Team 1700 has all of these characteristics. Through FIRST, Gatorbotics has created a sustainable organization that has broken and continues to break stereotypes surrounding female engineers. In the past five years, we have established a school culture that embraces our passions like any other sport or extracurricular activity, a school curriculum that places greater emphasis on science, math, and technology, and fostered enthusiasm for engineering in elementary school children. Our mission is to provide exposure, information, and opportunities to the community. We spread the message of FIRST and nurture both leadership and innovation in young men and women. We began in 2005 as a product of the drive and initiative of a small group of dedicated Castilleja students. Their enthusiasm was infectious, and soon over 12% of the school joined in. Through our partnerships with the school, local engineers and professionals, teachers, the parent community, and corporations of every size, we have become one of the most visible student organizations in the region. We are recognized for not only our engineering innovations and competitive achievements, but also for our attitude and efforts to reach out to the larger community. The Gatorbotics FIRST experience has been transformative for team members and the school. As Castilleja provides no engineering courses, Gatorbotics serves as the girls" only exposure to programming, engineering, and technological innovation. Gatorbotics has provided opportunities for an entire "generation" of Castilleja girls to learn C, LabView, HTML, JavaScript, and CSS while building mathematics and science skills through real world applications. We are proud to report that 100% of team alumni have gone on to major in engineering, physics, biotechnology, and other sciences at universities such as MIT, Stanford, Harvard, Princeton, and Brown; alumni credit their interest in science directly to their Gatorbotics experience. The impact of Gatorbotics can also be seen in the cultural and curricular shifts at our school. As an all-girls school, Castilleja has traditionally placed a greater emphasis on the arts and humanities than sciences. Gatorbotics has provided a tremendous force of change: in the past year, to address this gap in the curriculum, three team leads designed and ran a semester-long robotics elective course. This self-run for-credit class not only allowed us to learn the new coding environment of LabView, but also provided a structured environment and timeframe within which we could work, learn, and collaborate during the off-season. The school's administration has noticed our efforts and is working to implement more advanced math, science, programming and technology courses. We have also reshaped Castilleja in a much more literal sense. Before this year, our robotics space was limited to a small project room the size of a cozy bedroom. Over the summer, we petitioned the school administration for a larger workspace. Recognizing the validity and scope of the robotics program we have established, the school gave us a much larger space as well as a robotics office. Our expanded workspace has made build season significantly smoother. No longer must we spend time setting up the chemistry lab for robotics, only to pack up a few hours later. By entrusting us with the keys, Castilleja recognizes robotics as a competitive student-run, student-led activity. Gatorbotics has become a fundamental part of our school's culture. To promote engineering and share our passion, Gatorbotics has planned and executed many school-wide and inter-school events. Each fall, we host a "blinky bug" workshop for students to learn about basic electronics in an informal environment. We also showcase our robot on Marie Curie Day (an annual celebration of the sciences) and other school events throughout the year. In 2007, we built a full size rack for both our team and others; we hosted several nearby teams for dinner and a practice session. Events such as these foster friendship and partnership. Two years ago, the team initiated "Camp Gatorbotics" during the summer. During this intensive weeklong course, students disassembled computers, built scooters, learned how to use pneumatics, and honed their programming skills. Camp allows students to engage with mentors during the off-season, get to know each other, and develop teamwork and leadership skills. The first year's curriculum was developed by our lead mentor, but in subsequent years by student leaders. We were the ones designing and teaching classes. Camp Gatorbotics has since become an annual tradition that we offer to all interested students. Gatorbotics is committed to spreading the FIRST message. Because we are an extremely small school, even with a large percentage of the student body invested in Gatorbotics, we lack the human resources to engage in large-scale community projects. We are nonetheless committed to giving back to the best of our abilities. Gatorbotics has successfully run a LEGO robotics program for underprivileged children at a nearby school, Elizabeth Seton, for the past three years. We see the enthusiasm in the faces of the children we mentor and know that if even a few of them are now excited about science, our efforts have been worthwhile. By bringing robotics to young children in a less-resourced school, we can encourage them to achieve higher learning and participate in science and technology as they grow up. Working with the children has exposed them to myriad possibilities; upon seeing our 2007 FRC robot in action, many expressed awe when told that in a few short years, they too could engage in the FIRST Robotics Competition. We have also mentored Castilleja's middle school FLL teams. Many of our FRC team members are graduates of this FLL program, creating a cycle of new FRC team members as well as FLL mentors. Gatorbotics has truly altered the perception of the sciences within the Castilleja community. Girls now see robotics as both an educational and enjoyable hobby. Robotics is an integral part of Castilleja's extracurricular offerings held in the same regard as other groups and clubs. In fact, Gatorbotics' members total around two dozen; we outnumber many sports teams. Our success stems from the nature of the team, as an interdisciplinary activity that combines the competitive aspects of sports with creativity, fun, elements of business and even community service. There is an area for everyone and anyone. Every team member is also extremely committed to other activities; it is not unusual for team members to go from school to sports to robotics. Our evening meeting time accommodates each girl’s unique schedule. Given the number of hours in the day, it is remarkable that team members commit to several hours of robotics nightly on top of already packed schedules. Their commitment symbolizes the validity and appeal of the robotics program we have established. Gatorbotics operates like an extended family. With around fifteen girls working on a given night, we are small enough to be friends as well as team members. Each night, we eat dinner as a team, recap each subteam's progress and plan for the rest of the night. Our nightly check-ins ensure open communication and strong team bonding. Our team's successes are a result of the relationships we have established with our mentors, parents, companies, and students. Over the years, we have developed partnerships with high-tech firms and companies such as IDEO, Tesla Motors, Evolved Machines, and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. These corporations have provided us with financial support, mentors, and in-kind donations. We regularly invite them to tour our workspace, observe our robot in action, attend competitions, and review our progress virtually and in person. We have built a particularly close relationship with the design consultancy IDEO. Several of our most cherished mentors who hail from these companies have been instrumental in designing and constructing past and present robots. The team walks to IDEO's shop almost daily during build season to construct our robot, as Castilleja does not have a machine shop. This experience has taught students how to use machine tools and how engineering and design work are carried out in the "real world." During the off-season, the team invited IDEO employees for an intensive observation session. Both parties asked questions and shared ideas on improving methods. The Artificial Intelligence Lab at Stanford, upon hearing about Gatorbotics, requested two of our team members as interns last summer. These internships were allowed these girls to apply what they have learned through FIRST in the real world. Our networking has allowed us to forge long-lasting friendships with professionals, share ideas in ways that benefit both the corporation and the team, and expose students to engineering, innovation, and professionalism. Our operating philosophy is to be student-run and student-led. While we appreciate the expertise and skills our mentors provide, we know that we learn the most from FIRST when we take initiative ourselves. Mentors never make design decisions for us. Once we come up with a design idea, we prototype; it is in this prototyping phase that mentors provide feedback about the design. They guide, suggest, and advise, but in a way that allows us to think and decide on our own. We also do all of our own budgeting and fundraising, and communicate with our sponsors ourselves. While our self-run organization provides many challenges, we become stronger and self-reliant through overcoming them. Gatorbotics is more than a club. We are a sports team, a business, and a family. We are women. We are engineers. We are students and we are teachers. We are collaborators and independent thinkers. We are FIRST. |