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Chairman’s Video 2018
Chairman’s Essay
Team 5837 is founded on the principle of our name, Unity4Tech. In 2015, three Waterloo FTC teams representing both public high schools fused to form a new FRC team. Now in our third year, we’ve grown to include students from neighboring towns and private schools who lack access to an FRC team of their own. Each season we embrace the spirit of coopertition, competing against each other in FTC before reuniting as one team for FRC. Like our team logo of a tree, we are rooted in FTC, supported by mentors and sponsors, and branching out into our community to spread the message of FIRST and promote diversity in STEM.
In Waterloo, 70% of students qualify for free or reduced lunch and only 22% of our graduates go on to earn college degrees. Half the students in our school district identify as people of color and many students come here as refugees. Our goal as a team is to reach out to disenfranchised populations and connect them to STEM opportunities they may not realize exist. Since the beginning our team has been one of the most diverse in the state. In our first year, over ⅔ of our team were people of color and ⅓ women. This year ⅔ of our team hail from groups underrepresented in engineering, with ⅓ women, and ⅓ identifying as people of color. No matter who we are, FRC gives us the tools to rise above our circumstance. It impacts not only our lives, but allows us to help other FIRST teams grow and empowers us to change the culture in our community.
Our roots in FTC allow us to transfer our skills, knowledge and lessons learned to FRC. FTC has also become the key to our team’s sustainability. Through our presence at FTC League and Regional matches, we’ve directly recruited Jr. High students as they prepare to enter high school. Last season, our team helped FTC team 5023 after they lost their coach and all but one of their students by recruiting a new coach and donating members of our own teams to fill out their drive team. This interaction convinced the student to continue in FIRST this year by joining our FRC team. FTC has also helped recruit more students from West High and local private schools, as well as a new FRC mentor from a neighboring town. Being an amalgam of multiple schools and towns challenges us to overcome long time rivalries and prejudices to work as a united team. It also allows for students with vastly different backgrounds and resources to interact and learn from each other.
The support we receive from our sponsors and mentors helps us spread our message further. Last spring, Rockwell Collins selected students from our team to be ambassadors at the 2017 FTC North Super Regional due to our team’s community outreach and focus on inclusion. We were also chosen for this reason by Mid-America to be part of their STEM display at the 2017 Iowa State Fair. Our greatest partnership is with our largest sponsor, John Deere. Every year they invite us to demonstrate our robots during Engineer’s Week and to their headquarters for the FTC kickoff. Because of our team’s focus on helping underrepresented groups discover engineering and STEM careers, John Deere selected our team out of the 516 FIRST teams they sponsored last year to make a promotional video that was shown to the board of directors and at all FRC regional events. All but one of our team’s mentors are retired or current John Deere employees. Their dedication to serving us and our community has allowed our team to thrive. Many of our mentors have been involved in FIRST for years and half are also mentors for 4 different FTC teams at the high school and jr. high level. One mentor, Dick Hurban even helps John Deere teams based in Mexico, India, and Brazil. Because of his dedication, he was awarded the John Deere Inspire award in 2016. This year, an article about his efforts appeared in the John Deere Journal, and three videos featuring himself and our mentors, Maggi and Mohamed, were produced to inspire other employees to become mentors for FIRST programs. Our focus on diversity is reflected in our mentors with ½ of our mentors coming from underrepresented groups in engineering. They also have diverse engineering backgrounds, exposing us to new career paths. Our mentors show us that anyone can succeed in STEM, regardless of race, gender, religion, or socioeconomic status and provide our team with role models to emulate.
FIRST has given us real life experience applicable to careers in trade and engineering jobs. Our mentors expect more from us than even our teachers and will host homework sessions in lieu of meetings to ensure we keep our grades up. FRC offers students on our team a place to belong, an environment to grow, and for some, a guaranteed meal. It has also allowed our achievements to be recognized. Our team captain, Taylor, was recognized as a finalist for the 2017 Iowa Women of Innovation Award, due to her passion for robotics and STEM. Our mentors truly believe in us, to the point they expect us to become the engineers working on an eventual manned mission to Mars and the recipient of a Nobel Prize.
We use our team’s success to help other FIRST teams succeed as well. Last year we restarted FTC team 4626 based out of Hudson, IA as well as saved FTC team 5023 by recruiting new coaches. This year, five members of our team mentored jr. high FTC teams 5023 and 8008. After build season last year, we invited area FTC teams to our build site to demonstrate how we operate, CAD basics, and programming. Last year we helped a local rookie FRC team, 6455, with the software element of their kitbot, and gave pointers on what it takes to become Rookie All-Stars. In particular we highlighted the issues we experienced in our first year, and how to reach out to the FIRST community for help. This year we are preparing welcome packets for teams in attendance of the Iowa FRC Regional. Since the majority of teams will be traveling from out of town, our packet will contain information on nearby restaurants, coffee shops, entertainment, and vouchers for local hardware stores.We hope to make these teams feel at home, while also helping local businesses in our host city.
Our team motto is, “We work for TiPS: Together in Promoting Success.” This is our mantra as we work to change the culture in our community. In order to spark interest in our city’s youth, we demonstrate at elementary and jr high schools. This summer, we demonstrated our robots to roughly sixty 3rd-6th grade students attending a YMCA camp. In 2016 we hosted the “Cedar Valley Robot Rally in the Valley” where our mayor proclaimed the last week in March, “Robotics Week.” We invited numerous area FTC and FLL teams to demonstrate at the kick-off ceremony. This allowed participants in other FIRST programs to see what FRC is all about and inspire them to either join our team or start their own. To promote STEM education, our FRC team annually features our robots at Waterloo STEM Fest. Last year we organized all the FIRST teams in attendance, making sure to include teams from nearby small towns and show the full spectrum of FIRST programs available. We work to ensure every elementary school in our district has an FLL team and every middle school has an FTC team. Our goal is to provide all students the chance to move up the FIRST programs and retain their enthusiasm for STEM.
We recognize that in order to engage with underrepresented and disadvantaged groups in our community, we must actively seek them out. Each year our school district hosts Culture Fest, a city-wide event that showcases the art and music of often overlooked cultures within our community. Our belief that the culture of FIRST is open to all people drives us to attend every year. Our booth provides attendees the chance to drive our robots and appreciate the creativity involved in designing a robot. In an effort to inspire more young women and people of color to get involved in STEM, we partnered with the National Society of Black Engineers, the Society for Hispanic Professional Engineers, and the Society of Women Engineers. Together we hosted a screening of the film Hidden Figures on MLK Jr. Day that was free for students of all ages. Following the movie, representatives from the engineering societies discussed the importance of diversity in STEM and spoke about their own experiences and the challenges they faced in their careers. This fall, women on our team led sessions with 5-8th grade girls as part in the Expanding Your Horizons conference. Working in groups, we tasked these girls to design the longest paper bridge given the materials provided. This tested their critical thinking skills, teamwork, communication and other necessary skills required in STEM. At the same time it empowered them to recognize their own creativity and problem solving ability. This experience also challenged our own members to demonstrate leadership and facilitate the education of others. We believe that reaching out to these groups requires a different approach than demonstrations and rallies. Our team works instead is to find innovative ways of meeting people where they’re at and reframing their image of STEM to include themselves in the picture.
Malcolm Forbes defines diversity as, “the art of thinking independently together.” Our team and our community could easily be divided along demographic lines: boy, girl, rich, poor, black, white, asian, latino. Rather than be divided, we derive strength from our diversity and the unique perspective each team member provides. Independently, yet together, we take the skills we’ve acquired through our FTC roots, the nourishment received from our mentors, and the stage prepared by our sponsors, to branch out into our community and plant the seeds of possibility. FIRST has challenged us with the common goal of building a robot in six weeks. In doing so, FIRST has united us to build FRC team 5837, Unity4Tech. A team that is sustainable, inclusive, and building a legacy.