FIRST Technology Challenge

2016 Dean’s List Winner, Colleen Johnson explains how the skills she has learned participating in FIRST programs has changed her perception of herself, what she can accomplish, and her goals for the future. FIRST has changed my life. You hear that sentence over and over again, tens, or even hundreds of times, at different FIRST events, but let’s take a moment to really step back and think about what those words mean.   FIRST has taught me so many different valuable lessons, and helped me identify such a wide variety of passions, that I honestly don't know where I would be without it. Now, before we go any further, there’s something you should know. I love to create videos.   Training videos, advertisements, audition tapes, dumb little videos with my friends, whatever.   And I’ll talk about how FIRST helped me discover that a bit later, but for right now I want you to imagine this.   A young girl sits in the middle of the Smart Move FIRST LEGO League course ...

2016 Dean’s List Winner Luz Moreno explains how the skills she has learned participating in FIRST programs has changed her perception of herself, what she can accomplish, and her goals for the future. If you would have asked me five years ago what my plans were for college, I would have laughed and explained to you how college “is just not for me”. I was always told that once I turned fifteen I would become just another number on a graph. I never had college in mind until I started my FIRST team back in the fall of 2014. During our first competition with an incomplete robot, a referee asked me my plans for college and I stayed silent because I had no answer to it. What do I say? What should I say? So many thoughts were going through my mind, and not having an answer terrified me. I cannot thank that referee enough, he gave me a pamphlet about the FIRST Scholarship Program and said: “I know you will do great here in the FIRST Tech Challenge, welcome to the family”. He was the first ...

We asked Andrew Dornbier, a 2016 FIRST Tech Challenge Dean’s List Award Winner from Garner, Iowa, “What does inclusion and equity mean to you, and how has FIRST helped show your identity and relate to others more positively?” We're happy to share his awesome response with our community! FIRST has defined me as who I am today. I started with FIRST when I was in 4 th grade on our 4-H county’s first ever FIRST Lego League team.  My FIRST Lego League team was more than just playing with Legos. I couldn’t wait until the end of August when the mission pieces would come with a huge book of instructions and wondering what my team was going to build and program. My FIRST Lego League team did team building exercises every time we met. My coach was competitive and wanted us to do well on the robot but she always said that the score on the robot meant nothing unless we demonstrated Gracious Professionalism no matter how good or bad we did at the table. FIRST has core values that teach life...

The FTC season is well underway. Scrimmages, Meets, and Qualifier events have officially started, and in some places the State Championship is coming up within the next couple of months. But did you know that there is still time to apply for the Dean’s List Award? Laura Irvine, a 2015 FIRST Tech Challenge Winner has this to say to any Mentor or Coach that has been thinking about nominating their students for the Dean’s List Award. “Apply! Apply! Apply! Don’t be afraid because you think other people do more than you, because it’s not really about that, it’s about how you make the most out of FIRST for yourself and the people around you. Plus the entire experience was a ton of fun, and I met lots of amazing and inspiring people along the way.” This past July, the ten   FIRST Tech Challenge and ten   FIRST Robotics Competition 2015 Dean’s List Award Winners were flown to Manchester as part of winning the Dean’ s List Award. For FIRST Tech Challenge, this was a celebration of th...

Imagine it, the FIRST World Championships and Festival . You are in America’s Ballroom, which is packed with teams, coaches and mentors, video cameras and photographers, and Dean Kamen. He’s speaking to you about the importance of STEM, and how you are the future. But he doesn’t mean “you” rhetorically or “you” as an audience member or “you” as a young adult. He literally means you , a Dean’s List Award Winner. Alec Kumpf and Simran Parwani are both 2014 FIRST Robotics Competition Dean’s List winners. Since 2010, ten FRC team members each year have been on the stage in America’s Ballroom with Dean Kamen to receive the Dean’s List Award, meaning Simran and Alec are part of a group of fifty winners. That’s fifty out of almost five thousand finalists.   This year, there will be ten more FRC team members added to the ranks, and for the first time, ten FTC team members as well. Alec onstage at the FIRST Dean's List Award ceremony “The whole experience is priceless. Very few experienc...