Team 1640 Mission and Program
Contents
Our Program
Our Mission
To inspire and educate pre-college students within the greater Downingtown Area school district in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics through hands-on experiences with robotic technology. Build knowledge, an understanding of planning and project management and life skills (especially gracious professionalism, team work, effective communications, coopetition and leadership). Promote expansion of this program both within and beyond the Downingtown District. Use the core concepts in FIRST robotics as our foundation.
Continuing Improvement
We're now going into our ninth year of service to students in the Downingtown Area. We started with just 3 mentors and 8 students, but now include nearly 30 students and over a dozen active mentors. Our robots, once unassuming "kit" bots, are now highly engineered machines. Students have grown from mechanical and controls novices to programming advanced drivetrains, customizing transmissions with tight tolerances, and welding the robot frame in-house. Mentors who once reviewed the basics now teach advanced engineering. The 2005 team would not recognize us today.
Expanding Inspiration
We truly believe in FIRST's ambitions For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology. We've expanded our program to deliver FIRST LEGO League and VEX Robot Challenge opportunities to elementary and middle school students and even helped on the core management committee creating DASD's new STEM Academy. We also actively volunteer for all these competitions and can be found within the community at outreach events like the Upper Uwchlan Block Party, Downingtown Good Neighbor Day, and Uwchlan Day.
Cultivating Partnerships
Our goal is to develop a top-notch learning organization. First and foremost, our partnership is between students and our mentors. Mentors respect students as colleagues, working beside each other to learn and grow. Together, students learn confidence, leadership and life skills to leverage for the rest of our lives. Our partnership with team parents augments this mentorship relationship, strengthening students and the team as a whole. Our partnership with other local teams has made each of us stronger, as we share, adapt and expand each others ideas, on and off the field.
Our Accomplishments
Our Robots' Trophy Case
From our humble beginnings as a simple rookie robot, we've become very successful on-field team -- winning 4 of our 9 competitions in 2012. Though we're clear that awards are simply a side effect of truly inspired students, we still couldn't be prouder of the team's efforts in wining 13 performance and engineering awards over our 8 years!
2012 Duel Champions (271, 341)
2012 BR2 Champions (25, 869)
2012 MAR Champions (341, 25)
2012 Hatboro Champions (341, 1218)
2011 Riot Finalists (303, 2199)
2011 Duel Champions (365, 87)
2011 Phily Champions (365, 303, 2607)
2011 2228's Most Creative Robot
2009 PARC Champions (222, 2753)
2008 Duel Finalists (375, 272)
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Our Team's Achievements
Beyond our engineering-related accomplishments, we're much more proud of our community outreach and Gracious Professionalism and STEM inspiration-spreading efforts. Our team regularly participates and hosts outreach events and volunteering efforts within and beyond our community. Here's just a bit of what we do:
