Revision as of 08:00, 29 October 2012

I was a student on Team 1640 from 2007 (Rack 'n Roll) until I graduated from Downingtown East in 2009. I continue to mentor the team, commuting 7 hours from Penn State Main every weekend almost year-round. (I have literally traveled the equivalent of the circumference of the Earth.)

Mentor

I currently serve as the team's field coach and process manager as well as its co-lead designer.

Field Coach

As field coach, I'm responsible for training the drive team (and currently the scouts), negotiating qualification and elimination strategy, serving as the chief at-event contact for other teams, liaising between the drive team and pit crew (and the rest of the team), and of course coaching the drivers during matches. The longest-standing coach and drive team member (and one of the long-running team members in general), I have been coaching 1640 regularly since I graduated in 2009 and have coached 5 of our 7 competition championships.

Process Manager

As process manager, I am responsible for the CIP or continuous improvement process on 1640. Generally, this is seen a endlessly bugging people to examine how we can better fulfill our mission (of inspiring and educating our students) and operate more optimally. I facilitate these discussions, mull over the SWOT (strengths/weaknesses/opportunities/threats) issues brought up, and then return with more suggestions, questions and improved structures with which to bug them. It's worked out well enough so far. This has been the mechanism for most of the team's recent restructuring. I am also responsible for some more in-the-moment issues, including running some meetings (particularly for student feedback), one-on-one interviews and other administrative and management activities.

Co-Lead Designer

During build season, this role generally entails teaching, supervising, and coordinating mechanical design, prototyping and fabrication. Unfortunately, a dearth in student CAD/design experience required me to step into a lead hands-on CAD role in 2011 before doing the bulk of the CAD work in 2012. My main job, however, is to work on remedying this inexperience, leading to my initiation and teaching of multiple design projects as the team's design process teacher. In 2013, I hope to take a more guiding, tutoring and coordinating role as a design leader, though I expect there will still be some hands-on CAD walkthroughs for eager students in my future.

Pit Supervisor

Though students now proudly organize and execute the pit work for 1640, I currently serve as the most-regular adult pit supervisor, coordinating troubleshooting efforts and advising the student crew where needed. (While not actually informal, this position is largely extemporaneous and derived from the collision of my coaching and process management roles with my student experience as pit captain.)

NEMO Mentor

As an official and active member of FIRST's Non-Engineering Mentor Organization, I have also assisted with the team's Chairman's and and Woodie Flowers submissions and created most of the team's media handouts. As our student and mentor base grows and more NEMO talent arises, I have been able to take a less active role in some of our own NEMO activities, though I still have some project responsibilities and remain active in some NEMO proceedings outside of 1640.

Volunteer

I am proud to say I am a budding FIRST volunteer. I serve primarily as a referee, though I have and will fill other roles in FRC, VEX and FLL.

2013 Season

• FRC Bridgewater-Raritan District - Referee
• FRC New York City Regional - Referee
• FRC Battle o' Baltimore Off-Season - Referee
  

...

2012 Season

• FRC Chestnut Hill District - Referee
• FRC Mount Olive District - Referee
• FRC Battle o' Baltimore Off-Season - Referee
• FRC Brunswick Eruption Off-Season - Referee
• VEX Delaware State Championship - Referee
• FLL Downingtown Area Robotics Qualifier - Judge

2011 Season

• VEX Eastern Pennsylvania Regional - Co-Lead Queuer

2010 Season

• FRC Big Apple Breakaway Off-Season - Referee
• VEX Eastern Pennsylvania Regional - Field Controller, logistics

2009 Season

• VEX Eastern Pennsylvania Regional - Referee

Student

In my time as a 1640 student, I served as captain-manager, pit captain, design team lead student, head mechanical student, head welder, co-driver, and outreach lead. However, several of these names would now be re-classified to include media lead, logistician and finance student, among others under the team's current, more detailed organizational scheme.

Captain

In 2008 I became the first 1640 student to be named lead captain for two years, serving as captain-manager of FRC Team 1640 for the 2008 (Overdrive) and 2009 (Lunacy) seasons before graduating Downingtown High School East Campus. At the time, the job entailed being representative and student liaison, media and PR lead, student logistician, contact point person, scheduler and organizer, and finance officer. It also earned me the first student slot on the [[Steering Committee], created in 2009.

Design Team & Mechanical Lead

In the 2009 season, I became the first student member of the just-created design team as the team's pit captain and lead mechanical student. Student slots have since been significantly expanded, but at the time the enhanced student-mentor coordination helped lead to the team's then-most unique (and effective) drive system, as well as our first official award (turns out the judges really would rather hear from a student).

Pit Captain

After an ill-defined 2008 pit hierarchy, I found myself in definitive the capacity of pit captain in post-season 2008 through 2009. Luckily, nothing much went wrong in 2009 (allowing me to focus on driving and wooing judges).

Co-Driver

As a sophomore in 2007, I became the team's youngest official driver by operating the arm at the Pittsburgh Regional. I drove in every event in 2007-2009 afterwards, including serving as alliance captain at PARC 2008, making the finals at Duel on the Delaware and winning PARC 2009. I also did some coaching in those years before becoming the team's main coach for 2010-Present.

Lead Mechanical Student & Chief Welder

As I took over as lead mechanical student in post-season 2009, one of the main changes I found myself in was in rapidly becoming the chief, first and only team welder (student or adult) in 2009. Somehow I managed to figure out what I was doing well enough to weld a 2009 robot that weathered 6 competitions (tied for our record at the time) with only one broken weld. I also served as lead mechanical student (design, though I also did fabrication) for the rest of the award-winning 2009 robot.

Outreach Lead

As the team's representative in 2008, I had the wonderful opportunity to help start a robotics club at Sugartown Elementary School in the nearby Great Valley School District, with whom we still remain in contact. Also in pre-season 2008, the team leadership began pre-kickoff classes (we were previously basically dormant before kickoff), several of which I taught to both the FRC team and our VEX outreach.

Team Roles & Photos

Below is a list of my sub-team memberships and roles throughout my student and mentor years (reverse chronological, each by precedence), along with a photo summary of my tenure.

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  DEWBOT III: What on Earth have I gotten myself into?

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  But I got used to it. And made pit crew! (for 3 years)

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  And drive team! (also 3 years)

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  I even made team captain! (2 years)

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  And we're getting better now.

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  I do outreach....

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  And some leader-like stuff.

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  And welding...

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  And public speaking! (GETT)

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  Hey, I'm a mentor.

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  In mechanical work...

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  And a coaching!

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  And CAD leading...

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  And teaching!

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  We've been in some tight spots...

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  But luckily it's worked out!

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  It's hard work...

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  And we've got stiff competition...

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  But what's not to love?

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  We're getting a lot better!

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  Really, a lot better.

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  It's pretty incredible.

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  'Nuf said.

Experience & Travel

I'm currently at Penn State - University Park, where I'm a Schreyer Honors College Scholar (<2% of all PSU undergraduates) and mechanical engineering major with concentrations revolving around international relations and humanitarian engineering. I am currently a teaching intern in the humanitarian engineering & social entrepreneurship program at Penn State, where are do some curriculum writing and teaching in addition to working on getting peer-review articles to publication. I will be taking graduate bridge courses at Penn State until 2014 before moving on to graduate school for engineering. I am also a student member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) and an honored member of Tau Beta Pi. Additionally, I have traveled rather extensively in my work and study for international relations and humanitarian engineering.