In the fall of 2011, a member of CRUSH (Fiona Hanlon) and member of Plasma 2403 (Kelly Carlson) started a new organization that aimed to help Arizona FRC teams excel. The organization is called the Arizona FIRST Student Division (or AZFSD). Fiona and Kelly founded AZFSD as a way to expand on gracious professionalism and increase communication between teams. Teams really only get to show off gracious professionalism at competitions, so CRUSH and Plasma decided to change that. The program is different than what is already available to teams. The Student Division focuses on communication between teams in a particular state. It expands on helping by having web-cam meetings every 2 weeks, so teams can verbally explain what they are having problems with, which is in some cases easier to do. Since it is focused on each state individually, we've found it has been especially helpful not only for fundraising, but for having fun and having an opportunity to speak to those with similar interests.
Our Goals...
AZFSD already met one of its goals: to branch out past FRC to make it Arizona's collaboration program. We now have, in addition to the student representative for the FRC team (at this point, only FRC teams use the web-cam collaboration system), a student representative from FTC, and coaches from both of the levels of Lego League. We are hoping to branch out the web-cam system into these other levels, as their seasons pick up again later this year.
CRUSH and Plasma would like to expand the division to other states, and hopefully nationally by the 2013 championship.
If you're an Arizona team and would like to join the Division, email Fiona at [email protected] or Kelly at [email protected]
CRUSH and Plasma would like to expand the division to other states, and hopefully nationally by the 2013 championship.
If you're an Arizona team and would like to join the Division, email Fiona at [email protected] or Kelly at [email protected]