Building Colorado’s 21^st Century Technology Workforce

   3 Minutes of Video Explains it all!

Since the September 2002 founding of Colorado FIRST, visibility and interest has exploded! Schools from Fort Collins to Grand Junction to Colorado Springs to Denver are working to field teams for the competitions. Major corporations are working to provide financial, facility, and other support for these teams. However, to succeed, they need adult mentors who can help the teams organizationally and technically.

Do you have professional or personal experience or interest in:

• Engineering
• Electronics
• Robotics
• Computer programming
• Computer Aided Design
• Animation
• PR, marketing, and communications
• Finance and fundraising
• Team organization and operations

If you are interested in any of these, you can be a mentor.

What you will do as a mentor?

A FIRST mentor:

• Inspires students in science and technology
• Motivates and engages students in the meaningful activities
• Creates open communication
• Facilitates instruction and has students do as much work as possible

Mentoring is the process by which an experienced person provides advice, support, and encouragement to a less experienced person. A mentor is a teacher or advisor who leads through guidance and example. On a FIRST team, the mentor's goal is to actively share wisdom and knowledge with the students to foster intellectual growth. Mentors need to help each other discover ways of adapting instruction to reach every student on the team. The mentors and students are equal and become united through a partnership where each works collaboratively toward a mutual and beneficial goal.

The team mentors will work with the students to learn technical and organizational skills needed to build a robot and compete as a unified team. You will help the team design and implement a robotic system to compete in a specific competitive environment using predefined parts. In addition to having some fun, you will have a profoundly positive impact on our children, our schools, and our community.

"Comparisons illustrate the return on investment in the FIRST project. Costs of $3,000 a person for one-week professional training courses are not uncommon in industry. Past industry participants in FIRST have vouched that they have learned more through the FIRST project than in any professional training course. Baxter Healthcare Corporation and Procter & Gamble have sanctioned the FIRST competition as product management and prototype development activities for their engineers."