Chairman's Award Submission

As an active FIRST Robotics team, Epsilon Delta’s (ED) goal has always been to promote FIRST, to attract a diverse body of students to the dynamic program and to teach them to be confident, innovative leaders.

ED is about building. We build robots, but more so we build lives. We build teams, we build communities, we build confidence. Most importantly of all, we build tomorrow.

Building a Team

ED has doubled in size from the 2007 to the 2008 season, as a result of successful outreach from students. The large size of our team allows us experience the joys of having a diverse group, but our size also presents additional obstacles to overcome. With eighty members and one robot, it takes fantastic coordination to keep everyone involved. Our team members organize themselves into subgroups that each carry out a particular aspect of the team. We have an electronic check in system to keep track of every member’s hours to make sure that no one is falling behind. Somehow, despite the size, the team builds very personal relationships with mentors and team members.

In addition to the increase of the sheer size of our team, we have pulled in more diverse students in the past year. We have nearly tripled our participation by minority students in 2008, and have doubled our number of female team members. We encourage outreach aimed at young women, and our efforts have led to increased membership. Our members have reached out to local Girl Scout troops. We also brought our robot to “Sally Ride Day,” an event dedicated to inspiring women in engineering fields, at George Mason University.

ED fosters confidence and leadership; we help any student recognize their potential. One of last year’s team co-captains started high school with a GPA of 1.2, and never imagined that he would pursue a college education. After joining the team, he applied the dedication and problem solving skills that he learned with ED to his educational career. Today he is attending his first choice college, with the intention of opening a welding apprenticeship once he graduates. Not surprisingly, this former captain continues to visit and help members of ED at team meetings.

Team ED goes beyond a high school activity; members of ED are members for life. We consistently have members return as mentors. George Costigan never left; he became an ED mentor immediately following his high school graduation. Tyler Wetzel graduated in 2004 and is still on the team today. Joanne Emerson, class of 1999 returned to the team as a mentor and has even gone on to found other teams. At least one member of every ED team from our very first year until now is still involved with the FIRST program in some fashion.

Building a Community

No team can be successful without a network to support it. ED does outreach every year to foster interest in our team to younger children, and to give our community an understanding of what we do. We bring our robot to fun activities, such as “Air and Space Day” and “Air and Scare,” a Halloween event at the Udvar Hazy Space Museum. Every year we set up a booth at the Herndon Festival, a popular annual event that pulls in over 20,000 locals each day. We bring our VEX Squarebots and set up a miniature interactive game and playing field where families will stop to play as we tell them about FIRST, the team, and the robot. Watching children and parents alike enjoy the Squarebot activity is like watching a bridge be erected over the generation gap.

The Town of Herndon invited ED to participate in Community Safety Day in October of 2007, where the team demonstrated shop safety. Sponsors of the event, the Herndon Crime Prevention Council, indicated that ED would be invited back next year.

ED participated in the 2007 “Relay for Life,” where we gave participants the opportunity to play with our robot. We also donated a robot toy to be raffled off, with the proceeds going to the American Cancer Society.

Our strong community network has allowed us to continue as an active FIRST team. Our largest sponsor by far is NASA, supplying us with a $35,000 grant per year. This past summer, SAIC, where one of our engineers worked, allowed us to successfully transport our robot to the Indiana Robotics Invitational. In addition to the assistance that we receive from large companies, the respect that we have earned from our community has led local businesses to give us generous discounts and even to donate tools and materials to show their support for our team. Our sponsors are our most valuable asset; ED would not be able to continue without them.

We recognize that competition should inspire respect and friendship. We follow an “open pit” policy at competitions, where we allow other teams to use any tools that we bring to competition, and help them to overcome any obstacles that they come across while trying to improve their robot. In addition, we mentor FLL teams, FTC teams, and other FRC teams. ED even invites these teams into our shop to see firsthand mentoring other teams is as important to us as our own team is; we take pride in their successes and share in their joy.

... And Beyond

In our first few years as a team, we put enormous effort into contacting companies and local groups for outreach. Today our reputation as a constructive and unique team leads groups to approach us, and our team are consistently invited to events. For example, in Spring of 2007, ED was one of two FRC teams invited to the Washington DC Congressional Reception to introduce our team and our robot to congressmen from across the country. By playing our game and listening to team members, the congressmen had an extremely positive, interactive experience with ED, and learned about the wonderful FIRST experience. ED was also invited to a similar event the year before; we attended “Tapping America’s Potential 2015” on Capital Hill where we demonstrated our creativity and ingenuity to members of Congress.

ED strives to impart a spirit of generosity on every team member. We reach out to other teams if they need help. After Hurricane Katrina devastated parts of Louisiana, we collected tools and materials, including some from our own shop, and drove them to New Orleans so that they might help teams to rebuild so that they could still participate in FIRST.

ED keeps an extensive photo-journal of our activities. We frequently receive requests to use our photos to promote FIRST and robotics education; our photos have been referenced by other FIRST teams, and have been used in newspapers, on websites, and in NASA’s End of Year report.



Building a Future

The next generation of young minds is our world’s most valuable resource for technological advancement. By doing outreach activities at local elementary schools, we create an interest at a young age and ensure a continued participation in FIRST for the years to come.

The impact of ED stretches far beyond our community. ED works to inspire new FIRST teams to give students worldwide the opportunity to participate. ED has been directly credited with getting NASA involved with FIRST. We were the first team sponsored by the NASA Telerobotics Program back in 1995, and based on that the success of that experience NASA made the decision to become deeply involved in the FIRST program. As a direct result of that success, NASA now sponsors nearly 200 teams and 4- regional competitions each year – all of which are ED’s descendents. After an inspiring year with ED, Angelique Couloris moved to Greece in 2007, and is starting a FIRST team at her new school in Athens. Alisha Wallenstein MacIntyre finished her high school years with ED and went on to found two new Virginia teams while mentoring ED during her college years. Alisha then went on to become the director of FIRST Israel, where she has personally created 24 new FIRST teams and directs the Israel Regional Competition. Former team captain Matt Haberland finished graduate school at the age of twenty-one and is now working at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where he is helping to build the next generation of space craft to explore Mars. While there, he helped found and mentor a new FIRST team at La Canada High School in Pasadena.

For current team members, we inspire students to pursue higher education. Every year, team members who never considered engineering become so enthralled by the FIRST experience that they choose to pursue technical careers. ED helped Chris Comtois decide to go into mechanical engineering. Allie Grimes discovered ED while working on the school yearbook her sophomore year. After working with the team mentors, next year she will be going into aerospace engineering at Virginia Tech. Joel Grossman was planning to be a theater major before joining ED. Now he plans to be an engineer. “Robotics has helped me practice what I will be doing as an electrical engineer, and working with the team has strengthened my interest,” said senior Ted Markson.

While the six week build season may be mostly devoted to the current competition, ED members spend the entire year working on projects for the future. ED is helping FIRST plan next year’s Washington DC regional. We currently have a myriad of projects planned for this summer. ED is helping fund “The Superbowl of Smarts,” a documentary film about FIRST that is following three teams: a Girl Scout team, a rookie Hawaiian team, and an incarcerated youth team in Denver. The film is being produced by Fleur de Lis Films, and is hoping to premier at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival.

In truth, every FIRST team is highly deserving of the Chairman’s Recognition Award. Simply by involvement in FIRST, they promote a dedication to teams who are innovative and respectable in healthy competition. As a proud representation of FIRST, ED strives to promote the qualities of FIRST, of gracious professionalism, inspiration, teamwork and invention.

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