Executive Summaries
Last updated
Was this helpful?
Last updated
Was this helpful?
Executive Summaries are a series of short-answer questions provided by FIRST, focusing on team demographics and outreach initiatives. These summaries must be submitted alongside the Impact Essay.
The questions change each year, but the topics remain consistent.
Each response is limited to 500 characters, requiring concise yet detailed answers.
It is essential to mention outreach events not covered in the Impact Essay.
To maximize coverage, avoid repeating the same event or project across multiple answers.
Describe the impact of the FIRST program on team participants within the last 3 years. Think about percentages of those graduating high school, attending college, in STEM careers, leadership skills, and serving as mentors/sponsors in FIRST programs.
We unite students in the greater Iowa City area, representing 6 cities, 7 high schools, and 5 districts. A recent 167 alum and software mentor joined the 57% of our mentors who are FIRST alumni. In the past 3 years, 100% of our seniors are pursuing STEM majors. As another alum put it, "FIRST helped develop my love for STEM. It provided me with the experience, support, and community that helped promote my scientific growth and those experiences have helped me with my future career in STEM."
Describe your community along with its unique opportunities and circumstances. Think about your geographic region, diversity of town/school, language barriers, socioeconomic barriers, and cultural expectations.
While visiting the Neighborhood Centers of Johnson County (NCJC), we gained insight into our community’s diversity. At 11 events, we engaged with over 400 students, 98% from Black or minority families. Many parents relied on their children for translation, so we collaborated with staff to translate our posters into Spanish and Arabic. To further support pre-reading students, we developed picture-based instructions for our Mini Bots series.
Describe the team’s methods, with emphasis on the past 3 years, for spreading the in ways that are effective, scalable, sustainable, and creative.
At a NCJC Lunch & Learn, a STEM non-profit, NewBoCo noticed the students’ excitement around our robot and invited us to their CoderDojo. Since then, they have visited our lab, added robot demos to their schedule, and asked us to judge their Future City Competition for Eastern Iowa Middle Schoolers (a DiscoverE national competition.) We judged their students' essays about building a better world and in return they acted as mock judges for our team and attended our inaugural Robot Reveal Night.
In 2021 we made recruiting a primary goal of ours after having only 6 competition team members. We identified 16 member roles that would make up our ideal minimum team. By joining a local homecoming parade, putting up flyers in businesses, attending club fairs, and reaching out to parent groups we have reached 29 active members. Second, we recognized a need for more devices for team and outreach events. Our business team applied for and received a grant from Bayer for 12 tablets and 15 laptops.
What impact has your team seen from your efforts described in the above question? How does your team measure impact?
More members and sufficient access to more technology our team has allowed us to accomplish tasks more efficiently and impactfully. Many of our events have limited registration due to device shortages, increasing these has led to a huge increase in participant capacity. Over the past 3 years we have had 1,161 hrs of outreach, reached 36,941 people, and had 97 summer campers. These measures and student feedback help us identify areas of impact. 22% of summer campers have returned for 1+ years.
Please provide specific examples of how your team and team members act as role models for the FIRST community with emphasis on the past 3 years. How do you share these best practices with other teams?
Our PopBot Swerve initiative helps transition teams from tank drive without the upfront financial burden. The drive base has traveled to 4 different teams since 2023 along with an introductory program we have created. This allows teams to learn and test before they fully commit. To further help balance the FRC experience, we created a summer camp crash course to provide teams with another funding path. Our goal is to provide equal opportunity through knowledge and resources to all teams.
Describe your team’s initiatives to Assist, Mentor, and/or Start other FIRST teams with emphasis on activities within the past 3 years.
Beyond our FLL and mentoring initiatives mentioned in the essay, we’ve built strong relationships with local FTC teams. Liberty Robotics has assisted at Jr Bots and joined us for outreach events. Together, we packed meals for families during Back-to-School Night. We also hosted a robot review and mock judging to help their new coach learn about FTC. Team 9925 supports our camps and recently joined us for a STEAM night with sponsor BAE Systems.
What other initiatives have you created, grown, sustained, or participated in (FIRST or otherwise) to help inspire young people to be science and technology leaders and innovators? What outcomes have you seen from your efforts in the past 3 years?
From demoing for 350+ kids to an initial workshop of 20 students, we made a splash in our 2 years at the Iowa City Public Library. We have created and grown multiple library events including 2 How-To Tuesdays, 3 Mini Bots workshops, 3 Arts Festival ABC Days, and our 2.5 FLL teams. Our How-To Tuesday labs and school break Mini Bots camps now hold 100+ students each. Mini Bots is a free 1-day condensed version of our LEGO EV3 camp. On ABC Day we teach isometric drawings using LEGO mini figures.
Describe the partnerships and relationships that you've created with other organizations (teams, sponsors, educational institutions, government, philanthropic entities, etc.) and what you have accomplished together, with emphasis on the past 3 years.
Since joining our lab in 2023, we formed a close bond with the University of Iowa College of Education Makerspace. With them, we co-hosted an open house and teamed up on various projects (see GoBabyGo). As a community team, we met with district leaders to establish why FRC should count with new Iowa attendance laws. BAE Systems is also one of many sponsors we work with. We have presented at their open house, toured their facility, attended a STEAM night, and planned a soldering clinic with them.
During our 2023 season, we wanted to find a way to make Junior Bots more affordable without compromising necessary team funding. We partnered with the Johnson County United Way chapter for their Summership program to send 5 students to camp for free annually. So far 6 campers, half of whom are Hispanic, have used this program to grow their STEM knowledge. Summerships specifically benefit those on free or reduced lunch, making Junior Bots more inclusive to a wider range of participants.
Explain how you ensure your team and the initiatives you have created will be sustainable.
We’ve focused on building a robotics community that is bigger than just FRC to ensure our future. Close ties with K-12 families, sponsors, and local STEM experts propel us forward through brand recognition and networking. Our quarterly newsletters are one example of this. They were originally meant for sponsors, but now include over 70 subscribers one year after opening to the community. Newsletters provide updates about FRC progress, recap recent events, and highlight ways to get involved.
Highlight one area in which your team needs to improve and describe the steps actively being taken to make those improvements.
Recruitment has been a major concern and while we’ve grown a lot in 2024-25, we want to ensure team sustainability. Using community feedback, we identified a need for PreK-2nd STEM camps and workshops. We hosted 6 preschool visits at NCJC & La Petite Academy to test doing hands-free robot demos, utilizing pre-built EV3 robots and science experiments. We also have 4 second grade campers registered for a Junior Bots pilot to gain feedback on how to approach a camp for students in grades K-2.
Briefly describe other matters of interest to the FIRST Judges, including items that may not fit into the above topics. The judges are interested in learning about aspects of your team that may be unique, particularly noteworthy or had a large impact.
We have 2 members on the Iowa FIRST Student Leadership Board to expand the mission of FIRST while serving as a voice for their peers. Additionally, we assisted in cleanup after an EF-2 tornado hit Hills, Iowa. We also hosted the Celebration of the Wild Robot in North English, IA. After the school read the Wild Robot, our team led an evening assembly for families to teach them about our robot, compete in robot relays, and learn about FIRST. Afterward, we hosted an FLL clinic for their district.
Please use this space to ask 1 question to your FIRST Impact Award Judges which will be answered after each event with feedback from the judges.
Which metrics best demonstrate a team’s impact on their community, and are there any we should be tracking that we aren’t?
Describe your team’s goals and the progress you have made towards them to fulfill .
Describe your team's efforts in the past 3 years to promote within your team, FIRST, and your communities.