Financial Longevity: We are not funded by the school or the state and depend on the community for financial support. Every student on the team is responsible for raising the funds year in and year out. In years past we have secured substantial donations from foundations and businesses but last year we foresaw the coming hard times and knew we had to work harder and smarter. Last summer we created RPM, an organization dedicated to Robovikes. RPM stands for Robotics Parents and Mentors. It would no longer be sufficient to come together just during Build Season. We had to work year around if we are to make it viable. RPM meets every month and has had committees for various functions, finance and travel to name a few. To create incentives for the students and the parents, a novel plan for financing was implemented. Each student gets to keep 90% of what they raise towards individual expenses whereas in the past, all funds went to a general fund. Now, only larger grants and donations go to the general robotics fund. The group fundraising activities are geared towards personal expenses related to competition. This empowers the students and gives an incentive for their families. It has resulted in numerous fundraisers with different prime movers.

 

 Team longevity: Our mission of promoting engineering and science awareness has a hopeful motive. We hope that the kids of our local Lego Leagues become the RoboVikes of tomorrow. But it is not enough to sign up the kids, we have to keep them. We do this by succession planning. The old hands train the new blood in every aspect of robotics - mechanical, electrical, programming, business management- the list goes on. They learn by doing. Everyone has a job during build season and none is more important than any other. The hallmark of our program is that all the work is done by the students. This creates support and most importantly, mutual respect. Team is not just a "buzzword" around 701. It is a very real concept. This propagates from year to year making sure we not only get great new people but keep them through out their stint at High school. Our retention rate is very high. This is not a coincidence. Just how do we do it? We have a well defined organization based on a modular plan. The Robovikes organizational structure can be seen in the pages that follow.

 

FIRST longevity:  "Knowledge shared is knowledge grown" is the abiding lesson taught by Mr. Green. Of all the lessons learned in our program, this is perhaps the most important. This is perhaps why 701 is very active in spreading the gospel of "gracious professionalism" by bringing FIRST to many schools. Mr.Green and the RoboVikes have helped start three high school programs and three elementary and middle school programs. In FIRST's longevity, lies our longevity. In 2006, we helped start a FIRST program at Vacaville High, a school not far from us. Just a year earlier, we helped start an FRC team at Hiram Johnson High School in Sacramento. Last year , we helped Vallejo High School start a FRC team. Our team members helped start Lego Leagues at Cambridge Elementary, Foxboro Elementary and Golden West Middle schools. We held our first Mini-Robotics Tournament in November 2008, which brought out nine teams in the local area and was a huge success.

The Team: Over the past nine years, Team 701 has developed from a small physics project to a 30+ student class that has embraced all high school students from freshmen to seniors. This is the ideal size we want to maintain. Robotics at Vanden was never a casual club, it is a rigorous advanced Engineering program open only to students enrolled in the class.

The Sponsors:    Though the students are the muscles that power the program, we will collapse without a strong skeleton to hold us up. And we have a formidable skeleton in the guise of our wonderful parents, mentors and sponsoring organizations such as Solano County Office of Education, PGP Corporation, COGCO, Wireline Inc, Fairfield-Suisun Rotary, Solano Community Foundation, Valero Refining Companies, Tesoro Refining Companies, Dale and Shirley Brown, Pedron's Storage Co. and Michael & Margaret Salvador.

The Future:  We plan to continue our Mini-Robotics tournament to make it an ongoing annual event. We are working with Will C. Wood, a high school in our area, and hope to have them start an FRC team in the coming year. Robotics would be hosting our school science career night in 2009. Many of the graduating senior class will return this summer and host senior workshops to teach a new generation of Robovikes on Autodesk and Programming. In the off-season, we will take our current robot and make presentations to show organizations that are already, or could be, future sponsors of the program.

 

Science is our future. We will, in our own way, help keep our country FIRST in science by keeping FIRST in our country for a long time to come.

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RoboVikes Organizational Structure

 

 

Team 701 has also created a "by students, for students" Team 701 Handbook. In this handbook, we described how we decided to delegate tasks though committees for Build Season 2009 and for years to come. Prime among these committees is our Leadership Committee  headed by our Robotics Coach Mr.Green and supported by the President, Vice President, Secretary, Treasurer, Business Director and Engineering Director. Our Business Director leads the Public Relations, Finance and Competition Support Committees whereas our Engineering Director leads the Mechanical, Electrical, Prototype, Inventor and Programming Committees.

 

• Started FRC team at Vacaville High (2007)
• Lego team at Cambridge Elementary (2007)
• Lego team at Foxboro Elementary (2007)
• High School Robotics Class earns UC elective course approval (2008)
• Started FRC team at Vallejo High (2008)
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  Lego team at Golden West Middle (2008)

Business Plan Written by: Priya Rangan, March 2009