Robotics Team captains selected

Written by: Vicky Camarillo on November 17, 2009 at 11:56 am

The 2009-2010 Robotics team captains, Ariel Hardin and Jeffin James, were announced last Monday.

According to Supervisor Robyn Segrest, the format for choosing the team captains changed this year.

“Before, we’d always let the students choose their team captain; this year, to get away from it being a popularity contest, we shifted to a format where nominations were made by the team,” she said. “If the nominee accepted the nomination, then we had them answer a set of questions. The questionnaires were handed over to a selection committee made up of teachers who were involved with the program, and they made their selections based on those answers.”

The selection committee was made up of welding teacher Jeffrey Pillows, drafting teacher Robert Foley, and Building Trades teacher Calvin Fry.

“For me, after reading all the responses, I found that some had more experience than others in handling certain situations,” Pillows said.

Fry said that in the students’ answers to the questionnaire, he looked for strength and a lack of favoritism.

“I looked for someone who would follow the project through from beginning to end and that  their main focus was to get the robot completed,” Fry said. “Friendships and favoritism are out when you’re doing projects like that. I looked for someone who would put his heart into the project, not just someone who was trying to be the leader of something but who would take the project first.”

Although the questionnaire was the only aspect taken into consideration to choose the captains, Segrest said the questions required practical thinking.

“The returning team members and I worked together to create those questions based on issues we’d faced in the past,” she said. “From there I took the questions and fine-tuned them and changed them from yes/no questions to scenario questions where they really had to sit and think and give an answer that they would follow through with. And really, the scenario questions that we developed gave us a very good overall picture of the individuals.”

Besides the format for determining the team captains, another thing that is changing this year is the team captain role.

“It’s shifting from being a symbolic position to being more of an integral position across the team,” Segrest said. “As opposed to being a team lead, where they’ll be very focused in one area, the team captain has to focus on everybody. They have to take care of everybody emotionally, they have to help me keep things organized and meet due dates, they’re going to help me structure the team, and they’re going to be the face of the team at certain types of meetings.”

Segrest said Hardin and James are “well-matched” as co-captains.

“[James] is a third-year team member, lots of experience, and actually has some teaching experience now because of his job. He’s an assistant taekwondo instructor, so he’s gained some experience on leadership and how to focus people,” Segrest said. “Our other team captain has younger children in her home, so she’s used to giving direction. I think that with their guidance and direction, we will have a very successful team.”

Hardin said she is prepared to help the team improve their time management.

“Last year we got behind on a lot of things that we did,” she said. “I would really like to get the team focused this year and just keep them on schedule because we really need to get things done.”

James said he expects that he and Hardin will work well together this year.

“We both have a lot of what it takes to help bring this team together and hopefully have this team mesh together as well,” he said. “I think this year would the best team we’ve ever had, so it will make it easier on us to actually function as a team.”

However, Segrest said it could take time for the team to start working well together, especially since the majority of this year’s team consists of new members.

“They’re not quite a cohesive unit yet, but that also comes with having six veterans on the team and 30 new students,” she said. “And it’s always like that. It takes some time to become that unit, and you really don’t start functioning that way until about the fourth or fifth day of build season; that’s when it’s all-out, go for broke, pedal to the metal, don’t look back. It’s going to take some time to get that going because we’re starting so much earlier this year, but they’re getting there.”