Dean's Homework
In response to Dean Kamen's Homework challenge Team 378 has sent, by e-mail and snail mail letters to: Senator Hillary Clinton, Senator CHarles Schumer, Assemblywoman Francine DelMonte, President George W. Bush, Congresswoman Louise Slaughter, First Lady Laura Bush, and Senator George Maziarz. In addition we have sent a letter special delivery to Governor Spitzer as Sentor Maziarz has graciously agreed to hand deliver a letter to Governor Spitzer in Albany for us. Below is an example of the letter that we sent out:
January 18, 2007
Senator George Maziarz
2578 Niagara Falls Boulevard
Suite 600
Wheatfield, NY 14304
Dear Senator Maziarz:
The Circuit Stompers is a group of Newfane High School students, teachers, parent boosters, and Delphi engineers who work together to build a robot for the FIRST Robotics Competition. FIRST, an acronym for For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology, is a not-for-profit organization designed, in the words of FIRST founder Dean Kamen, “To create a world where science and technology are celebrated. . . where young people dream of becoming science and technology heroes” (www.usfirst.org).
Our team is once again working to design and build a robot to compete at this year’s US FIRST competition. In addition to building a robot that can “Rack and Roll,” teams were given a homework assignment by FIRST founder Dean Kamen. The assignment was two fold: Each team was charged with the task of contacting their representatives and inviting their representatives to attend a FIRST competition. Teams were also charged with sending a copy of their invitation to Kamen so that FIRST will know that they did their homework. Kamen plans to publish the invitations and the responses on the FIRST website.
To be successful with our homework, we need your help. First, we would like to request your support at a FIRST regional competition. There are eight to ten competitions each weekend in March. While our team will be attending regional competitions in Pittsburgh (March 8-10) and Cleveland (March 22-24), there are three regional competitions held in New York State: the Finger Lakes Regional at the Gordon Field house on the RIT campus in Rochester (March 8-10); the New York City Regional at the Javit Convention Center (March 16-18); and the Long Island Regional at Hofstra University Arena (March 29-31). Please consider supporting us at one of these events.
In addition to your attendance, we would like your help with our invitation to our governor. Both Governor Lynch of New Hampshire and Governor Lingle of Hawaii have expressed their commitment to making FIRST available to every school in their state. We would like to have our governor’s support as well. We are certain that if Governor Spitzer were to attend a FIRST regional event, he would support our program. We know that the Governor receives many, many invitations from organizations looking for his support. We also know that our invitation, like many others, may never reach the Governor directly. To help insure that our invitation does indeed reach the Governor, we would like you to deliver our invitation directly to the Governor. Would you be able to assist us with this delivery?
Thank you in advance for your support. We look forward to hearing from you soon.