Updated
Dates
- Submission Opens: Thursday, November 2, 2023, at 12pm ET
- Submission Closes: Thursday, February 15, 2024, at 3pm ET
Description
The FIRST Impact Award (formerly the Chairman's Award) is the most prestigious award at FIRST, it honors the team that best represents a model for other teams to emulate and best embodies the mission of FIRST. It was created to keep the central focus of FIRST Robotics Competition on the ultimate goal of transforming the culture in ways that will inspire greater levels of respect and honor for science and technology, as well as encouraging more of today’s youth to become science and technology leaders.
Overview
The concept of the FIRST Impact Award enables FIRST to recognize teams for their exemplary efforts in spreading the FIRST message. Teams must submit for this award by the deadline to be eligible for the award. After submitting, teams will receive an email to confirm the submission has been accepted and it will also list the events the team is eligible to be judged at. The teams who have earned the Regional and District Championship FIRST Impact Award can travel to the FIRST Championship to be considered for the FIRST Impact Award.
FIRST Impact Award Eligibility
Teams are eligible for the FIRST Impact Award at each Regional or District event at which they compete. District Teams are not eligible to win, nor can they interview for the FIRST Impact Award at Regional events or inter-district events. Teams will be restricted to earning this award once at each level of competition and once they have won, they cannot interview. In other words, once a team has earned the FIRST Impact Award at a Regional or District event, they may not interview for or earn it again that season at a later Regional or District Event.
FIRST will present a FIRST Impact Award to 1 winning team at each Regional and District event. FIRST Impact Award recipients from District events will go forward to be considered for the FIRST Impact Award at the District Championship. FIRST Impact Award recipients from Regionals and the District Championships will go forward to be considered for the FIRST Impact Award at the FIRST Championship.
* Note: All teams that received a NASA Grant must prepare a FIRST Impact Award submission online through the FIRST Dashboard as part of the grant requirement even though they may be ineligible to win if they fall into one of the below categories.
Ineligible Teams
- Hall of Fame
Hall of Fame teams are teams that have already earned the Championship FIRST Impact Award and are ineligible to resubmit for consideration for 5 years.
- First Year Teams
Because the FIRST Impact Award recognizes sustained excellence and impact, not just a 1 year team effort, it is not possible for any first-year team (including rookie teams and new teams that have been assigned a veteran number) to receive the FIRST Impact Award. First year teams will NOT be considered for the award and will not be interviewed.
Submission Content and Award Emphasis
The FIRST Impact Award is presented to the team judged to best exemplify the true meaning of FIRST through measurable impact on participants, school, and community at large with emphasis on promoting science and technology through FIRST programs.
While the FIRST Impact Award is about “more than robots”, teams often leverage their robots to enhance their impact on the broader community. For this reason, it is expected teams in contention for the FIRST Impact Award will have built a robot appropriate to the game’s challenges for the season. This does not require the team to have ranked at a certain level during the event but does require teams to put in more than just the minimal effort necessary to field a drivable robot.
The criterion for the FIRST Impact Award has special emphasis on recent accomplishments within the last 3 years. The judges focus on teams’ activities over a sustained period, as distinguished from just the robot design and build period.
The FIRST Robotics Competition is not about machines; it is about the experience of people working together toward a shared goal. Documenting and preserving your team’s FIRST experience becomes an important component of the over-all FIRST experience.
Submission Format
- Each executive summary is limited to 500 characters, including spaces and punctuation (with an exception of the last question).
- The Essay is limited to 10,000 characters, including spaces and punctuation.
- To help standardize FIRST Impact Award judging, FIRST has developed a definition list for terms commonly used by teams. Teams are responsible for policing their own choice of words. Click here to see the FIRST Impact Award Definitions.
- Please note that teams are encouraged to show their FIRST Impact Award Documentation Form (editable word doc here) to the judges during the interview. Note that this is not a required form (i.e. you can still be eligible without this form) but providing it shows the Judges that your activities are well planned and documented.
Submission Process
- A student who is designated as the Award Submitter or lead mentor 1 or 2 can submit the FIRST Impact Award submission
- In preparing this submission, bear in mind that students, engineers, teachers, community, school, sponsors, families, and other supporters are all integral parts of your team experience. Your submission needs to clearly convey the factors outlined below.
- Submitters must enter information, save it, and return to the site to edit the FIRST Impact Award submission until they are ready to finalize it for final judging. All entries must be finalized and submitted by the deadline. No entries will be accepted or altered after the deadline.
- The team must submit their FIRST Impact Award submission, in English**, through the FIRST Dashboard and enter the following required information. Team Number, Name, and Location are automatically included and provided to the judges.
- ** FIRST Impact Award Submissions may be in the team’s native language if they are interviewing at an event that speaks their native language. If not, the submission must be in English.
- If a team wins and their submission was not written in English, they have 1 week from the end of the event (for weeks 1-5) to translate the submission to English. For week 6 events, we must receive translated submission by the Monday immediately following the event. If we do not receive a translated copy of the submission by the deadline, they will no longer be eligible at the FIRST Championship event.
- Teams will not be able to submit the application without agreeing to the FIRST Impact Award Video Consent & Release of Rights Form in the submission portal. No entries will be accepted or altered after this deadline.
- Teams will also see a question inviting them to submit a link to their FIRST Impact Award Video
- Teams are optionally invited to submit a URL to their FIRST Impact Award Video. The video must be hosted on one of these three (3) file sharing sites (Dropbox, Box, and Google Drive) and be made public to allow video downloads.
Executive Summaries
- Describe the impact of the FIRST program on team participants within the last 3 years. This can include but is not limited to percentages of those graduating high school, attending college, in STEM careers, and in FIRST programs as mentors/sponsors.
- Describe your community along with how your team addresses its unique opportunities and circumstances.
- Describe the team’s methods, with emphasis on the past 3 years, for spreading the FIRST message in ways that are effective, scalable, sustainable, and creative. How does your team measure results?
- Please provide specific examples of how your team members act as role models within the FIRST community with emphasis on the past 3 years.
- Describe your team’s initiatives to Assist, Mentor, and/or Start other FIRST teams with emphasis on activities within the past 3 years.
- Beyond starting teams, what initiatives have you done to help inspire young people to be science and technology leaders and innovators? What results have you seen from your efforts in the past 3 years?
- Describe the partnerships you've created with other organizations (teams, sponsors, educational institutions, philanthropic entities, etc.) and what you have accomplished together with emphasis on the past 3 years.
- Describe your team's efforts in the past 3 years to promote equity, diversity, and inclusion within your team, FIRST, and your communities.
- Explain how you ensure your team and the initiatives you have created will continue to run effectively for the foreseeable future.
- Describe your team’s innovative strategies to recruit, retain, and engage your sponsors within the past 3 years.
- Highlight one area in which your team needs to improve and describe the steps actively being taken to make those improvements.
- Describe your team’s goals to fulfill the mission of FIRST and the progress you have made towards those goals.
- 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 or particularly noteworthy.
- (OPTIONAL) 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 (250 characters maximum). Note: Questions asking what is required to win the award will not be answered.
Essay
- The essay portion of the FIRST Impact Award submission provides teams an opportunity to describe their activities and achievements in narrative form. While Judges encourage creativity of expression, the essay must clearly deliver information and facts describing what the team is about. Teams are encouraged to use some of this space to explain how their team is structured and the number of mentors and students on the team.
- The essay should avoid merely duplicating information provided in the executive summary questions. However, it is appropriate for the essay to further expand on those responses and provide more in-depth discussion of notable team achievements.
- The most effective essays are characterized by an overview of team activities during the last 3 years, followed by in-depth discussion of notable activities during the most recent 12-18 months. Judges use the essay to get a big picture view of the team and to learn about achievements that may be unique and noteworthy.
FIRST Impact Award Interview Process
Teams who have successfully submitted for the FIRST Impact Award will be randomly assigned to an interview time slot at each eligible event. Once the interview schedule has been posted, Pit Admin will make an announcement and teams can see the slot to which they are assigned. Some teams may need to request to change time slots. In order to do so, the team must find another team who is willing to switch. Both teams will then go to Pit Admin and request the time change. Pit Admin is the only group who can approve the change. Pit Admin will alert the Judge Advisor or Judge Advisor Assistant.
- FIRST Impact Award interviews are limited to 12 minutes total; up to 7 minutes for a presentation by the team (which includes set-up) and the remaining time (5 minutes) is for question and answers led by the judges. If teams use less time than 7 minutes for their presentation, judges may use the remaining minutes (out of 12) for Q and A. To ensure consistency, it is very important that all interviews are no longer than 12 minutes.
- Interviews are conducted in English (with the exception of teams interviewing at events in Brazil, China, Chinese Taipei, Israel, Mexico, Quebec, and Turkey).
- Teams needing a translator or sign-language interpreter may include an additional person to act as that translator/interpreter. The translator/interpreter does not need to be a team member. For these teams, the duration of the interview is increased by up to 5 minutes – up to 2 minutes for the presentation and up to 3 minutes for the Q&A portion.
- No more than 3 student (pre-college) team members are allowed to present information or answer questions from the Judges. One adult Team Mentor may attend the interview as a silent observer and later provide feedback to the team, but the mentor is not allowed to provide any assistance during the interview. We highly encourage this silent observer in order to provide timely feedback to the team based on observations and noting judges’ questions. This feedback can be very valuable in helping teams hone their skills. Teams will not be marked down for having a mentor present. If the mentor provides any assistance during the interview, the Judges should respectfully remind the mentor of the rule.
Note: These mentors are not allowed to record video or audio or take pictures during the interview.
Exception: If necessary, the adult mentor may provide translation services for students needing foreign language or sign language translation. This person does not count as the adult mentor observer.
Feedback
All teams that interview at a Regional or District event will receive feedback on both the interview and their submission. The feedback will answer 3 questions
- An area the team has an opportunity to improve,
- Something that really impressed the judges, and
- A team submitted question (optional - see last executive summary above).
Suggested Feedback Questions
To help teams who may be unsure of what question to put in the optional feedback question, we have compiled a few options that teams may choose from:
- Is there something more that we can do to improve our presentation?
- Is there anything missing from our submitted materials?
- Which outreach activity do you feel we execute most effectively?
Teams will receive this feedback for all Regional and District Events from the event judges automatically 48 hours after the event. Please note that teams will not receive feedback at FIRST Championship. See the FIRST Impact Award Resource webpage for instructions on how to access the feedback.
FIRST Impact Award Video
Teams submitting for the FIRST Impact Award are invited to optionally provide a video link along with their submission. The team that is awarded this award will have their video shown during the award ceremony (if available). The content of the video should explain what the team has done to earn the FIRST Impact Award. The video content may be in the team’s native language, but if that language is not English, the team should add English subtitles. The video may be shown to the judges during the team’s presentation if the team chooses. In addition, the team must provide the equipment for viewing (i.e. laptop/speakers etc.) the video if they intend to show it during their interview.
Content Guidelines:
- Please show us what you are doing to earn the FIRST Impact Award
- Please do not identify minors by full name, use only first names.
The Video format is as follows:
- A 16:9 (“widescreen aspect ratio”)
- Not more than 3 minutes long, no shorter than 1 minute long.
- Include a clean audio track
- Free of copyright restrictions, including music.
- The video must be hosted on one of these three (3) file sharing sites (Dropbox, Box, and Google Drive) and be made public to allow video downloads.
Video may consist of:
- Video footage
- Voice over/music over still photographs
- Animated presentation
- PowerPoint converted to VIDEO format
Sound:
- Should be clear of pops and hisses
Copyright:
- If using copyrighted music must have written permission
- If using Creative Commons Music (CCM) online, the music must be used in accordance with the appropriate license and properly attributed.
- Music may not contain offensive or suggestive language
Note: Unless you show your video as part of your presentation, your video will not be judged as part of your submission, though an inappropriate video will disqualify you from winning. The FIRST Impact Award is our highest honor and teams who receive the FIRST Impact Award represent the highest standards of FIRST.
Regional/District Championship FIRST Impact Award
Teams that have earned the FIRST Impact Award at a Regional or District Championship will be requested via email from FIRST HQ to submit a link of their official FIRST Impact Award Video and presentation video for posting along with their online submission. These will be used as resources for current and future FIRST Impact Award submitting teams. We want other teams to be able to see what it takes to be selected for this most prestigious award.
The FIRST Impact Award Championship Award Process
At the FIRST Championship, a panel of judges will interview teams and review the submissions from all the Regional and District Championship FIRST Impact Award recipients and will select 6 FIRST Impact Award Finalists and from those, 1 winning FIRST Impact Award recipient. The Championship FIRST Impact Award teams become Hall of Fame Members.
The Allaire Medal - Leadership Defined
The Allaire Medal recognizes leadership exemplified and is awarded to an individual student on the team selected as the FIRST Impact Award team.
Named in honor of Paul A. Allaire, a long-serving FIRST Chairman of the Board, the Allaire Medal is given to the student who has demonstrated outstanding leadership on their FIRST team, within their school and community and whose personal character best embodies the spirit of FIRST.
The team earning the FIRST Impact Award at the Championship will select the Allaire Medal recipient. The adult and student team members of the FIRST Impact Award team determine the recipient. The recipient must be a high school junior or senior who has been accepted into a 4-year degree program at a college or university. The Allaire Medalist receives the Allaire medallion and up to $10,000 in total scholarship support for undergraduate tuition, room/board and fees/books at their intended university or college.