I knew that FIRST was expensive and time consuming.  I planned to pursue a competition-based program, such as Botball, that I considered to be more achievable with limited resources, and better suited for classroom instruction.  Botball involves Lego-based construction of autonomous robots.  Programming the robots is a major feature of Botball.  Botball is also not cheap, but if computer facilities are already available, it can be done for less than half the cost of the FIRST Competition.

I planned for part of my project to be the pursuit of grants and donations to build a robotics instruction program.  As would be expected, buying the startup material would be the most expensive item for classroom instruction.  Entering a Botball event would be desirable and an extra expense, but would be optional.

By late September 2001 I had outlined an intended course of action for my master’s project.  I then heard from my former mentor teacher that grants from NASA were going to be made available to Oregon high schools and administered by Andrew Klein at Oregon State University.  I emailed Dr. Klein, expressing an interest and inquiring about the process.  After some more email exchanges and about a month later, I learned that Corvallis High School would be one of the 8 Oregon schools to receive a $10,000 grant.

Half of the grant would be required to pay the entry fee for the competition.  The entry fee included a standard set of parts to be used for the competition.  Some parts were mandatory, such as the radio control system and power distribution system.  Other parts were optional.  Restrictions on the use of the remaining $5000 of the grant was not specified.  In January 2002, there was a ‘recommended’ use notification received via email.  Although it was never specifically mentioned, it now appears that we were free to use the grant money per our discretion after the entry fee was paid.

Not knowing exactly what was in the parts kit, I believed that it would more than we needed, and we would select which parts we would use.  I thought that I would be able to use part of the $5000 to develop my future class.  After seeing the rules made public on 1-7-02, and seeing what was in the parts kit, I learned that this was not the case.  The kit was more of a ‘starter’ kit, with teams free to purchase more of the official parts.  We used all of the available grant money, plus material donations from mentors, in building and supporting the robot.

Getting the FIRST grant caused me to redirect my project.  My focus shifted to promoting robotics and fielding a good team, assuming that I could retain some grant money and find more later to get my class going.