Team Leaders, as the summer winds down, we are all trying to figure out what going back to school will bring for students and teachers.  As we move into the new FIRST season, we’d also like some clarification on what the season will look like for our teams.  Every team is struggling with the unknowns – what to do with new team members, live or virtual team meetings, should modifications to last year’s robot be made, how, and when, and what will competitions look like and when will they occur.  We will keep a very open and active dialog to help understand your issues and keep you informed on what we’re hearing from FIRST and our local community.  To help facilitate this, a couple of committees within FUM (FIRST Upper Midwest) would like to hear from you to help them make plans for the upcoming season.

Mentor Meet-up

Please plan to join the September edition of our ongoing series of Virtual Minnesota FIRST Robotics Competition Mentor Meet Ups, Thursday evening, September 10, 7 PM. Please RSVP (https://tinyurl.com/yxh9h62t) and enter your questions, concerns, comments into the evening’s agenda. We’ll send the Zoom link to all who RSVP. We’re looking forward to seeing you via Zoom!

Team Diversity and Inclusion Survey

The FUM Diversity and Inclusion Committee is seeking your help in providing our community with information about approaches that your team is using to recruit students, particularly students from diverse backgrounds.  We hope that you will complete this survey and share your team’s experiences, both successful and challenging – https://forms.gle/bpZbu3wn27ozFWUv8.

We will share the results with the community via email, as well as on the FUM website.  Your name and team number will not be included in the survey results.

Team Support Survey

FUM is gathering input from FRC teams to share strategies and tactics being used during the COVID-19 pandemic. We will share the results with the community in a future communication. Here’s a link to a short survey concerning fall activities (https://tinyurl.com/y6g2p75j ).

Regards, Mark Lawrence
Chairman, MN FIRST Regional Planning Committee