Rochester Institute of Technology

From FIRSTwiki

History

The Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) has been involved with FIRST in various forms since 1996.

From 1996 to 1998, the special interest housing floor called Engineering House mentored team 73. This was the high point of team 73's history, winning a National Championship and 2 Photogenic Awards (now called Imagery Award). Team 73 folded after the 1998 season.

In 2000, RIT freshmen Matt Leese and Jeff Zampieron revived some interest in RIT and found enough funding from various sponsors to restart team 73 for the 2001 season.

However, lack of funding was again an issue, and team 73 couldn't compete in 2002. However, RIT stayed involved by mentoring team 340.

In 2003, Bausch and Lomb started to sponsor team 73, and once again RIT was involved in mentoring team 73.

In 2004, besides mentoring 73, several students also mentored team 1405.

RIT will be the host for the Finger Lakes Regional in 2005.

Student Involvement

In 2001 there was a minimally organized group of 6 students with Matt Leese (team 7) as the unofficial leader. In 2002 Matt Leese was formally elected president and Joe Ross (team 330) was elected vice president of the unofficial FIRST club. In 2003 and 2004 Christina Alzona (team 263) was elected President and Chris Vincent was Vice President for 2003 and Jonathan Wilkinson was Vice President for 2004. During the 2004 year, the FIRST club became officialy recognized by the university as RIT FIRST. Elections for 2005 have already been held, with Michael Martin being elected President and Chris Vincent elected Vice President.

Faculty/Staff Involvement

Dave Hathaway runs the main engineering machine shop and was involved in with the team pre '98 and in 2003. William Scarborough is a mechanical engineering professor and was the RIT FIRST faculty advisor in 2004. Bert Gamory is a staff member from the engineering department who was the faculty advisor from 2001 to 2003 before moving on to teach at MCC (the local community college). Harvey Palmer and Dick Reeve are the Engineering College Dean and Associate Dean, respectively. They have been supporting FIRST since 2001. Albert Simone is the President of RIT and is very supportive of the Finger Lakes Regional Ed Hentzel works with team 578 which his son is member of. He is also on the Finger Lakes Regional committee.