Hi Dean’s List Nominating Mentors and Coaches,
We hope you enjoyed the League Championships and that your teams did well. Later this week we will have more information regarding the State Championship, if your team has earned advancement, but for now this message is about Dean’s List Interviews.
We have scheduled your nominees using the Remote Cloud based Scoring System as we had the Judging Sessions this past month. Please reference this tool for when your Nominee will be Interviewed and share this with you Nominee ASAP and let us know if there are any issues or conflicts.
 https://ftc-scoring.firstinspires.org/
We will have two Judge Interview groups for these sessions and will interview all nominees on Saturday, May 1st in mostly the morning hours starting at 8:30 AM and lasting through a start time of 12:40PM. If you nominated one (1) student from your team you may assume that the single nominated student’s time is the one that you and your team have been assigned. If you nominated 2 students per team you will receive a separate email from me (Tom Zawislak) indicating which of the two students are assigned their specific time.
Again, please share with your Nominee and let us know of any conflicts or issues ASAP otherwise we will expect them to be ready and able to join their interview start time.
Note also that we have assigned 20-minute intervals for each interview. This is for the convenience of the Judge Interviewers as it will allow them time to deliberate and write up notes based on the live interview. The interview with the student will start as close to the assigned start time as possible and will actually last 5 – 7 minutes consistent with the criteria set forth by FIRST. Please be sure your student joins early and is ready for questions.
Please be assured that we do have your nomination essays on hand for the interview teams but should you have any questions or concerns given that you did not see confirmation of your submissions when they were entered into the Dean’s List system you may reach out to me at ftc@pennfirst.org. Otherwise, we again have the nomination essays already in hand.
Good luck to all of the students. We know that you and your collective coaches and mentors are very proud of them otherwise you would not have taken the time to express this pride and share with the world their special personalities and accomplishments. Each student interviewed is considered a Semi-Finalist for the Dean’s List in the PA State, Pennsylvania FIRST Robotics program and will receive a special pin recognizing this achievement. After careful review and consideration of all PA Nominees by a separate Dean’s List Review team, we will have three (3) students from our state submitted as Finalists to FIRST HQ where they will then be considered for FTC Dean’s List international honors. Ten (10) students in the FIRST Tech Challenge program are chosen for this amazing honor.
Again, please go to the Scoring System ASAP and share with your student nominee. The Interview group looks forward to meeting with them!
All the best,
Tom Zawislak, Dave Hackett and Bob Debes
Pennsylvania FIRST® Robotics
FIRST Tech Challenge® Program Delivery Partner
phone: (302) 383-9925
email: ftc@pennfirst.org
Website: www.FTCPenn.org