[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 57 (Thursday, May 11, 2006)]
[House]
[Pages H2557-H2558]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




              FIFTEENTH ANNUAL FIRST ROBOTICS COMPETITION

  Mr. BASS. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to claim Mr. Norwood's 
time.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Without objection, the gentleman from New 
Hampshire (Mr. Bass) is recognized for 5 minutes.

[[Page H2558]]

  There was no objection.
  Mr. BASS. Mr. Speaker, following on my friend of Rhode Island, I had 
the pleasure of joining him and you, Mr. Speaker, in Atlanta a week and 
a half ago to witness the 15th international FIRST Competition. It was 
truly an extraordinary experience. There were 1,133 teams represented 
there, 904 of them were returning teams, and 229 new teams there.
  Let me explain, as my friend from Rhode Island talked about how this 
works. What happens is a mentor or a company or a small businessman or 
anybody outside an engineer, outside of a school system, will go to a 
school, a high school and say they want to start a FIRST team there.
  You get together a group of kids, the kinds of kids that you might 
not see on the football field or the baseball field, the kind of kid 
who might not be the biggest, most popular person in the school. You 
get together with them, and you tell them about how you could build a 
robot, go to a competition, win that competition, go to a regional, go 
to the nationals and really do something that is exciting.
  This foundation was started by, as my friend from Rhode Island said, 
Dean Kamen, a constituent of mine from New Hampshire. Dean Kamen didn't 
get a college degree. He spent quite a bit of time in college, but he 
used the skills that were available to him to learn, what was important 
to learn in order to become successful, a business person, an inventor, 
an entrepreneur, and obviously an engineer and a physicist.
  His dream is not only to be successful in his own life but to be able 
to communicate that kind of success to kids who may not have the kind 
of advantages that many of us enjoy. So he put together this 
organization which he called FIRST. It is designed to give kids, many 
of whom come from disadvantaged school systems and disadvantaged 
neighborhoods, and are from families that may have problems, but to 
give these kids the excitement that one gets from baseball or from 
football or from other sports, and, indeed, he succeeded.
  My friend from Rhode Island went to the Boston regionals and saw how 
excited these children were, as I did, when I went to the regional in 
Manchester, New Hampshire, with their team screaming for them in the 
audience and the robots competing against one another in a ring with 
referees dressed in stripes judging them.
  They handed out over 2,000 awards to these kids nationally this year. 
Dean Kamen himself made a beautiful clock out of Plexiglass, a 
beautiful grandfather clock that is given each year to the winner.
  Indeed, Dean is a great entrepreneur, a great businessman, and he has 
brought a lot of great products to society. But his real passion in the 
world, I believe, is bringing education and excitement in engineering 
and physics to children.
  Now you may ask, is this just the work of one individual and one 
person's dream? Well, back in 2002, the FIRST Foundation contracted 
with Brandeis University to do a study about what happens to their 
graduates. Here are some of their conclusions, key conclusions.
  Participants in the FIRST program were more likely to attend college 
than an average high school graduate. Eighty-nine percent of the FIRST 
competition alumni attended college. That compares with a 65 percent 
national average. Once at college, a high proportion of FIRST alumni 
took courses at internships that were related to math, science, 
technology. Eighty-seven percent took a math course in college. 
Seventy-eight took at least one science course. That compares with a 66 
percent average in these fields.
  Perhaps the most striking finding is that 41 percent of the alumni 
that went to FIRST actually ended up majoring in engineering in 
college. Their educational aspirations were well above the national 
average; 78 percent of the FIRST alumni reported they expected to earn 
a graduate degree versus 58 percent among college students nationally.
  FIRST alumni were more likely to pursue careers in science, 
technology and engineering. Compared to students in a comparison group, 
45 percent versus 20 percent. FIRST alumni also reported continuing 
involvement in their communities. FIRST alumni were more than twice as 
likely to report volunteering in the community in the past years than 
were students in the matched comparison group, 71 percent versus 30 
percent. Site visits indicate also that a variety of positive public 
impact in schools, including new classes, improve school spirit and 
other great benefits.
  My friends, this is a wonderful program that is in its fifteenth year 
now, has handed out almost $8 million in scholarships, has business, 
educational institutions and students working together for science and 
education.

                              {time}  1745

  It is a great partnership. I have two challenges: I want my 
colleagues to get involved in their first regionals, and I want the 
first participants to contact their Members of Congress and get them 
involved. This is a great program that is good for America and good for 
education.

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