The electrical and programming teams have also been hard at work, helping ensure that the current robot configuration is feasible in terms of motors, wiring, and mounting limelight. They've wired several parts of our robot in the past few weeks, helping ensure our success. Programming has been reading documentation to perfect their code for this season, and testing several things in the process.

While all of this has been going on, we've also been waiting on parts to come in, and the business team has been working to submit the Impact Award. They were able to complete this task on Tuesday, February 13th, two days before the deadline. The business team has also been working on pit signs, ensuring that CSP has a phenomenal setup by Gwinnett. We're also thankful for our mentors and parents for setting up our DE field! We're so thankful to have a supportive community of individuals that ensures our success!

We're counting down the days until Gwinnett! CSP is AMPED UP for the Crescendo Season and all that it will bring!

On the Business side of things, CSP has been hard at work, running several outreach events at the same, including hosting an FLL competition and mentoring our FTC teams at their FTC super-regional! Two of our three teams qualified for the FTC State Competition, with Team Ecliptic 22327 as the runner-up for the Inspire Award! We are so proud of our teams!

CSP has also been hard at work on the Impact Award Executive summaries, our Pit Signs, and the Impact Award Essay. We are so excited to see what this year brings!

FIRST Robotics is home to a few initiatives focused on uplifting females pursuing STEM, most prominently being ‘FIRST #LikeAGirl’ and ‘LadiesFIRST. Programs like the ones just highlighted are imperative to allow women interested in STEM the support they require as their journeys past FIRST and highschool ensue. However, while idyllically apt– and an amazing look to the public–, how many of these programs can effectively alter long-time, homologous identity perceptors or historically binary societal ebbs and flows? Are women set up with the proverbial tools to succeed in these male-dominated fields, or are they unintentionally being set up to fail?

In modern times, Sociologists have pondered a notion deemed the Leaky Pipeline Phenomenon, which explores the longevity of women pursuing STEM past their vocational years whether or not they are equipped with words of encouragement rather than strategy. The proportion of women in the STEM occupational fields has decreased continuously through the educational and vocational tracks, leading scholars to use the metaphor of a leaking pipeline. Women navigating through STEM-based career pathways drop out at higher rates along the way, as opposed to men going to school in the same field, resulting in a much smaller proportion of women at the end of the pipeline. A published paper by the Magazine of Empirical Research in Vocational Education and Training emphasized the high dropout rate of female STEM students in college, attributing this as being a direct symptom of the aforementioned phenomenon. Women drop out due to various factors such as career mismatch, sex-based discouragement and identity-centered incongruence. Career mismatch, specifically, refers to the tendency of women to be overqualified for the careers that they end up in, likely due to their reluctance to enter jobs that are inconsistent with typical gender roles. That is, women who receive STEM degrees are not as likely to choose STEM careers– juxtaposed to males with comparable STEM degrees. As an additional result of career mismatch, this concept is symbolic of a positive feedback loop where women continue to serve jobs below their abilities, while their male counterparts reach higher leadership positions. This then amplifies the amount of women who feel a lack of self-confidence in their professional skills, a deficit in assertiveness on interactions with male counterparts, as well as a persistent pressure to assimilate to male culture.

Look around– metaphorically, of course… When you see a woman in a higher position or even an unconventional role in engineering within FRC, let’s say… working in their team pit…, do you feel surprised, intrigued, or even merely recognize the implications of one taking a second to actively notice a feminine entity engaging in something traditionally done by masculine figures? Social role theory argues that societally shared beliefs on female or male ‘roles’ are preserved through “psychological processes that stabilize these societal practices by making them seem natural and inevitable to members of the society” (Markova, et. al., 2016). This is further evident when one looks at how only select women are championed for their work in male-dominated fields, and how ‘we’ would find it “out of place” to see a female with a yellow hard hat and a neon vest clocking into the construction site. Putting emphasis on women in STEM is of utmost importance, however, recognizing why much of society feels the need to apply this emphasis is even more integral. As, despite increasing numbers of women in science and engineering fields, this fact alone does not ensure any improved conditions for women’s real careers. Even women with a higher position in their respective fields have reported a lack of self-confidence to advocate for other, younger females within their departments. Thus, despite the increasing number of female students in gender-atypical study fields, “organizational structure within units, and the divisions they engender, continue to isolate women” (Markova, et. al., 2016). 

Despite the progress that is perceived at competitions, such as a female-operated Drive Team or female Programming and Mechanical Leads, there is still ample work to be done in the field of STEM to have these women appear as less of a show-stopper for being in leadership and more of a normalized construct within STEM fields. As notably theorized by West and Zimmerman, the scientists who constructed the idea of ‘doing gender’, “gender is not a set of traits, nor a variable, nor a role, but the product of social doings of some sort.” We, as a people, prescribe these social doings, meaning we also have the power to alter them and to dismantle them to an extent that lets each sex feel comfortable in the other’s historically-designated fields of work. Women should not have to ‘act like men’ in order to be assertive and assume leadership positions in STEM fields, nor should women have to go out of their way to advocate their worth. Women, as well as men, possess the innate abilities to lead or to serve, but, as a symptom of gender-roles, this autonomy has been somewhat stripped away from the sexes.

But what can we do, even amongst FIRST Robotics members, to curve the narrative towards true acceptance over a figurehead status, and to patch up the leaky pipes? Firstly, companies and educational institutes need to hold themselves accountable, looking at their gender-based statistics or how they may have failed women as a symptom of their own ignorance. Companies should be challenged more to actively combat sexism and gender discrimination, effectively creating an inclusive working environment for young women in gender-atypical careers. Moving through this vein of thought, there are a few introductory tasks that may produce far more equitable working environments for women, beyond the current structure:

1. Understand the process of (re-)production of gender inequalities within the organizational culture. Meaning, discerning the persistent cycle of implementing gender binaries in order to better perceive how to break them down or to avoid them.
2. Recognize the gendering mechanisms and annexations within the organizational culture of institutions and how they influence individual professional development. 
3. Construct a proactive effort to realize potential for diversity within gender-segregated professional fields, and actively appreciate any present workplace diversity.

Ultimately, companies and educational institutions should want to use all of their employees’/students’ skills most effectively, taking advantage of the “complementaries in individual skills and interests” (Markova, et. al., 2016). The ability of widespread equity in a workplace or university can spark increased productivity, yes, but in order to reach these results, we need to begin from our individualized communities… Although FIRST Robotics has laid the framework for gender inclusivity, making concerted efforts to show up for women, institutions adjacent, beyond and within the organization still need to do evaluate their pyramidal structures. In this Women’s History Month and beyond, it is essential to acknowledge the ongoing and systematic issues that face women– especially women of color– in the present time.

Citations:
Makarova, E., Aeschlimann, B. & Herzog, W. Why is the pipeline leaking? Experiences of young women in STEM vocational education and training and their adjustment strategies. Empirical Res Voc Ed Train 8, 2 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40461-016-0027-y
“STEM Gender Equity: Supporting Girls in STEM Without Diminishing Boys.” FIRST, 5 Feb. 2020, www.firstinspires.org/community/inspire/stem-gender-equity.
Figure 1. UNSCO Institute of Statistics estimates based on  July, 2015

Computer-Aided Manufacturing, or CAM, is computer-controlled machinery integrated with software such as AutoCAD or Fusion360. The purpose of CAM is to automate the usual manufacturing process, using pre-programmed toolpaths to etch out a desired design on various raw materials– polycarb, aluminum, etc. CAM uses a sort of language converter produced from digitized data, called post-processing, that enables designs made in CAD, and then transferred to CAM, to be tangibly manufactured via a CNC machine (Computer Numerical Control). The CNC machine at Columbus Space Program’s HeadQuarters is a long metal table with a rigid arm jutting out over it, which controls the physical toolpaths. Accentured along the table are deep grooves from past cuttings and dozens upon dozens of unruly aluminum shavings to be swept up at the end of each day. Also attached to the router is a small table with the computer that inputs information taken from CAD to CAM, telling the machine its tasks.                
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But, of course, none of this manufacturing would be able to happen without immensely focused human labor. CSP began to CNC in 2018 initially, but the bulk of the work done with it surfaced after COVID in late 2021 by our FTC team, Ecliptic. However, with no one professionally trained in operating it, the CNC router posed a huge learning curve, begging the question of whether it was worth relearning or not. Of course we can’t just waste machinery, but what also solidified the decision was the team constantly running into problems of non-precise holes and cuts. CAM and CNC would ensure custom boreholes and depressions that were near-perfect. 

CAM-ing and CNC-ing has undoubtedly allowed our team to test its creative limits, going beyond what was previously expected of us as well as guaranteeing more prototypes in less time. Actually, all parts now and in the future are intended to be completely CNC-ed if they are not electrically based. To make the longevity of CAM possible, we are training four rookies to be able to confidently use both the software and machinery.                    

​At all times in our history, CSP has intended to uplift innovation and independency, whether it be personal or creative expression (respectively), learning how to troubleshoot efficiently, or forming immersive and varied experiences for rookies (welding, soldering, graphic design etc.). CAM and the CNC router are each an extension of this concept, needing machinists to interpret technical drawings as well as sequence and refine software operations. CSP hopes to continue using CAM and CNC to increase the smoothness of workflow and the design-to-final-fabrication transition.    ​