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Woodie Flowers Award
A mentor worthy of the Woodie Flowers Award is an invested, inspiring, and inclusive member of the East Grand Rapids Robotics team. These mentors’ investment in the program is shown by their near-perfect attendance and extracurricular self-education on what robotics is and the challenges and opportunities that come with it. Their ability to inspire and include each student maximizes the enjoyment and personal growth of everyone involved on the Robotics team. James Strodtbeck fulfills all of these expectations and occasionally goes above and beyond in his dedication to East Grand Rapids Robotics and to FIRST as a whole. James Strodtbeck is a nurse,…show more content… James Strodtbeck’s “ability to own every room” stems from the everyday pressures of his job as an EGR nurse where lives are placed in his hands. His second dual jobs as a husband and father give him the listening skills, patience, and sympathetic nature that are essential to his success as a teacher and mentor of our team. His patience enabled him to spend countless hours outside of meetings to read this year’s rulebook, learn the minutiae of the game, and ensure that everyone else knew the rules as well. James Strodtbeck also told us all that he was mainly participating in the FIRST program for the people: not for the robot. He therefore lectures to inspire us to give our all to our respective groups to benefit the entire team. The tribal program that he created at the beginning of the season helped include and inform everyone on various mechanical topics, such as welding, tapping a piece of aluminium. His tribal program not only worked to educate those who didn’t know much about Robotics, but also gave each person a sense of worth and a viable role on the team. It takes commitment and patience to teach high schoolers how to use a miter saw for six hours, but James Strodtbeck did it graciously with
