Team 1403 | Montgomery Cougars FIRST Robotics Team

Community

We are widely recognized by our community due to several outreach programs such as public exhibitions and school events. We also publicize our efforts through local signage and newspapers, including the Princeton Packet, the Trentonian and the Star Ledger.

Montgomery High School

To interest incoming students to join robotics, we display and demonstrate our robot at the freshman orientation. We also host a demo at a school assembly before Monty Madness to demonstrate this year’s game works and our robot, and to inspire other students to get involved in FIRST and join our team.

Other schools in the township

The center of life and activity in this largely rural town is at our schools. Our schools help to tie together our diverse community members through various activities.

The event that attracts the most attention is Fall Festival. We have been participating in this annual event for 6 years. We set up a vex robot obstacle at the event to allow the young kids who often come to this event to spark their interest in robotics as well as FIRST. We often discuss FIRST and our team with the parents of those children. This community event is one of the paramount activities of our year, as we are educating and informing our community about FIRST and our team.

We introduce FIRST to the younger generations through our FIRST Lego League team at the middle school. We had mentored the team for 2 years, helping the middle school students build their interests in science and technology and lead them to a high school career. Also, our team has increased its involvement in FLL by volunteering at the state championship. Our team also conducts a summer enrichment course, where younger students who have not yet entered high school can experience the values of FIRST and be exposed to science and technology.

Working with our Board of Education, we started a robotics class for 7th graders and expanded the technology curriculum in our high school.

Local public

We have reached out to our community leaders in our town’s Rotary Club. This group of successful community members has influence over the events of the town as well as the many organizations scattered around Montgomery. A few members of our team gave a presentation to the members of the Board of Education introducing FIRST to these influential members of our school.

These past two years we have held an annual car wash at our local Amboy Bank and we have sold USB pin drives. These fundraisers not only raise money, but bring the team together and spread the word of FIRST to our community and school.

Other local towns

The closest town center to Montgomery is in downtown Princeton. We have held an annual demonstration in the heart of Princeton for the past few years. It has been very successful, attracting a variety of townspeople, young and old to inquire about FIRST and our robotics team. We have also exhibited our robot at a Patriot’s game in Bridgewater, spreading the word of FIRST to a wider demographic.

NJ Community Service

One community service activity that we have dedicated ourselves to is Operation Jersey Cares, which we have been participating in for several years. During this event, Team 1403 helps pack boxes of goods such as canned foods to send to troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. In addition to helping them at the event, we printed over 1000 fliers for them in order to publicize their efforts.

Local differently-abled

Team 1403 Cougar Robotics has also opened up the world of science and technology to special needs children at the Rockbrook School for children with communication challenges. We brought vex robots to the school and exposed these young children to the world of science. We have also enjoyed participating in the Flying Eyes project at Princeton University which targets the unification of technology and art by helping visually impaired children take photographs of their community.

FIRST events

This is our 4th year hosting an official FIRST Kickoff, and we couldn't be prouder.

Monty Madness, started in 2006, is another event that not only brings together teams from all different regions but also as a community event that many members of Montgomery attend. In the past few years the list of attendees has expanded to include over forty teams.

We particularly enjoy the coopertition at FIRST events and readily offer help to teams who need it. Two veteran teams that we have helped include Team 103 The Cybersonics and Team 1923 The Midnight Inventors. We recently reached out to 5 rookie FRC teams in New Jersey to offer our help and support. These teams include: Team 3142 The Braves, Team 3151 Cyber Storm, Team 3231 Pioneer Tech, Team 3314 Mustang Robotics & Team 2240 AEA Eagles. We do this in order to quickly acquaint these teams with FIRST and all it has to offer. We also lend electronics and other key parts to other local off-season events in our area. These events include Brunswick Eruption hosted by Team 25 Raider Robotix, Ramp Riot hosted by Team 341 Miss Daisy, and (BR)2 hosted by Team 303 Panther Robotics.

[See all the NJ FRC Teams]

Wider

After experiencing FIRST on Team 1403, many of our alumni move on to pursue careers in science and technology. One of our alumni has begun to spread the word of FIRST by starting a new FRC team in Ohio, Team 3186. We have also begun to aid this team by sending basic programs to help them get started with programming their robot.