Award Deadlines Approaching

While teams are furiously working to get their robots built, I don’t want you to lose sight of upcoming deadlines for some awards that require submissions prior to a team’s events.

Here are the number of teams and submissions for the awards in 2025. I think that recognition is one of the most important things that we do. We get what we celebrate, and nominating people for these awards is a great way to celebrate their contributions. All of these submissions increased from last season, and I would love to see the number of submissions continue to increase this year!

A few things to keep in mind when submitting for these awards:

• The Woodie Flowers Award nomination must be submitted by a student team member. The Lead Coach 1 or 2 for each team must assign at least one (1) and up to two (2) student award submitters in the FIRST Dashboard. Check out the Instructions to assign an Awards Submitter, if you need assistance.
• The Dean’s List Award nomination must be submitted by a team mentor who is not related to either of the students chosen as the team’s Dean’s List Semi-finalists. The Dean’s List Award Guide has instructions to allow another mentor to submit and other helpful tips.
• The FIRST Impact Award may be submitted by a student who is designated as the Award Submitter or Lead Coach 1 or 2.
• If you’re running into issues with submitting any of the awards, you can review the Helpful Award Tips webpage for frequently asked questions for submitting awards.
• Check out the “Award Resources” section on the Awards webpage which has resources for teams on these submitted awards and resources for pit interviews at events.

As a reminder (this text is also on the Submitted Awards page and in the Judge Manual), teams are permitted to use Artificial Intelligence (AI) to assist in the creation of award submissions, handouts, writing robot code, etc. FIRST views AI resources as tools available to students in the same way that CAD programs, Programming Languages, and 3D printers are tools available for their use. Teams using AI to assist with code or content generation must provide proper credit and attribution, and respect intellectual property rights and licenses. Proper credit can look like this: Essay created by Team XXXX and ChatGPT.

Judges should not discredit a team who uses AI or rank them lower simply for using the tool. Teams should be compared based on what they have accomplished in relation to the award judging guidelines. Additionally, while there are some sites that check if a submission used AI, they are not accurate and should not be used to verify.

We can’t wait to see how many teams submit for the awards this year!!