fully capitalized on these resources and we're just now hitting our stride in terms of marketing FRC and letting people know how cool FIRST is. But we are right on track in creating strong and long lasting ties with real-world engineers. Already we have had the pleasure and special privilege of visiting many of the facilities of the spectacular engineering companies around our school. One very memorable moment for many team members was when the California Science Center Director attended and spoke at our school's academic awards night banquet about the engineering challenges in moving the retired space shuttle Endeavour across L.A.! We've even participated in events at our local community college, El Camino, on their Engineering Day.
We hope to further use these established channels of communication to share the values of FIRST. We know that many of these professionals would love to share their expertise with the community and we can act as the link to make this happen. We have reached out and acquired valuable mentors like Fazlul Zubair from Raytheon, Ralf Ihmels from Com Dev, Ted Dang from DARPA, David Stuart from Boeing, and Bill Kummer from Raytheon. Our growing communication with these professional individuals has allowed us to create a bridge between these engineers and local community members.
We're also fortunate to be located on the same campus as our sister K-8 school, the Da Vinci Innovation Academy. As a team we have worked extensively with the young childrenin our community to get them excited about
pg. 4 (Chairman's Essay cont.)
engineering. As engineering aficionados ourselves, we understand that it is important to introduce young children to engineering at a young age. When asked, many children in our community say that they want to grow up to be firefighters, football players, or even movie stars, but very few of them say engineers. Team 4201 is working to change this. We have made efforts to expose children to engineering in the most fun and captivating way. Over the last three years we have been part of Da Vinci Science's initiative to set up summer math and science camps for local middle school and elementary school kids, where they get to design their own toys and other creations. We also regularly visit the Innovation Academy, in order to mentor their FLL team and to help them with the engineering projects that are part of their curriculum. Our aim is to change the way these kids think about engineering because it certainly is fun.
As proud members of the Vitruvian Bots Team 4201, we realize that we have accomplished much within our community. But just as involved as we have become, we realize that we can grow even more in creating connections with our community. We hope to be able to market ourselves more and reach out to our partner schools, Da Vinci Design and Da Vinci Communications, to help them start their own FRC team. We strive to make our team the best it can be and we know that if we push ourselves and we spread the FIRST message, we can truly affect the society we live in for the better.