Leadership

Building Leadership

1511 works on building leadership throughout the team, year round. All students are encouraged to take leadership roles at different times through the year. Here are the major ways 1511 promotes Leadership!

1. Leadership Boot Camp & Training

The Leadership Boot Camp is a full day training held over the summer or in the fall. It is designed to

be helpful to both students and mentors and is based on several very popular leadership books. There are lots of workshops and activities to get participants working on their new skills immediately. This has been a very valuable training for our student leaders!

Leadership Boot Camp Presentation
Leadership Boot Camp Workbook

Our former Lead Mentor first presented this camp in 2006. She also presented "How to run a Leadership Boot Camp" at the Championship Conferences for two years, as well as a seminar on "Motivation."  The documents are linked here.
How to Run a Leadership Boot Camp
Motivating Yourself and Others

2. Student Leadership Selection

Rolling Thunder's Leadership selection is a 3-step process:

1. Anonymous survey - it asks potential leaders about their morals, skills, and ideas for improvements concerning the team. Selection from this step is anonymously chosen by a set of experienced mentors.
   Student Leadership Application
   Mentor Application Review
   
   
2. Interview - low-pressure, questions and answers by a team of mentors. Mentors ask candidates questions about personal experiences, how he/she can help the team as a leader, and what he/she wants to learn by being on the leadership team.
   Interview Questions
   
   
3. Vote! - the candidates who made it through the first and second steps come up with a speech (up to 5 minutes) about why they should be elected to their teammates. After the speeches, the team votes on who they think would make the best leaders. They get to chose 2 from each year (2 freshmen, 2 sophomores, 2 juniors, 2 seniors). The top two from each class gets the leadership position.
   
   

3. Student Subteam Leaders

To manage the various sections of building a robot, our team is divided into subteams by subject. To keep those subteams organized, a student is appointed leader of that subteam, with the responsibilites of keeping that subteam's wiki page up to date, taking attendance, keeping meeting notes, and writing task notes among other responsibilities.

4. Students Lead Events

To keep student initiative high, students are encouraged to lead events such as robot demonstrations, community service activities, fun team events, and fundraisers. They set up times, dates, and organize all the details associated with creating and running an event.

Upcoming Events