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As a team, we pride ourselves in preparing students for life past high school and aim to create successful future engineers and professionals by teaching discrete skills. To cater to individual interests and have the most inclusive community we can, we have five specialized teams: mechanical, programming, electrical, business, and creative.

By being a part of the mechanical team students are able to gain experience with tools, machinery, and the design process which will help them with real world design and engineering challenges. The mechanical team not only builds the robot, but designs it and has to account for dimension restrictions and other limiters that FIRST entails, like pricing for parts. They have to be able to communicate with all the other teams for budgeting, electrical power, and the abilities of our coders. 

The programming team is a great environment that allows team members to develop a variety of skills that prepare students for their futures as coders, thinkers, and most importantly, team members. Through coding our robot, we establish not only the mindset of a programmer, but one of critical thinking, problem solving, and patience, as well as how to clearly articulate our thoughts and ideas through in-code comments or oral communication. 

On the electrical team, students learn similar skills to the other teams, such as teamwork, time management, and problem solving. In addition to building those strengths, the electrical team learns how to work with space constraints. Depending on how the mechanical team designs the layout, the electrical team may have limited space. Working with these constraints causes electricians to have creative problem solving skills. Students on the electrical team must also figure out how to execute their ideas within the abilities of their materials and clearly communicate the restraints with their teammates.

Our robotics team isn't only benefiting those going into STEM fields. The business/strategy team teaches students valuable lessons in contacting businesses and how to conduct professional exchanges with them. Budgeting is another important part of this team and will help students in their personal life. These skills are useful in any field and are a big part of running team 3454 as a whole. This team also handles overall strategy in design and competition tactics. These critical thinking and problem solving skills are necessary to preform effectively on the robot field, and later in life.