by Paul J. Heney, Editorial Director
For the January issue’s Leadership spotlight, Editorial Director Paul J. Heney profiled master inventor and engineer Dean Kamen. Kamen is also well known for creating the successful FIRST program for inspiring kids to engineer solutions to problems, using everything from LEGOs to robots. Kamen invited Heney to the FIRST Championships this spring in St. Louis, to witness firsthand what was happening with the program. After the Championships, the two spoke about this year’s event and the future.
Heney: What was your takeaway from this year’s championship? Was there anything in particular that surprised you?
Kamen: I think, like every year, it was bigger and better than the year before … With more than 80 countries sending teams, the idea that the two teams that ended up in the final championship round from the little FIRST LEGO League kids, one team happened to come from Jordan and the other team came from Israel. To watch Israel and Jordan competing with 8 year old kids and at the end of the round, the teams ran out and hugged each other. It gives you hope for what the world could be like for smart and rational people.
Heney: Did you have any memorable interactions with a student or team?
Kamen: They’re nonstop. You typically have a kid run up to you and explain that FIRST has changed her or his life, and they’re now going off to college. One of Will.i.am’s kids, Cynthia, is Hispanic, who is just this incredible kid, has been working for 10 years, since she was 6 years old, with the obsession to become a great engineer and to go off to MIT. It turns out that she wins one of the 10 positions of Dean’s List students. Of course, with 182 universities all lined up … giving out tens of millions of dollars in scholarships, they announce that she’s won Dean’s List. She comes running up. She’s hysterical. I see her, and I said, “What are you going to do now?” She said, “Now I’m Dean’s List. I’m applying to MIT. I want to go to MIT.”
I turned around and I see Stu Schmill there, who happens to be the Dean of Admissions of MIT. I turn around and say, “Stu, meet Cynthia. Cynthia, meet Stu. By the way, Cynthia, Stu is the Dean of Admissions of MIT.” He puts out his hand, shakes hands and says, “Let’s talk.” I thought she was going to pass out. There’s just no end of incredible stories that happen. In fact, most of them, people wouldn’t believe. They think this doesn’t happen in the real world, this is cornier than a tear-jerking movie. What’s so exciting about it is it’s all real, and it happens to thousands and thousands and thousands of kids.
Heney: You told me when we met in December that you thought that FIRST should excite kids in a similar way to how our society treats sporting events. I think there definitely was that kind of excitement in the building. Is this the way you envisioned FIRST 25 years ago, or do you think the vision that you and the other people involved in FIRST had has changed over the years?
Kamen: I would tell you probably one thing that I never let change. We grow, we evolve; I hope we improve. I started FIRST for a single mission. I started FIRST with a single premise. The premise was, despite what lots of people say, we don’t have an education crisis in this country. We have a culture crisis. We have a culture in which kids are free to do whatever they want, and in a free culture, you get the best of what you celebrate. We’ve grown into a culture that celebrates, to obsession, the worlds of sports, NFL and NBA and World Series, Super Bowl, and the worlds of entertainment, and the Academy Awards and Hollywood. Every famous role model that kids, particularly women and minorities can relate to, comes from Hollywood or professional sports. No wonder they gravitate to that. No wonder they gravitate away from the lifelong efforts you have to put in, starting as a kid, to learn math and science, to become a great engineer and innovator.
I said, “Let’s figure out how to celebrate the superheroes of technology, even once in a while, the way we do superstars of sports. Let’s use the model that they use in other sports to create, among kids, the same kind of passion for science and technology as they have for bouncing the ball or jumping on a stage.” Twenty-five years ago, I named the organization FIRST: For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology.
The word education isn’t in our name. We’re about inspiring kids. We’re about recognizing the importance and the fun and the accessibility of science and technology. From the beginning, I said we’re not competing with the Science Fair, we’re competing with the Super Bowl. We’re competing for the hearts and minds of kids, and we have to convince kids, particularly women and minorities, that if they’re willing to put their passion to it, science and engineering are every bit as much fun and every bit as accessible as bouncing a ball. The big difference is every kid on every team in FIRST can turn pro, because there are millions and millions of jobs out there for qualified people that have a passion for technology. There are very, very, very few jobs open every year in the NBA.
From year one until today, I have not changed, and I won’t let anybody else change the mission of FIRST. Let the schools teach. Let the educators educate. We are a coalition of industry, parents, government and teachers that want to celebrate and develop a passion among kids for the hard work that it takes, and for the gratification that you get from mastering science, engineering, math and technology. I believe that FIRST is successful because we are igniting a passion among kids, in the same way they can be inspired to work so hard at, frankly, what are really pastimes. They can develop, over their youth, an obsession for sports and entertainment. It will not give them career options. Or, they can develop, while they are young, a passion for learning science and math and solving tough engineering problems under pressure, and that prepares them for the real world of technology. It prepares them to take on any career they want.
People think we have a job shortage in this country. I’ve been saying for a long time, there’s no job shortage, there are skill shortages, and kids that don’t have the skills to do tech are going to see less and less and less exciting career options available to them. The boring careers, the physical labor careers, the dangerous careers are going away. They’re being done by robots and computers. The only exciting, expanding area for kids to have great new careers inevitably requires more and more confidence in, and comfort with, technology. FIRST is creating that among a whole generation of kids. That has never changed, and I think it’s more important than ever.
Heney: Do you see 3D printing playing a bigger role in the coming years in the program?
Kamen: Oh, yes, 3D printing fits perfectly with FIRST because A, it’s an advanced technology—I love to show off to kids how exciting advanced technologies are—and B, 3D printing allows you to make parts really quickly, and there’s very few places where that matters more than in a competition where you have only a matter of weeks to design and build a solution to a complex problem. In fact, some of the robots that were there, the entire robot base was 3D printed. A couple of companies were exited to show that they built one and they didn’t like it, so they just changed a few aspects of it overnight and reprinted another robot. Ten years ago, that would have been something that NASA couldn’t do, that the Department of Defense couldn’t do, that the most advanced engineering labs in the world couldn’t do. Now we’ve got high school kids 3D printing entire robots overnight.
Heney: Are there any challenges at the state or local level that stand in the way of FIRST succeeding?
Kamen: I think the problem is most large systems, and education is a very large system, most large systems that have taken 100 or more years to develop in a society are very hard to change, even though everybody knows they need to change. Even though certain aspects of them everybody knows are broken or inefficient. They’re just hard to change. Bringing FIRST into every school is going to require changing various aspects of almost all the different layers of education, from school boards to superintendents to principals to teachers. It’s a lot of work, and people resist change. I think we have to keep pushing hard to make FIRST available everywhere.
Heney: Dean, if you could have the ear of one person for 15 minutes to sell them on why they should support FIRST, who would it be and why?
Kamen: That’s a very good question. Actually, I was lucky enough to get invited by the President of the United States to have lunch with him, and I did have more than that amount of time, and I did spend some of my time trying to convince the president, who I think is already a huge believer in tech and a huge believer that the best solution to everything from what’s going on in Baltimore to what went on in Ferguson, the best solution to all those things is give all kids equal access to great education, particularly STEM education that can lead to great career options for them. I did tell the president, “You know what, there’s lots of problems out there, and you can treat them one at a time. Ignorance, teenage pregnancy, drug addiction, poverty, bigotry. You treat every one of those one at a time, and you’re treating a symptom.” Why are people addicted to drugs? Why do we have so much teenage pregnancy? Why is there hatred, bigotry and fear?
You can treat all of those as if they’re a problem, or you can recognize those are a symptom, and the core problem is lack of education. You give a kid a great education, which gives them self-confidence, which gives them the capability to turn dreams into reality, which gives them great career choices to pursue and be satisfied by. Those kids will not end up with all those other problems we just talked about. I suggested to the president that he help us make FIRST available to every kid in this country, and eventually, every kid around the world. Certainly he didn’t argue that that was a bad goal.
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