Curious what StudentRND has been up to over the past year? Feel like you may have missed a few of our projects, or wondering how we raise the money to operate the space? The 2011 Annual Report answers all these questions, check it out below!

Download 2011 Annual Report

Bellevue, WA – October 29, 2011 – StudentRND and FIRST Washington announced the availability of a publicly accessible FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) practice field at StudentRND’s workspace.

The practice field will allow high school FTC teams to test their robots and gain an edge before the regional and state competitions in Washington. Also, teams can play practice games, especially on “FTC Scrimmage Day”, a statewide event on November 11th to encourage FTC teams to practice with their robots in a friendly and competitive manner.

“I’m really excited to be supporting FIRST’s high school students,” said Edward Jiang, founder of StudentRND. “It’s a great program, and I look forward to working with more robotics teams in the future.”

Students can visit StudentRND on Wednesdays 2-7pm and Saturdays 12-7pm, or email to request additional times. StudentRND is located at 1405 132nd Ave NE, Suite 3, Bellevue, WA 98005.

About StudentRND:
StudentRND inspires students to learn more about science and technology by providing tools, equipment, and resources to enable students to work together on exciting projects.

About FIRSTWA:
FIRSTWA (www.firstwa.org) inspires students to pursue careers in science and technology by hosting the FIRST Robotics competitions in Washington state. FIRSTWA is here to help every FIRST participant be successful.

The time has come! The robotic PVC pipe organ that begun this summer is complete and will be unveiled Wednesday the 12th at 6pm. Come by the StudentRND workspace to be serenaded by this unholy combination of mechanization and music and eat pizza!

We’ll be running a live stream at http://pipeorgan.studentrnd.org so tune in if you can’t make it to the event in person!

When I first heard about the Chase Community Giving application, I immediately emailed Chase to get our organization added into the program. I never got a response from them, so I never had a reason to check back on the application.

However, yesterday I got a notification from Evelyn Laminack about StudentRND being on the Chase Community Giving application!

This is an incredible opportunity.

Chase will be giving $25,000 to 100 nonprofits with a budget under $10m.

This can be us. We can be in the top 100.

Currently, over 300,000 people have voted in the Chase Community Giving application. 1% of that is 3,000. However, there are over 500,000 organizations in the database. That’s an incredible number.

I believe if we can get 3,000 votes by December 11th, we have an excellent chance of getting into the top 100 organizations and receive the grant.

This will be a difficult endeavor. However, I believe with enough focus and determination, we can get this done.

To do this, we should have a multifaceted campaign:

1. In-Facebook Campaigning
We’ll create an event and invite everyone we know to the event. This is an easy way to get people to see our voting thing. It’s going to be easy to invite everyone we know to the event, due to the “invite everyone on your friends list” trick.

2. High School Campaigning
We definitely need people to talk to others, post up fliers, etc, at high schools. Tim should be creating fliers within this week. If you have a in-school club/group or facebook group/page that gets reach to high schoolers, we definitely need to send out communication to the members to help us. If you know anyone who has this type of reach, that works even better.

3. College Campaigning
We have only set up the leadership team for StudentRND UW so far, but we can still create a huge impact on the college level. We could combine this with our recruiting efforts and go around and tell people about our organization and mission, as well as give them a quick and easy way for them to help us. Even if we need to go door to door at the dorms, I believe we can mass a good number of votes through the effort of the leadership team and people that we may recruit.

As I said earlier, this will be a difficult task, but we can do it!

• Vote Now!
• Facebook Event

Dear Student,

I’m excited to see you become a part of StudentRND over the upcoming year! Together, we can build our new-age library – the Workshop, and inspire students to learn more about science and technology!

Over the school year, we’ll focus on making the Workshop a reality. To do so, we’ll need three things: space, money, and a set of policies, rules, and procedures for the Workshop.

Currently, we’re in talks with the Redmond/Sammamish Boys and Girls Club to use the upcoming Sammamish Community Center as a space. This is nowhere near certain though, but certainly is a first step! Otherwise, we’re hoping that corporations or other organizations may let us use their space next year.

We also have raised over $3,300 over the last year, although $1,100 was spent over the last summer. We need a minimum of $6,000 before next summer to operate. (That means we still need to raise at least $3,800!)

We also need to devise a set of rules, policies, and procedures for the Workshop next year. Otherwise, what’s to prevent one person from abusing the equipment?

That’s where you come in. We need to accomplish these goals, and get the Workshop running by next summer. We need to fundraise, write grants, talk to local companies about our mission, get publicity, etc. There’s so much to be done, and can be done. Together, we can accomplish.

Sincerely,

Edward Jiang, CEO