Woodie Flowers Award Nomination 2006 Arizona FIRST Regional Chris Hanson is great mentor and teacher. Since I have been a student on the FIRST Team 1011, it has been my pleasure to have the opportunity to work with outstanding mentors. Chris Hanson certainly stands out in an extraordinary lineup! Some of the best qualities about a mentor are not always about credentials or experience, sometimes it is all about how a mentor relates to students and how they relate to him in return. Chris really has a remarkable gift in this area. His quiet, self-confident temperament allows him to interact freely with Team 1011 students. His quirky humor is always well received. Chris always has a smile and a witty comment that will give us the chance to smile. At times, it is our first smile of the day! His humorous outlook on life allows everyone around him a little respite from the stresses of our lives. One of the qualities often associated with a great mentor is the ability to motivate people and students around you. Chris has a simple approach to this, he never asks us (the students) to do anything he is not already doing! Chris is always the one of the first people help out when needed. He is a great example for all students that would rather sit around and watch everyone else take care of business. He really can and does motivate us to do things we really don’t want to do. That is a great quality for any mentor working with high school students! Chris understands the philosophy of Dean Kamen and FIRST. In his own words, Chris describes why he became a mentor,                FIRST is the hobby that I could only dream about as a kid. It allows                teenagers an opportunity to get hands-on experience in developing                hardware and software to compete in an exciting game that prepares them                for real-life assignments. It also helps kids that might feel like outcasts,                geeks, or nerds a chance to be involved on a team where their skills and                personalities are valued. Chris is the head programming mentor on Team 1011. Up until this year, this was a very lonely position. Most Team 1011 students really preferred to do other things during build season, but not this year. Team 1011 recruited several programming students (geeks to those that love them)! For the first time, Chris finally had interested students to teach programming and software development to. Some of these students were so shy and introverted, you could barely hear them when they spoke and there were times when we never even noticed them. Chris has worked miracles on these students. Most days, it is hard to get them to stop talking about programming! What a difference Chris has made in their self-confidence. This year, these young and highly motivated students were fully engaged in the software development and are responsible for much of the final robot code. They have all become better communicators mostly due to the thoughtful, inspiring approach Chris has used to help them become more self-assured! We look forward to their contributions over the next few years, as they are all freshmen! Chris Hanson really is a great mentor to emulate. He is a valued asset to team 1011 and he is highly regarded by all of the students, parents, volunteers and fellow mentors. We believe he is an excellent candidate for the Woodie Flowers award and respectfully submit his nomination.