PFP Wiki

Information on this page is transposed from an old PFP website and supplimented by an oral retelling by Dr.Chiu.

Founding

Several administrators in the College of Engineering took interest in the FIRST program and devised an effort to explore the program. In the spring of 1999 Associate Dean Warren Stevenson along with faculty and graduate students, visited the FIRST National Championship event at the Walt Disney Epcot Center in Orlando Florida. In the fall of that year, PSEF (Purdue Student Engineering Foundation) was approached to add a FIRST team to their extensive list of outreach activities. This effort was spearheaded by Shanna Snap, alum of FRC46 and freshman at the time.

After the new students forged a partnership with Steve Florence, a local high school technology teacher, their cohesive effort resulted in the formation of the FRC team 461 Westside Boiler Invasion in 2000. The FRC team was a huge success and began to expand, eventually it began to overshadow all of PSEF’s other outreach activities. It became evident that the FIRST program needed to separate from PSEF and become its own entity. In 2004 the Purdue FIRST Programs was an officially recognized independent student organization.

Tabularized