As the modern founder and 2x President of Northeastern Robotics, I rebuilt the defunct club to 450 members and counting.
The Beginning
When I joined as a freshman, NURobotics was a small, scrappy club with a budget of $1,000. I joined the Robobrawl and Wallcart teams, quickly finding a community of others passionate about robotics.
The Pandemic Shutdown
When Covid-19 hit, the club collapsed. Projects, events, and communications ceased. By the end of the semester, all of the eboard had graduated or moved on.
Eleven months later, the robotics club was still dead. A void was felt in the community; when new students asked me how to get started in robotics, I had nowhere to point. After several contact attempts, I finally re-established contact with the former President.
The Revival
The former President handed me the login information to the club accounts, and told me that practically everything else needed to be built from scratch. With that, I set off to recruit a new eboard to bring the club back to the limelight.
Our initial eboard was composed entirely of sophomores, myself included. I established a regular eboard meeting time and steered the team through the steps of bringing back the club.
- Established a new club constitution and election process
- Created a Teams communication platform as a virtual communication hub for members to connect
- Started social media accounts to promote the club
- Formed a roster of 6 new and revived team projects
- Hosted a series of intro to robotics crash course lectures
- Began the professor seminar speaker series
- Built a makerspace for projects to grow from
Phase Two
When I returned to campus after my first co-op, I returned as President. With a fresh perspective, I re-evaluated the systems that had been built, and worked further to solidify NURobotics as a club that will last far beyond my time.
- Redesigned club website, providing an up-to-date view of the club to the public
- Club Knowledge Base, a flexible document intended as a one-stop-shop for all info robotics
- Unified club communications platform under Discord, with an interactive role system to streamline project onboarding
- Began cross-collaborations with other student organizations, such as ASME and Forge
- Grew the eboard further, establishing new roles such as DEI Lead
Web Redesign
To reflect the newly revived club, I rebuilt the website from the ground-up.
I started by mocking up the site with a box diagram on Figma, later adding pictures and hooking up the buttons for an interactive demo, as seen on the left.
After showing the layout around for user feedback, I implemented it into the actual website, shown on the right.
Knowledge Base
To streamline the onboarding process and document our knowledge for the next generation of engineers, I established the club knowledge base for all members to reference, both new and old.
Unified Club Communications
I discovered an initial flaw with my club architecture: each project had a separate communications platform, walling off segments of the club and making the onboarding process challenging. I consolidated everything under one hub, with a one-click action to join a project.
As of February 2023, the server has grown to 560 members and counting.
The Phoenix Award
Recognizes exceptional organizational improvement and rebuilding during the year. Awarded to the organization that was most successful in making significant improvements in the areas of leadership, membership growth, retention, and programming.
Nominated in 2021. Won in 2022.
News@Northeastern Article
Our story got picked up by Northeastern’s news team. After interviewing us and taking photo shoots, our story was shared as the headliner of Northeastern’s premier new site.