By Alex Bryant | President
Chesapeake BRIDGES: Building a STEM Talent Pipeline
By Alex Bryant | President, FIRST Chesapeake
July 2026
There is a moment that happens at almost every FIRST Chesapeake competition that does not show up in our data.
A team runs into a problem they have never seen before. A wire fails. A sensor stops reading. The clock is running. And then, from across the pit area, a mentor from a different team walks over. Then a student. They do not know each other. They have been competing all day. None of that matters.
That moment is what Chesapeake BRIDGES is built to multiply.
BRIDGES is the connective tissue that links our 493 teams, 10,235 students, and 1,748 mentors and coaches across Virginia, Maryland, DC, and West Virginia into something that functions like a regional ecosystem. Shared fabrication hubs. A network of regulation practice fields. University partnerships that open campus labs to community teams. And Geared Up, our team-launch engine, which stands up new FRC and FTC teams with startup funding, training, and two years of structured mentor support, opening access in a new community every time it fires.
Rising Tides: Near-Peer Mentorship in Washington, DC
Washington, DC has eight FIRST Robotics Competition teams. Most are in Title I schools. All of them are in communities where finding and keeping a technical mentor is one of the hardest problems a team faces.
Rising Tides is our answer. Developed in partnership with Howard University, the program places trained, paid collegiate mentors with DC FRC teams at schools including Phelps ACE, Jackson-Reed, Cardozo, and Anacostia. The model is intentionally reciprocal: the college student grows into a professional by doing the work, and the high school student gains a mentor who comes from their community and is genuinely invested in their success. Year Two brings the program to Virginia State University, extending the same model into the VSU STEM Hub service area.
The Students at the Center of It
The numbers describe the scope. The photos tell you something the numbers do not.
Two students from Team 1389 The Body Electric, controllers in hand, watching their robot with total concentration. Four members of Team 13370 Electric Slide posing with their robot, laughing, arms around each other. Five members of Team 2068 Raid the Reef in matching blue shirts, looking like exactly what they are: a team.
These are not stories about exceptional kids. They are stories about what happens when ordinary kids get the infrastructure they deserve.
Looking Ahead
This summer brings our Mentor Conference at James Madison University on August 8 and 9, and FTC Academy for new coaches across the district. Through BRIDGES in FY2027, we are working to launch eight new FRC teams, expand Geared Up FTC into communities where competitive robotics has been out of reach, deploy the Rising Tides cohort in DC, and sustain the Southwest Virginia and West Virginia pipelines already underway.
Thank you for making this possible. Every dollar you contribute helps us launch more teams, train more mentors, and build the infrastructure where moments like the ones above happen, not by luck, but by design.
What we are building is not robots. It is people.
With gratitude,
Alex Bryant
President, FIRST Chesapeake
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