theMentors - Our Mentors provide a variety of support for the students in designing and building the Robot, Web design, CAD, and 3D Animation.

Mr. Joe Cunningham -

Position: Pinkerton Academy Team 241 Faculty Advisor and Team Coordinator
Joined the Team: 2003/2004
Occupation: Teacher

Experience and Background:
Former engineer at various companies, Joe Cunningham has been an engineering teacher at PA for six years.

Additional Information:
A Project Lead The Way ( PLTW) master teacher for three years.

Ms. Peggy Blanchard -

Position:Pinkerton Academy Team 241 Co-Faculty Advisor and Computer Specialist
Joined the Team: 2006/2007
Occupation: PC/LAN technician

Experience and Background:
Installs, maintains, and repairs all computer related workstations and peripherals
Troubleshooter
Operating system & application support and troubleshooting

Mr. Richard DiPasquale -

Position: General Robot Mechanical Design & Strategy
Joined the Team 2009/2010
Occupation: Systems Architect and Engineer

Experience and Background:
I am currently a Consulting Member of Technical Staff responsible for architecting fiber optic telecommunications systems and sub-systems at Alcatel-Lucent. As an architect, I analyze customer, market and supplier trends and development team capability and help generate potential technical roadmaps to create products and features to meet customer needs. I also fulfill the role of a systems engineer: writing technical requirements for products and features. (The technical documents I write are much like the rules of a US First competition.)

I enjoy teaching engineering analysis to solve problems and teaching how things work. As this is my first FIRST season, I'm learning a great deal from the team. Through my career, I've worked primarily in realtime software based telecommunications systems. I am new to robotics, but I have a knack for instigating analysis of future problems and a knack for finding potential sources for solutions: (such as team members, Mr. C and the other mentors!). Over the years I have learned a variety of software languages including C, C++, and Pascal

Additional Information: In high school, I wrote software for fun as part of a Boy Scout Explorer group. Over the years, I've taken many broken things apart, and sometimes, I even put them make together and had them work! I’ve been a coach for Destination Imagination teams— (But they only had $100 limits, so I'm trading in my expertise in duct tape and paper mache for a high learning curve on angle aluminum and Lexan.) I like learning new strategy games and thinking in the clouds, and just occasionally, coming back to solid ground.

Mr. Dan Pelletier -

Position: General Project Management & Strategy
Joined the Team 2006/2007
Years with FIRST: 7(2 FLL, 5 FRC)
Occupation: Student at UNMH

Experience and Background:
I first became involved with FIRST in middle school as a member of the original Auburn Village School, during which the team racked up 2 quality research awards (1 qualifying, 1 state) and 3 spirit awards (2 qualifying and 1 state). I worked on both these teams, earning the nicknamed of "team cheerleader", which I wore with pride. Moving on to high school, I quickly assimilated myself into Team 241, joining both the programming and animation team. As a freshman I headed up scouting and strategy. At the beginning of junior year I was “given” the job of team General Manager.

During my two-year tenure as student lead, the team competed at the national level in Atlanta and also went 7 and 1 in the 2009 Granite State Regional. During my senior year, I directed Team 241: The Movie, a short film about all of the hard work that a robotics team does during the six weeks of build season. After I graduated, I signed back on with the team as a junior mentor to help out with management and leadership.

Additional Information:
I took three years of computer sciences classes, and is knowledgeable in Visual Basic, C++, and Java.I have a passion and enthusiasm for FIRST events, which helps me be loud and proud with Astro Spirit.I have a knack for being able to watch multiple robots at once that helped run scouting and strategy and be “rules guru”. For team events, I can always be found running the music and MCing the events.

Mr. Steven Shumway -

Position: Website, CAD, and Animation Design
Joined the Team: 2008/2009
Occupation: Software & Process Engineer

Experience and Background:
Designing test programs and applications to improve manufacturing shop operations. I’ve started designing software programs using “Shell” and “C” language in 1980. Over the years I have learned a variety of other languages including AWK, Perl, C++, Pascal, Java, Visual Basic, .NET, Visual Fox Pro, PHP, and Cold Fusion.

Additional Information:
I’ve spent many hours during my young adult years working on auto mechanics.

Mr Tim Harding -

Position:Mechanical and Scouting Team
Year Joined the Team:2009/ 2010
Occupation: It specialist for Department of Veteran’s Affairs

Experience and Background:
Mechanical operator of the US Navy Submarine

Hobbies
Workaholic – Umpired baseball for 3 years, coached baseball for 6 years, coached soccer for 4 years, and was on the board of directors as a safety officer

Mr Peter Vitale -

Position:Computer Software
Year Joined the Team:2009/2010
Occupation:Substitute teacher for Pinkerton Academy, and Guitar Sales Consultant

Experience and Background:
Bachelors of Science in Electrical Engineering, and worked in telecommunications for various companies

Hobbies
plays guitar in blues bands

Mr Adam Hicks -

Position:Computer Software
Year Joined the Team:2010/ 2011
Occupation: Software Engineer at BAE Systems

Experience and Background:
Imbedded systems software design developer in the defense industries

Hobbies
Referee of soccer and basketball