Thank you for you interest in volunteering for Music CIty BEST competition.  

There are multiple ways to volunteer:  team mentoring, competition judging, and hub team involvement.  Below is a description of each of these opportunities.  Please submit an inquiry request and indicate what activity interests you.

Team Mentoring

Teams from across the metroplex work for 8 weeks to design and built robots using the engineering design process.  Each team has a very dedicated teacher and/or key mentor guiding the team.  Some teams meet during school, while others meet after school and possibly on weekends.  Team mentors work with the teams to guide them throughout the design process.  If you enjoy working with students and shaping the creative process, please consider this volunteer opportunity.

Competition Judging

Judging begins on Tuesday of game week and runs through the Saturday game day.  All volunteers must register with the BEST National Registry to allow coordination of volunteer activities - the "Volunteer Now" button below will send you to the registry.

Game Week: Tuesday - Friday

• Notebook judging - scoring of the team engineering notebooks.  Game knowledge is not necessary, only knowledge of good engineering processes. 
• Website judging - scoring team's websites
• Video judging - scoring 5 min videos produced by teams

Game Week: Tuesday

• Robot Critical Design Review judging - each team will explain their robot design in detail and how different engineering discipline perspectives influenced the design (mechanical, electrical, software, test, human factors, logistics, etc.).  Judging will be online in the evening time.

Game Week: Thursday

• Team Exhibit and Interview judging - online interviews with teams where they will present their virtual exhibits to discuss how they brought their product to market.  Judging will be online in the evening time.

Game Week: Friday

• Marketing presentation judging - each team will present their product and brand to judges.  Judging will be online in the evening time.

Game Day: Saturday

• Game referees - these volunteers are involved in monitoring the game and verifying rules are met during each round.  Judging will be online throughout the day.
• Robot Compliance Check / Game Setup - examines the team robots and classroom field to verify it mets the rules.  Also, help teams get ready for their first round of competition.  Activity will be online throughout the day.

Hub Team Volunteer

Pulling together this competition takes a team with various skills in coordination and promotion.  Music City BEST has the benefit of collaboration with Lipscomb University  Engineering Department, who provide key portions of the coordination efforts.  We also have several members from different industries around Nashville.  Meetings occur once a month most of the year with more activities occuring around the event dates (Kickoff, Practice and Game Days).  If you are interested in joining the hub team, please let us know by contacting Janice Cato at janice.cato@lipscomb.edu.