Meet FIRST Robotics Mentor Tim Terlouw

Cyborg Cats engineers Lauren Moore and James Zandstra mentioned the Boeing mentors who helped them in the build of their robot. Those “real life engineers” are key to the FIRST experience for any team. Pictured above in the team pit is Tim Terlouw, a senior engineering manager at Boeing and father of two students at Westminster. He a long-time NX and Teamcenter user who brings a wealth of product and process knowledge to student engineers.






It was good to hear Tim talk about data management and the need to expose the students to systems engineering as well as collaboration tools like Teamcenter Community. Here is another video Westminster did earlier in the year with both Tim and Paul Degroot, one of the adult leaders of the Cyborg Cats:



Tim and Paul shared with me that Boeing encourages mentoring, including donating dollars for volunteer hours to community projects. They’ve put in 300 hours of mentoring so far this year. Tim and Paul were two of more than 5,000 mentors and coaches who were at the FIRST Championship last week. Kudos to all of them for sharing their time and talent. They are inspiring so many to consider engineering as a career.

– Dora