Looking for Mentors...
 

Truck Town Thunder Robotics, FRC Team 68, is looking for mentors. Experienced and inexperienced are needed to work with students to build a competitive robot.

Please email Andrew Spiece, aspiece at gmail dot com.

Thank you for all of your support. ::safety::

Re: Looking for Mentors...
 

Do you provide mentor bacon?

Re: Looking for Mentors...
 

Asking the real questions

Re: Looking for Mentors...
 

Feel free to send some of those this way :cool:
-Ronnie

Re: Looking for Mentors...
 

I'm not sure this is the best place to look for new mentors since if someone has an account here they probably already have a team they're affiliated with.

That said, what are some good techniques for attracting new mentors to a team? Do you directly approach individuals? Do you talk to your local Chamber of Commerce about the benefits of mentoring? Do you rely on parents and existing friends to lasso in new mentors?

What works and what doesn't when it comes to bringing in new mentors?

Where do the best mentors come from?

Re: Looking for Mentors...
 

We've picked up several mentors (and students) from doing demonstrations at events in our school for elections, open house, parents nights, etc. Either we are doing a robot demonstration or a team fundraiser but having one of our robots on display or running around is a great way to start conversation.

While CD isn't the best means for attracting new mentors there are a lot of people who lurk the forums who aren't affiliated or between teams at the moment.

Re: Looking for Mentors...
 

Said the man with no team?

Re: Looking for Mentors...
 

Talk with your sponsors. Take your robot out there, do demos, and anyone who seems even remotely interested is a potential new mentor. Parents are a great resource as well.

We've been fortunate this year to have a rather large influx of new mentors - one from a sponsor, one a graduated student who finished college and came back to town, several parents, and even a parent with a kid in the lower school and not on the team.

Re: Looking for Mentors...
 

I would agree that posting on CD isn't the best place to look for mentors, but teams who did it last year ended up winning the World Championship and Championship Chairman's Award so...

Re: Looking for Mentors...
 

A good mentor knows when and where to seek help (someone taught me) and Mr. Andrew Spice is one of them. Chief Delphi is super market for FRC teams, where one can find all sorts of answers and ideas and there is no better place than this. Many mentors have become mentor when their kid was in the team and then they continue coz of their personal passion. They will be good candidates to join teams that need mentors. Also the mentors who have moved to a new city can join. If a team does not announce on CD, they will probably not know about it.

Re: Looking for Mentors...
 

2512 would be the team I'm affiliated with. At least that's what I put on the form when volunteering. There are reasons I'm not officially a mentor, reasons that are irrelevant here.

Re: Looking for Mentors...
 

Pardon the creepy background research but looking at your bluealliance it says you started competing in 1998. If this is true and I dunno why it wouldn't be that would point at a lot of alumni, have you asked any of them if they know people who would be interested?

Re: Looking for Mentors...
 

They can't offer "no snow or ice during build season", so hopefully they've got bacon in their favor...

Re: Looking for Mentors...
 

I completely understand your position on this. Gaining mentors is always tricky. Getting experienced mentors is also really hard. None of the original mentors from 1998 are still with Truck Town. We are really good at gaining "green" mentors but getting dedicated mentors with experience in FIRST is always tricky. Our team does a lot for FIRST in our area and finding an experience FIRST mentor would really benefit our team initiatives and FIRST in general.

For example, our team has had the opportunity to start over 30 FIRST teams in the past two years and all of them need experienced FIRST mentors to help guide and help them build teams.

That being said, by being an experienced mentor on Truck Town Thunder, you will have opportunities to mentor other teams and be a huge contributor to FIRST as a whole. Soooooo, Chief Delphi is probably the only place we can find a mentor that will be able to fill this role.

We have done a lot of creative things to gain good quality mentors. The last two years we have even had remote mentors. One of those mentors helped us gain the FIM State Chairmans award but mentoring the students through a successful chairmans process.

Please do not take this as a bragging session! We really want to help FIRST as a whole and we are in a position to do so and we need help doing it!

Thank you so much for asking and I hope this answers your question.

Re: Looking for Mentors...
 

I don't understand the hostility in this thread. There are quite a few people with no team on ChiefDelphi. I got connected with my current team through here. I moved to a new city and made a post. Other teams have been successful at recruiting mentors from here as well.